The Savage Dragon Mini Series 3 of 3

The Savage Dragon Mini Series 3 of 3

Rock This Town.  

Synopsis :

This issue opens  like the previous  three, with a splash page  !

Inferno an  viscous circle goon, attacks Dragon  in the hospital. Things don't go to plan  as Dragon shoves his head through a wall. 

Frank Darling  informs  what has happened  after Dragon  went out like a light, telling him his body seemingly shut down to make repair. The gashes on Dragon's  head  were  healed within a day. 

Dragon has been out of it for nine days though. 

Basher is  dead,  he has a  hole the size of a softball in his head  hell razor and Mako  are incarcerated alive and in intensive care. 

We cut to  Overlord's  tower, where we get  our first good look at him. 

Isn't that  impressive  ?  We will see a lot of this armor.  

As it turns out  the hostage situation from issue 2  was a set up.  The three henchmen were getting too ambitious, Dragon was getting  in Overlord's way  and Cyberdata was supposed to  pull Superpatriot's strings and have them all four killed. 

Things obviously didn't go as planned. 

Back at the hospital Dragon prepares to leave and is met with a feeding frenzy of  reporter,s 

when  WHAM  Bedrock ..err  Badrock from the pages of Youngblood, shows up and  attacks  Dragon. 

He wants to see what Dragon is made off. 

This fight takes over the majority of the comic.

During the fight we cut to a  cameo of Spawn, in a hat  and raincoat,  glancing at Dragon's press conference on the tv. 

And a  elderly lady, who kinda looks like aunt May, the way Erik Larsen drew her, watching the same press conference  and exclaiming Rodney  !

Hmmm, wonder what that is all about. 

Dragon and Badrock have been fighting all day and  Badrock calls it quits. It turns out he want to see if  Dragon was "tough enough" to join Youngblood. 

Dragon's response is to arrest him. 

This issue ends with Dragon finding Debbie on his door step, because her mother locked her out.

And Frank Darling  getting a  blackmail phone call  from the Vicious Circle. 

They know he set his cousin Fred up for the fall, to get Dragon to join the force.

Sleep tight Frankie. 

Credits :

Story\Art\ Ink\ Erik Larsen 

Letterer, Chris Eliopolous

Color, Gregory Wright and Steve Oliff

Editor, Jannie Wong.

Notes :

This  issue  contains cameo's from  Badrock from Youngblood, ( obviously)

Spawn, 

Cyberforce is mentioned by name, 

and Cyberdata, 

in an effort to set up the nascent  Image Comics universe. 

The spawn cameo was  also in Spawn 5, which is where I first saw the Dragon. 

Review  :

And so ends the mini series. 

Of all three issues of the original Savage Dragon mini series, this issue is the weakest. 

It's mostly taken over by a contrived fight.

And just because dragon acknowledges that its contrived, doesn't make it any better.

He does subvert it nicely by arresting Bedrock\Badrock however. 

But mostly this comic  serves to strengthen ties with the  then nascent Image Universe by including cameo's from Spawn  and  Liefelds Youngblood and tying  Superpatriot to Cyberdata  from the pages of Cyberforce. 

Larsen made Youngblood look more interesting and dynamic then Liefeld ever did.  

Badrocks  silly motivations for attacking  Dragon are handwaved  away by  having him  look like a  hulking stone monster, but being a  13 year old kid. 

Which at least explains  his  reasons, doesn't make  them any better though. 

The two other  big revelations and set ups in this comic  are establishing that Dragon has an accelerated  healing  factor. 

And he will  come to use them,  A LOT  in the future. 

Right now they seem to be a bit  underdeveloped compared to the punishment Dragon will receive in later issues.  

We also find out  what Frank exactly did  and to what desperate lengths he was willing to go  to get Dragon on the force. 

Selling out cousin Freddie. 

This storyline will hang  over Dragon and Frank's  head for the first  handfull of issues  of the ongoing, but not so long it will wear out its welcome.

Unlike other  comics from this era, The Savage Dragon will end storylines in a usually  tidy  fashion and it does have a gameplan. 

Nor is it afraid to shake up the status quo,  as we will soon see.    

Despite being the weakest of the 3,  issue 3  introduces important plot points and sets things in motion for the ongoing. 

Next however we are going for a detour