Erik Larsen Talks the Shocking And Deadly Savage Dragon #246

It has been almost a week since Savage Dragon #246 hit the stands from creator Erik Larsen, featuring a birthday celebration for Maxine, a game-changing revelation about her future, and a journey into the Toronto underworld — in more ways than one. The big event in the issue’s back half is a team-up between Malcolm and Captain Tootsie — remember him? — as they go below the city’s streets in search of Scourge, whose violence flares up again this issue and results in dozens of deaths and huge property damage. How will the pair handle a villain who has handed basically every hero in town their ass at one point or another? Well, it’s not the way you’d think, that’s for sure.

…And of course, it’s Savage Dragon, where hardly a month goes by without an unexpected death. This time, though, it sets up a conflict that could change the way Toronto deals with some of Malcolm’s most persistent foes.

As is his custom, Larsen joined ComicBook.com last week to discuss the issue. So, spoilers ahead. You can pick up a copy of the issue at your local comic shop or buy one online if you want to read along with us.

Okay, so first of all, I know that you posted on Facebok there was a difference in the colors between the print and digital edition. Is that something worth addressing here?

It’s comically minor stuff. Because of the New York Comic Con and my need to be there, I ended up partially inking four pages on the plane. I finished inking them at Chris Eliopoulos’s house and scanning them there. Then I stayed up until the wee hours scripting those last few pages so that Ferran could letter them. It was all very seat-of-my-pants stuff. I got some lettering back and I’d married the lettering to the colored pages on Thursday night but Friday morning was my deadline—it HAD to be uploaded or I was doomed and that meant minimal proofreading and minimal color correcting. Gavin proofread the script and had a couple corrections and I trusted him. But it did mean that a few coloring mistakes made it into print. Mostly on page six. Maxine’s socks on that page are green—and they’re white on subsequent pages and two of the kids are discolored in panel one—nothing earth-shattering by any means but there were a few things along the way where a few things were missed or I rethought a sound effect color or two. Eagle-eyed readers may be able to spot them but nothing is changed substantially.

We have seen a lot of talk about Maxine’s sexual addiction, but does this issue kind of telegraph that she has a real problem with alcohol, too? It seems like there are a lot of bad life choices that go on whenever she drinks.

She’s doing what a lot of people do when they have problems and that’s to try and drown them in alcohol. People often drink to forget or to relax or feel comfortable or any number of things. She has a somewhat addictive personality and if it’s not one thing it’s another. She’s trying to be there for Malcolm but since she’s been through some serious trauma she’s not really comfortable doing that and it all kind of spirals out of control. It’s not an ideal situation for her or anybody around her.

We finally get closure on the Li’l Wise Guy blood. What does this mean for Maxine, since Malcolm has powers but it’s not like he’s immortal. And she has kids who will probably at some point be older than her now?

We’ll have to wait and see how that all plays out. She’s a long way away from her kids growing older than her. She’s 25 and her oldest are just four-years old. Maxine fears death more than ever at this point and this is an effort to keep that from happening but whether it works is another thing. PJ got just the smallest dose himself and this is diluted more than that so there’s no guarantee it’ll be as effective as she hopes it will be. If it does work than, yeah, at some point Malcolm will be in his 80s and she’ll still look 25 but I’m not likely to live long enough to see that day so that may be moot.

Bringing Freak-Out back into the picture is interesting. It’s been gone for a while and I hadn’t really noticed. Was it just a question of wanting it for this one thing or are you reintroducing it to the story?

It was for one thing. Maxine wanted it to deal with her youngest daughter, Madeline, who is the one child with electrical powers. She’s afraid of being electrocuted. Her thought was to take away those posers now and return them when she’s old enough to better cope with them. Other things will crop up that make her question that and there is the fact that Maddy was able to save her mother’s life because of those powers—so it’s not all bad.

The idea of Captain Tootsie coming face to face with modern cynicism and reality is kind of fun, but is that something that we might see more of, or was it just to get the question of him and his kids out of the way?

It’s a bit of each. It’s fun to play with the fish out of water aspect of Captain Tootsie coming from a more innocent time and thrust into a more modern setting. There’s fun to play with that stuff. It also begins the process of fleshing him out a bit more and making his more aware of what people are saying.

The Scourge death scene is played for laughs a bit, but is it a commentary on trigger happy cops who “fear for their lives” when they do something people object to?

That was a factor, sure, but it’s also a reality of being in a tense situation like that. Here’s a guy who had badly hurt him before and who nearly killed Angel. As confident as Malcolm tried to come across that had to be weighing on him. He had to think his demise was a possibility and he reacted accordingly.

That said, Scourge seemed like a more long-term threat than this. Between him and the Chained Man it seems like you’re just burnng through powerful villains right now. What’s up with that?

Things aren’t necessarily what they seem. It used to look as though Dr. Doom was dead or doomed with every encounter with the Fantastic Four but they’d find a way to wiggle out of it. But I also like playing around with readers’ expectations. I don’t want them to become too complacent and expect that anybody in particular is going to be a permanent fixture.

Obviously Malcolm pointed out a bunch of times that Scourge gets his powers from his suit. Is there a chance we’ll see a successor?

It’s not out of the realm of possibilities. Of course, at this point, the costume has a big hole in it and an obvious design flaw which allowed Malcolm to puncture it.

And why would Malcolm think leaving a suit that powerful behind was a good idea?

It had a big hole in it. It seemed destroyed and the Demonoids (if any) didn’t seem to be advanced enough to be able to repair it. HE might not have been thinking it through completely. More than anything, he just wanted to get the hell out of there and not get into any trouble.

Does Scourge actually have any powers that could be passed along to those babies?

Not that we know of. If he does—it has not been made known. But we’ve never seen him unmasked. The readers haven’t seen him out of costume fully.

Last but not least — how much fun is it to incorporate “hootin’ zoots” into the dialogue?

It’s such an insane, nonsensical catchphrase. It’s as though they thought, “Well, crap– ‘Holy Moley’ is taken by Captain Marvel and nobody on earth ever exclaims anything else–so let’s just make up something bat-shit crazy.” As far as I know, it’s just complete nonsense.