Introduction : Welcome the Dragon

Introductions  

This is the first of  three introductions,  examining in short the three series i plan to review.  

First up is  The Savage Dragon, by Erik Larsen. 

I "only"have  107  issues of the  well over  200 issue  run. 

The first  3 issue mini series.  

 The  Blood and Guts, mini series. 

And  101  issues of the  still running series. 

 

Erik Larsen is the only Image founder, still writing and drawing the title he started out with  way back in  1992. 

And one of the  few  people who  has written and drawn  more then  200  issues  on a  single  title. 

Fredy Perry with Gold Digger and  Dave Sim and Gerhard with Cerebus, being  some of the others.  One of these series is a  focus of this  blog,  the other is not.  )

Which is an achievement in of it self  and its  peculiar, very  few  people  ever seem to mention this. 

It's  usually Stan and Jack's much vaunted  Fantastic Four run, that get's the spotlight in uninterrupted runs.  

I wont belabour the point in regards to Image's  foundation and how it all came to be. You are here reading a  blog  about  The Savage Dragon, so  i am  sure  you are some what familiar. with it

  If not,  we will quickly bring you up to speed. 

The series is about the titular green Dragon with a fin on his head, who is at times  quite savage and  at other times not so savage. 

Each issue takes place roughly in real time, IE a month, unless otherwise stated.

And the status  quo  is  regularly shaken up, in  major and minor ways.

It's an action,  adventure comic with  action  first, in big bold words, but the writing is quality as well.

That's it, you are up to speed. we will pick up the rest as we go along  !  

But that's not all that's  notable about the  series. 

Larsen set out  to write and draw every issue in the series and so far he has done just that. 

He even went so far as to  write and draw  issue  13 B 

issue 13 A was part of an  Image cross over month, where everybody  would  write and draw  another  founders  series. 

The dragon was  handled  by  Lee and Choi, who turned it in to the Grifter show.

Larsen decided a few months later he wanted his own  13  as well and an uninterrupted  run, so he did just that.  

There are no gimmick  covers,  none what so ever.

Not in the issues I have anyway

There were a few variant covers. 

Issue 17  had  2  covers. 

Issue 51 had  two covers as well. 

And issue 32  had  two different versions,  for reasons we will get in to, when we get there.

All in all in 101  issues,  I have there are only  3  variants.  

Next : Digging  For Gold.