The Savage dragon 10

The Savage dragon 10  

Summary:  

Dragon resumes  his  duties as a police officer now fully equipped with two hands and deals  with Cutthroat again. 

Who now has a broken leg. 

Last  time they fought, Dragon was  in bad shape and still kicked Cutthroats ass. 

Cutthroat naturally still thinks he can take Dragon on.

He is wrong.

In the mean time,  Jimbo a mighty lobster gets wind of  Dragon and  is non too pleased.

Since he is the strongest. 

Shenanigans arise , ensue, and wil be overcome.

And Dragon throws the fight  to end it.

He doesn't give a damn about being the strongest or not,  people  were  getting injured lives were at stake. 

Dragon's personal pride  is unimportant.  

Notes:

This issue had two covers. 

A news stand  edition with a  beat up  looking Dragon, bleeding.

And a direct edition where Dragon and Jimbo are brawling. 

I have the direct edition.

This  is the 50th post on this comics blog.

Savage dragon is also the first title I am reviewing that  hits double digits.

Gold Digger is still at  5 on this site.

While Transformers won't stop being mini and maxiseries for  quite a while. 

The two current  ongoing series have hit  issue 50  though.

So it all ties in rather nicely.

 

Josh Eichorns title : Queen For A Day.

    

Credits:

Writer- Artist  : Erik Larsen

Letters : Chris Eliopolous

Colors : Reuben Rude

Editor : Jannie Wong

Review :

Issue 10 is  sadly another misfire. 

Most of  this issue is  given over  to yet another  fight scenem which again is just gratuitous and does little to forward the ongoing narrative. 

It's mostly a  fight between dragon and Jimbo da mighty lobster. 

Who is a lobster. 

And swears a lot and wants to show everybody he is da toughest. 

Yes that's about it.

 

The  background of this character  is more interesting then the  character it self.

Jimbo the mighty lobster, is the winner of Larsen's create a character contest. 

A contest where people could send their character to Larsen and if they won, could have  their character featured in a  issue of the Dragon. 

Larsen immediately regretted this, because he was  flooded by  submissions and had a hell of a time sifting through it all and choosing  a winner.

Jimbo da lobster seemed to stand out to him. 

Jimbo  belonged and still belongs to Jason Merrit, but I have no idea if he works in the comic field  (  probably not  )  or have any other details about him.  

There isn't much to say about Jimbo if I am perfectly honest, other then his speech pattern and Hulk like motivation to show the puny humans who is the strongest. 

But the conclusion of the fight is the most interesting thing. 

Dragon throws  the fight. 

He lets Jimbo think he has won, because they are both  too evenly matched and all Jimbo wanted  was to show da world he is da strongest. 

dragon couldn't care less about  that. All he cares about is stopping the fight, 

railing in any collateral damage and safeguard lives, if he has  to  lose to do that that wont be a difficult choice.

but this paints  both  characters in a  good light.

Dragon is smart enough  to throw a fight when needed, nor is his ego that easily bruised. Or is he that petty that he  can't deal with a defeat  once in a while.

And Jimbo gets his wish in defeating Dragon and Dragon's character and power level don't overshadow Jimbo's. As is  usual with  crossovers, where  usually one character overshadows the other.

  ( Spawn vs Batman  comes to mind now.  )

In the rest of the issue, we see Cutthroat again  being his usual self,  even with a broken leg. 

Breaking in to a store, killing everybody in sight and demanding the overweight store owner pleads for his life. 

Naturally Dragon shows up and kicks Cutthroat's ass again. 

Dragon even warns him about last time.

Dragon was in very bad shape, lost an  hand  and Cutthroat had Hellrazor with  him and he still kicked their asses.

You wonder  when these superfreaks will ever wise up  and just  listen  to the green man. 

Especially since this is the third time Dragon kicks Cutthroats ass  and hauls him in.

It's starting to become a  bit of a joke. 

The art and coloring on these pages are a bit unusual, with heavy inking, lots of black and  dark burnt sierra and  dark orange coloring.

I'm not sure if this is to evoke a sunset or a closed  half dark store, probably the latter. But its  very Miller on Sin City like. 

Maybe that was the whole idea. 

Furthermore we get the lowdown  on  Dragon's healing abilities. According to nurse Stevens, it took 5 weeks  to grow his hand back  and it would have been faster if  it  wasn't busy repairing his chest. 

After all who knows how much damage his chest suffered, after getting ventilated by  Overlord and then impaled. 

But as the series progresses we will see Dragon taking even more and more punishment.  

We also get an uhmm,  "interesting" panel of  Rapture in  a summer outfit and I think she was more covered in her usual  purple get up.

Which isn't much to begin with. 

I rather  like her hairdo here.  ...No seriously,  I am a bit of a sucker for ponytails. 

Rapture apologises for freaking out  last night, about Dragon's hand and is willing to  give it another go.

 While dragon implores her to go slow. 

According to  the opening essay of  the "A Force To Be Reckoned With"  TPB  Larsen never  knew Rapture would become so important  in his book or play such a large part in Dragons life.

 And he  didn't even introduce her properly in the Dragon series proper. 

He just slipped her in, in between pages, in a back up story and had her meet Dragon in issue 5.

In the TPB, she is  front and centre  and meets Dragon directly, which more or less  helps sell their budding relationship. 

Which is  going slow for the time being, but it's most likely Dragon's first long term relationship. 

So it's no wonder he wants to take it slow.  

The fact that Frank is missing is also addressed,  by the  head of the swat team. An unlikable character that, we will see a few more times, before he disappears. 

Dragon tells captain McCarthy,  (  subtle Erik)  that he has no idea  where Frank is and wouldn't be stupid enough to take  him along.

Which begs the  question  of why he just doesn't tell  the rest of  the cops that Frank is dead.

And even if Frank isn't dead, why not just keep up the ruse that he is ?

Denying it wont  help much in the long run. 

We also  get two subplots. One where a Vicious circle goon  is convinced that Mace could  be  recruited, which is a sub plot that fizzles out very fast.

And during a R Richard Richards rabble rousing  press conference, we  get to meet The Fiends latest host. 

And we will get to  meet The Fiend real soon again.  

And finally  we  see Dragon making a  phone call, telling the other  person to thrill him. 

He gets told that its a boy  and  Dragon congratulates him.

Despite the fact that his face is in the shadows, the caller is an African American male, with  white hair.

Hmm I wonder who that could be  !

10 is yet another misfire the third in a row. 

8  would be perfectly fine, were it not for the two week time frame which makes no sense.

9 on the other hand  is a retread  and the few subplots it does have, would be better served  to be folded in to  this issue. 

It might have made  it very densely plotted, but that's nothing new for this title. 

It would also have to curtail the Jimbo fight, but that fight is already long enough as it is.  Cutting it down wouldn't hurt it a bit.

It's mostly the subplots around the Jimbo fight and  the conclusion of the fight, that make issue 10 worthwhile, not the fight it self. 

If wondering, we never get to see Jimbo again in these pages.