November 3, 2017
Posted by Stefan Kalscheid in Reviews – no comments
Savage Dragon #227 came out a little over 2 weeks ago. Let’s take a minute to take a look at the current issue.
Captain Stewart to the rescue!
We knew from the solicits that Malcolm and family were eventually going to end up in Canada but it wasn’t clear yet how things would go down and if they’d have to fight their way to freedom. As it turns out Malcolm’s former boss Captain Stewart stands up for his fellow policeman and smuggled the Dragon family over the border – regardless of the consequences for himself.
Back in the states Jennifer, Angel and Alex are in Dimension-X looking for DarkLords technology to bring back the deceased Dragon only to have their way home cut off due to President Trump’s new law against aliens.
So while Dragon, Maxine and the kids have to come to grips with their new surroundings in Toronto – Jennifer, Angel and Alex have to deal with the reality of Dimension-X.
Change in perspective
The book keeps switching from one scenery to the other and puts the different kinds of ‘threats’ into perspective.
The soft horror of a filled cloth diaper on one side vs. the hard reality of fighting giant rock monsters on the other. Meeting new people vs. meeting new monsters. Trying to make yourself a new home vs. trying to find a way back home. In the end, the reader realizes that moving to Canada isn’t all that bad and that things could have been worse.
Panel by Panel
In case you hadn’t noticed, Erik pulled one of his “let’s-try-his-crazy-thing” things again with Savage Dragon #227. A while back he posted a little scribble on Twitter and teased:
This is what it looks like when a crazy person plans out their comic book. A which point did that become me?
He explains what he did in the letter pages:
…I tried this crazy thing with this issue – every page has panels of uniform size but no two pages are the same…
Erik figured out panel configurations that would work, calculated the panel dimensions and drew all panel borders before he started working on the issue. That’s not his usual work progress but, as he put it, “every so often I get a wild hair to try some strange challenge”. Loyal readers will remember that he has done stuff like that in the past. Stay tuned for a post dedicated to all of Erik’s experimental issues in the future…
Reviews of Savage Dragon #227
The book is a great jumping on point for new readers. It’s not only a change in a new direction but Erik also did a great job of catching people up to speed with this issue. If you want to (re)join the Savage Dragon bandwagon – this might be a perfect time.
Naturally, Savage Dragon #227 didn’t receive as much attention as last issue with its controversial Trump cover but we have gathered the reviews we could find so far for your further reading convenience.
That’s it for now. We’ll be back soon with a preview for #228. Until then
Enjoy
Stef
PS: BTW, Did you guys realize that Erik actually drew a dog this issue… ?
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November 2, 2017
Posted by Stefan Kalscheid in News | Website – no comments
Just a short notice that we have added the link to the Savage Fincast Discord channel to our Links Section. The guys from the Fincast came up with the great idea to use Discord as a chatroom where we can text or voice chat about the latest issues or everything else Savage Dragon related.
You can simply use Dicord in your browser but there’s also a free software with some additional features (like alerts when people start chatting) and there’s also an app for your smartphone.
Stef
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October 18, 2017
Posted by Stefan Kalscheid in News – 4 comments
Today is “New Comic Book Day” and Savage Dragon #227 hits the shelf. Make sure you buy a copy or three. If you’re like me and have to wait for your physical copy to be shipped, you can always buy digital issues at Image comics or over at Comixology. If you still need to be persuaded, check ot these awesome preview pages…
It looks as if the issue picks up right where we left off in #226. All aliens are deemed illegal which leads to some trouble for Alex, Angel and her mom. Last issue they entered Dimension X in search of DarkLord’s time machine to bring back the deceased Dragon. And it looks as if that’s Super-Tough enforcing President Trump new law…
And would you look at that gorgeous double-page spread of our heroes in peril.
James Purcell of the Savage Fincast (podcast) set up a channel at Discord so we can chat (via text or voice message) about the latest issue. The plan is to meet there tonight. This is a first so we will have to see how things work out. And now grab your copy of #227 and enjoy.
Stef
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October 13, 2017
Posted by Stefan Kalscheid in News | Website – no comments
Years ago, when Erik’s Board on the Image Comics Forum was pretty much the only place to talk about Savage Dragon comics, members would often chat about all the variant issues that existed and what they were missing from their collections.
I could get confusing. What was that issue again with the Matsuda cover? Which variants were newsstand editions? Why are there two wizard #½ comics and which came with a COA (Certificate of Authenticity)?
At one point I came to the conclusion that we needed a complete overview of all existing variants and so I gathered all the covers and made a thread that became a sticky at the top of the forum. The Savage Dragon board is unfortunately gone now and although Erik does have all the covers on his Facebook page I still think it’s cool to have the Savage Dragon Variants Overview back on the official site.
