Savage Dragon: A 1990's Masterpiece - The Overlord Saga

The Savage Dragon comic was first published in 1992 by Image Comics as one of the fledgling company’s founding books. The comic is a perfect example of what was great about early 90’s comics. It’s also a book, along with pretty much every Marvel comic published around this time, that foreshadowed the 1990’s as THE decade that either changed comics forever, destroyed comics forever or just plain ruined comics forever, depending on your point of view.

 (The) Savage Dragon was part of a wave of overpowered, over-muscled, overly grim, dark, and violent superheroes that were the comic book industry’s answer to the success of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore’s Watchmen. Dragon, along with Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, rode the wave of popularity known as “the grim and gritty era” or “The Dark Age of comics”. Stories in this era were trying to be as deep as Watchmen, Dark Knight  Returns, and other notable books of the 1980’s, but rarely matched their  greatness. Savage Dragon is one of the few books that comes close. Sure, it doesn’t have the depth of the best 80’s work, but its darkness and psychological complexity make it feel like it belongs in the pantheon of the best (or at least most remembered) comics of its era. In other words, this comic comes closest to being a spiritual successor to the groundbreaking work of Miller, Moore and their contemporaries in tone, even if it lacks much depth.

The 3 issue miniseries that presents The Dragon’s origin combine with the first 21 issues of the Savage Dragon title to form what is probably the best overarching comic book story published in the early 90’s: The Overlord Saga. This beginning period of The Dragon’s title has still never been topped and remains the definitive Savage Dragon saga, according to many fans.  

The story concerns an armored crime boss named Antonio Seghetti, alias The Overlord. He has Chicago in a vice grip. Dragon, a Hulk-like, green-skinned man with a giant fin on his head is found by a cop named Frank Darling in a burning field and joins the Chicago Police Department because he has no memory of his past or who he is. Dragon combats crime and corruption, as well as Overlord and his band of mutant creatures and deformed freaks known as “The Vicious Circle.” Along the way Dragon meets the Image Comics version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, sees his girlfriend get shot in the head, battles a giant talking spider called Arachnid, and nearly dies several times.

So, there it is. The Dragon's a hulking, super-strong green guy with a healing factor and resistance to injury. He started out as a cop who’s just trying find his place in the world and make sense of his past while working to clean up the streets of Chicago. The story may not sound particularly ground-breaking by comic book standards, but it has just the right amount of intrigue and complexity to be as exciting as anything pblished by Marvel or DC.

The art is prime 1990’s in the best sense of what that means for comics. Lots of detail and cross hatching really serves the story well. The panels are well-placed and the pacing is near perfect. Some people might be put off by the 90’s style of hulking heroes and villains, incredibly busty and curvaceous women in barely-there clothing, giant unrealistic guns and even more unrealistic fight scenes, but hey, comics in the early 90’s had started to abandon subtly.

Erik Larsen came to prominence as an artist on Amazing Spider-Man, taking over from Todd McFarlane and, later, crafting some of Spidey’s best stories with David Michelinie. When Image Comics was founded, Savage Dragon became one of its first books and, along with Spawn, remains one of only two of the original books still being published, as of this writing.

Since this is a cartoon blog, I’d be remiss not to at least mention the animated series. I remember seeing the Savage Dragon cartoon in the mid 1990’s and being entertained, even if I was clueless as to what it was. It seemed like every superhero was ripe for a cartoon back then, and, while this show was terrible and not very faithful to the comic, it did feature popular voice actor, Jim Cummings, as the voice of Dragon. That’s really all that can be said about it. It was pretty generic Saturday morning fare.

All in all though, the Savage Dragon comic, debuted as a great series. The Overlord Saga remains one of the most well-told stories of the 1990’s and the high point of the series, in my opinion. While I don't think the series was ever as good after this first arc, it has managed to keep being published and has even gone into different iterations, with Dragon’s son, Malcolm, eventually taking over as star of the book. So, if you’re looking for over-the-top action, a decent police procedural, colorful villains and an interesting hero, track this book down. Give The Overlord Saga a chance. You never know, you just might become a fan.