Freak Force is back in a big way, taking center stage with Malcolm Dragon and Angel Murphy at their side on the just-revealed cover of Savage Dragon #239, coming this fall from Erik Larsen and Image Comics.
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Originally a team of bounty hunters, Freak Force first appeared in Savage Dragon #4 before launching into their own series. While they have not appeared in a self-titled comic in years, they remain popular with Savage Dragon and ’90s comics fans.
The team, which features members including Barbaric, Superpatriot, Ricochet, and Horridus, is supplemented here by the latest Mighty Man, Angel Murphy (her stars and stripes now replaced by a maple leaf in keeping with the series’ move to Toronto, the Golden Age Daredevil, and Malcolm Dragon’s half-sister Marsha Bradley, who inherited her mother’s electrical powers.
Malcolm and Marsha’s mother, Rapture, was an original member of Freak Force, along with an earlier incarnation of Mighty Man.
Most of the team have been working for the U.S. government of late as part of the Special Operations Strikeforce (SOS), but Trump Administration immigration policy has made some of the alien and alternate-dimension members of the team unwelcome within the U.S. borders.
It is not yet clear whether Freak Force will be visiting Canada short term or whether they will stay there — and while Angel has jettisoned her American flag motif for a Canadian one, the same cannot be said of Superpatriot.
Also joining the cover are Maxine Dragon and three of the four Dragon babies, although it seems that their electric-powered newborn had a babysitter (maybe Malcolm’s half-brother Kevin, who has electrical powers but whose physical injuries limit his heroics).
Freak Force, like much of Savage Dragon, is composed of characters created largely during Larsen’s youth, when he would hand-make self-published comics and sell them to his classmates. In the case of Freak Force, several of its members have tried working with the police over the years — as Malcolm Dragon did, and his dad before him — but it never worked out.
Assuming no significant delays in the series’ publication between now and then, Savage Dragon #239 should be available in stores this October. The next issue, Savage Dragon #235, will be released on July 11.
