Savage Dragon #246 – Review

I’m really glad that I picked Savage Dragon up again. It’s obvious that Erik Larsen loves comics. It’s also very good to see a creator into slow storytelling. I miss the days when a subplot would run for months, sometimes over a year. Erik Larsen seems to have been a fan of that, too.

While I don’t have a special image for this review, Spoiler Warning is in effect.

Savage Dragon #246

Writer/Artist: Erik Larsen
Letterer: Ferran Delgado
Colorist: Nikos Koutsis
Flat Colors: Mike Toris
Cover Art: Erik Larsen

Solicitation:

“RETURN OF THE SCOURGE!” Malcolm Dragon’s deadliest foe returns, more powerful than ever! Another outstanding achievement from award-winning writer/artist ERIK LARSEN.

Review:

It’s nice to see callbacks. nine issues before, Scourge had his origin and proved very formidable. He was defeated, but not captured and ran away. In this issue we see where he got to. It’s another callback to the same issue and too much of a spoiler to give away.

I finally decided to research Captain Tootsie. I haven’t liked him too much, but I can now see why he may have found his way into Savage Dragon. He is a public domain hero, which Erik Larsen has found a knack for working into his stories. Captain Tootsie was created to sell Tootsie Rolls. Erik Larsen writes him as a serious super-hero, albeit a corny one.

Maxine’s insatiability continues to roll along and be a building subplot. We’ve seen some shame from her. We’ve also seen some reasoning for her actions. Despite any protestations, Malcolm Dragon seems too eager to indulge her. We even get the impression that Angel has continued to have threesomes with them. We also get a shocker that she’s injected herself with P.J.’s blood to stop her aging. Erik Larsen is really developing a complex psychological profile for this character.

The search for the Scourge is a wonderful sequence that has great timing. It also has a confrontation with the Scourge that isn’t your typical super-hero comic face off. Again, this leads into a really big ending that is the callback I referred to earlier.

Overall, I liked this issue more than most of the past year. Erik Larsen is quickly becoming one of my favorite creators. I had to refer to another comic that I reviewed this week, and I definitely enjoyed this book more than that one.

Final Rating: 8.2 (out of 10)

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