You can find it in the Comics section. Have fun hunting those issues down – some are very hard to get. In fact, I recently realized I’m still missing one myself…
Enjoy
Stef
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October 5, 2017
Posted by Stefan Kalscheid in Reviews – one comment
A little over a month ago Savage Dragon #226 hit the stands. Since we still have to wait a couple of days for the next issue, let’s take a look at the book and how people reacted to it.
As most of you probably know by now, the cover pays homage to Gil Kane’s classic cover of Daredevil #96 that came out way back in 1973.
When Savage Dragon #226 was solicited in April 2017 the book got a mixed reception – obviously based on the depiction of President Trump and the solicitation text which reads:
“TRUMPED” When a tyrannical madman assumes command of the United States, aliens are deemed a threat to national security and targeted for elimination — and that includes Malcolm Dragon and his family! With a country turned against him, Malcolm Dragon fights as he’s never fought before.
To those who follow Erik’s posts on the social networks, his opinion about Trump most likely doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Readers of Savage Dragon also know Erik doesn’t shy away from making politics a part of his book and while Savage Dragon isn’t about politics most of the time Erik has addressed political issues in the past and he has depicted other presidents over the years.
In this post at Comicbook.com about the latest issue, Erik is quoted saying he always enjoyed seeing the President show up in The Incredible Hulk.
“It seemed like there was a presidential portrait of sorts with every new administration. I’ve made it a point to do that as well and I kind of wanted to just get it out of the way.”
Take a look at these previous covers featuring presidents in the spotlight:
George Bush Jr. got ’bushwhacked‘ in #119. He had been replaced by the villain “The Impostor” back then.
Erik had been the first to solicit a book with Obama on the cover for his variant edition of Savage Dragon #137 but Marvel beat Erik at the printers and released an issue of Spider-man featuring the presidential candidate a bit earlier which lead to some heated debate. Erik’s cover was a huge hit nonetheless and saw three (!) reprints.
A couple of months later #145 got two variants — one featuring President Obama giving a fistbump to Dragon and the other serving a knuckle sandwich to none other than Osama Bin Laden.
Now the current issue features Trump and it’s pretty obvious Malcolm and he won’t become friendly with each other. In the aftermath of the three-issue epic “The Merging of Multiple Earths” President Trump issues an executive order that outlaws all extraterrestrials in the United States. That includes Malcolm Dragon and his three children and the issue ends with Malcolm being put under arrest…
If you’ve read the solicitations for the upcoming issues, you know the Dragon family is moving north, but we’ll have to wait a wee bit longer to find out if Dragon actually flees from the law or if he is deported.
The self-contained issue got some good reviews all over the net but the cover also attracted a couple of people who don’t usually read the book to voice their criticism.
What other had to say about Savage Dragon #226
Here’s a collection of articles, interviews and reviews on #226.
Enjoy
Stef
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October 2, 2017
Posted by Stefan Kalscheid in News | Website – 5 comments
Well, it’s come to this: savagedragon.com finally got a redesign. It was long overdue and it took me way too long, but here we are. In with the new, out with the old.
I took over reins as webmaster in early 2016 and had initially planned to just keep things up and running and a little bit more up-to-date. I soon realized though that the old page was a pain to work with. No wonder, the last relaunch happened 12 years ago. The website used ancient HTML, frames, tables and you had to manually save files in different sizes and places to make it work. It wasn’t pretty…
Getting started with the savagedragon.com redesign
I checked with Erik if he was OK with a savagedragon.com redesign – his reply was pretty much: “Do with it what you will…”
I talked with Raven Perez, who’s running Dragonfan.net and pretty much does what an official Savage Dragon website should have been doing. I took some inspiration from his page and made some layouts. And then nothing…
Life got in the way and things just lay there. It wasn’t until earlier this year that I finally sat down and seriously started to work on the page. I’m a graphic designer by trade and I had some pretty good basics in building websites but I had my work cut out for me. Eventually, I made this WordPress theme from scratch. It’s responsive, so you should be able to browse the page on your smartphones – I hear smart people do that…
Optimizing the Site
It’s still work in progress. Most likely it has a couple of bugs. I already know about a couple of things that need improvement. Let me know if there’s anything that doesn’t work or if you have any suggestions.
It’s still missing some content. I need to put all the crossovers and collections into the comics section and I’m also thinking about implementing the classic variants overview (now that the Savage Dragon forum on the old imageboards is history). Eventually each issue is supposed to have its own page with a short summary and a link to the wiki. As you can see I already have the layout for that but it will take some time to fill in all the content. And I might bring back the sketches collection from the old site. I know Erik has a huge collection on Facebook but I’d love to have that on the official website as well.
For now, I’m glad the savagedragon.com redesign is finally online and it’s still in time to celebrate Savage Dragon’s 25th anniversary. What better way to say thanks to Erik for 225+ issues of the best superhero comic on the stands.
Stef
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