Erik Larsen on Savage Dragon #253

This week, Erik Larsen released Savage Dragon #253, and while a lot of the discussion around the issue has been Malcolm Dragon’s endorsement of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (it even got a variant cover), the issue itself is full-ahead action, with Malcolm squaring off againt the Vicious Circle in the streets of Toronto. We also get a birthday party complete with a tiger-man — yes, the same one we saw in the Calvin & Hobbes parody last issue. What does that mean? Well, we get to know him a little better and get a sense for his role in the series going forward this issue.

While Malcolm faces off against supervillains and deals with a press conference in which he has to endorse a Presidential candidate, things aren’t much easier for anybody else. Angel is back in Chicago at her fiance’s bedside and Maxine is back home doing the birthday party and fighting with her mother.

Larsen joined ComicBook.com to discuss the issue, which hit the stands this morning. If you haven’t read it yet and don’t want to be spoiled, grab one at your local comic shop, or buy a digital copy and read along with us.

I won’t lie: of all the things I thought would carry over from the comics issue, I wouldn’t have guessed the tiger.

That was part of the rationale for doing a Calvin and Hobbes riff in Savage Dragon #252 even after having done a mild homage back in #236. I wanted my own Tawky Tawny type and having one of Scourge’s animal men be a homeless tiger seemed an easy way to provide that. I could reverse the Hobbes bit by having the cartoon tiger by Amy’s imagination seeing the fun in a real tiger and that would establish a character that I could use down the road.

We see the girls get some solo time, but can you run down kind of how you perceive the difference between each of the Dragon kids?

Amy is one of my favorites because she’s more active. But all the kids are developing their own personalities as they grow older. Maddy’s got Malcolm’s electrical powers intact, which does lead to more visually compelling encounters — she can hurl lightning bolts while the others can’t, but she’s also the youngest and least capable in terms of holding a conversation, keeping focused and acting sensibly. Amy is more actively seeking out adventure and more apt to push the boundaries. She’s also closest to Maddy because they’re sisters.

Of the two boys, Jackson seems more athletic while Tyrone is more lost in technology. Tyrone is more into school and figuring out the mechanics of things.

Is calling Wrath “Brainiac” kind of meta when his dad teamed ups with Superman that one time?

It’s not so much that as it is a sarcastic thing to call a person who makes a dumb move. That, and Wrath has a head which resembles an exposed brain. The Superman connection is a bonus.

How much of this issue would originally have been in #250 had the issue gone along as planned?

Not any, really. Once plans are scuttled I seldom just kick them down the road, they’re generally revised, updated and altered. I rethink what I can in mind and do something else. It’s all about what excites me at the time and plans which are too thoroughly worked out become a bit stale to me and I lose interest.

With some of these jagged panel borders, are you still trying to evoke classic Image a bit?

Yeah. Thought I’d play with that a bit. The opening sequence was kind of a continuation of the kids comics — I just bought the Charlton run of Tiger, a comic book version of the comic strip by Bud Blake and I’ve been reading through some Dennis the Menace comics and I wanted to emulate those both slightly, which is why it’s a simple layout that includes a circular panel. The rest of the issue was more old school Image. The Angel page had a similar configuration to one of my old Spider-Man pages. It’s a bouncier approach than I typically used with Dragon Sr.

How much of the pre-Image Dragon stuff will be integrated into Paul now that he’s here? He seems to have trouble finding anybody who will react on his level.

He’s giving it a shot. The problem he’s having is that his presence in his universe caused a ripple effect that wasn’t felt here, so a lot of events in his world didn’t play out quite the same here. In his world, for example, Angel was literally his daughter whereas in this one, she’s not.

So that name was clearly one her mom favored and in both realities her daughter was named that but because she’s not literally a different version of the same person—when realities merged part of her consciousness wasn’t transferred.

At the same time, I don’t really want to flesh out his world too thoroughly because it would be treading over a lot of the same ground and could get confusing. The important information to convey here is that he’s stuck on a world where there’s not a lot of connections. Not as many as he’d like at least.

Is this the issue you were posting about when you said that you had to draw a character you hadn’t drawn in 30 years and had no chance of getting it just right? What was that about?

Yeah, Joseph Strange appeared in exactly one panel in Graphic Fantasy #2 and he was so cropped that there wasn’t a lot of information to go by. I remember that his costume was yellow and a few vague details but I’m not 100% on how his costume was cut. I did the best I could.

How much connectivity is there between Bionic Man and SuperPatriot?

Not a huge amount. In my old comics I didn’t get around to having Mako maul SuperPatriot. When we last saw them both, Mako was a good guy and SuperPatriot was one of the heroes at the S.O.S. (as was Joseph Strange). So while Joseph created the bionics that he used in that world—in this one the accident which caused him to need them never occurred and they were used for SuperPatriot. Joseph was very much inspired by the Six-Million Dollar Man, who was popular at the time.

Is the stuff where Paul Dragon is failing to connect to people part of why we see him in future issues, looking into a literal grave?

It’s all connected to some degree. He’s trying to put his life back together and falling short. It’s certainly not going the way he had hoped it would.

Given not just how sex-positive Maxine has been but also the rep she gets among non-Dragon fans, what does it say that she’s so hung up on her mom’s sex tape?

Kids will be forever embarrassed and appalled by their parents. And even in a case where her mom is doing something very much like something she could have done — she’s very much shocked and appalled by it. Where it’s all headed is anybody’s guess. Maxine’s trying to keep it together.

Is it fair to assume Rogue Warrior probably won’t last long in a partnership with Dart, who seems to eat everyone around her alive?

I don’t think it’s safe to assume anything. Dart had a relationship with Daredevil at one point and he’s still alive and kicking. It really comes down to his utility. If he’s more valuable dead than alive — she’ll take action. If he’s a useful tool who’s easily manipulated to do her bidding — he could hang in there for a while.