The Daily Comic Book Coffee, number 17: Today’s tale of crossed continuums and caffeine is from Savage Dragon #101, written & drawn by Erik Larsen, lettered by Chris Eliopoulos, and colored by Reuben Rude, published by Image Comics, cover-dated July 2002.
Savage Dragon is a labor of love on the part of Erik Larsen. The Dragon was originally created by Larsen in his teenage years, and was the star of his earliest self-published comic books in 1982. A decade later when Larsen co-founded Image Comics the Dragon was his flagship character. Savage Dragon made its debut as a three issue miniseries, followed by an ongoing title in 1993.
Larsen has Savage Dragon take place in real time, meaning all the characters age. He has also regularly changed the status quo. Dragon started out as a Chicago police officer. He then became a government agent, and following that was a bounty hunter. A huge change took place in #76. Dragon attempted to alter history by killing his time traveling adversary Darklord. As a result Dragon was shunted onto a parallel world, one where his enemies had taken over the world. Twenty-five issues later Dragon finally defeated them, and located this reality’s version of his wife Jennifer Murphy and her young daughter Angel.
“Shattered Planets, Shattered Lives” sees Dragon with Jennifer and Angel at the diner, attempting to explain to them exactly what has transpired:
“I’m the real guy! I’m really Dragon – I’m just not the SAME Dragon. YOUR Dragon was killed by a villain named Darklord and our minds were swapped. I’m the Dragon from a different dimension.”
Not surprisingly, both Jennifer and Angel have no idea what to make of this crazy story. Given how headache-inducing this whole conversation must be, it’s no wonder Dragon is having coffee which, as we see here, he takes with cream “and enough sugar to fill a bathtub.”
I’ve been a HUGE fan of Savage Dragon since the first issue of the miniseries came out in 1992, and I’ve been following in regularly for 28 years. Larsen has written & drawn some really exciting, weird, and funny stories in his series.
In 1996 Dragon’s son Malcolm was born. Over the next 24 years Malcolm grew into a child, then a teenager, and finally an adult. Three years ago the original Dragon was killed off permanently by Larsen, and Malcolm Dragon became the new series’ star going forward.
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