Come, one and all, and see the amazing, transforming comic book. At first, it appears to be a gratuitous festival of T&A, a romp of revelry that never takes itself seriously for a moment. But lo, after the magicians wave their wands (or pencils, or keyboards), the book transforms into a kids' adventure in a scary alien landscape. At one point, it's a natural spinoff of loose plot threads from Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon series. At another, it's a random collection of scenes with no clear transitions. And look, there's nothing up the magicians' sleeves, not even a clear point or an ending for this supposedly self-contained one-shot.
She-Dragon finds herself stranded into Dimension X, courtesy the seemingly magical, limitless powers of the annoying Mr. Glum. She soon discovers there's plenty of life in the bizarre world that Mr. Glum once called home, but the locals ain't all that friendly. She-Dragon ends up being enslaved, forced into a life of back-breaking labor in the service of a brutal warlord. Of course, it doesn't take long for said warlord to take notice of her bust size, and he finds a new kind of enslaved service for her to fulfill. Meanwhile, Dragon's son Malcolm, Angel and a few other kids find themselves lost in Dimension X as well. Hey, I wonder if their path will cross with She-Dragon's?
Franchesco!'s art perhaps can best be described as Walter (Thor, Orion) Simonson meets Frank (Liberty Meadows) Cho. The energy in his work is undeniable, but that's not nearly enough to compensate for the lack of flow and clarity. the visuals are random and frenetic in nature. I'm also perplexed as to why the artist bothers to "cover up" (and I use the term loosely) the gratuitous sexual titillation of the title character's buxom form only to offer up a pinup in the back of the book that shows her breasts completely exposed. Actually, the pinup section was puzzling as well. What's the point of having one artist -- the same one who illustrated the story -- offer up a bunch of silly poses of the same character? No other artists available, was there? Or -- and this is a radical concept -- there wasn't a short story that could have been tacked on rather than the pinup filler material?
The script is as jumbled as the art. The terms "segue" or "scene transitions" aren't ones I need to use to write this review, save perhaps only to point out the unfortunate lack of them. The script is highly inaccessible despite the writer's effort to include a lot of exposition... a lot of exposition, but not seamlessly so. And despite those efforts, I felt I didn't really get to know the title character well at all. I still don't know what makes her tick. Some of the origin elements have absolutely nothing to do with the plot (for example, the Forever People riff that Erik Larsen explored years ago), which just adds to the confusion. Yes, Larsen does provide an essay at the back of the comic that reviews some relevant Dragon history, but there's no cue directly new readers to that first.
The most frustrating aspect of the book for me was how Larsen shifts gears halfway through the book, taking this action-oriented, bawdy "story" and turning the reader's attention to a quintet of minors who erupt into the hostile landscape of Dimension X. Is this a grown-up (though low-brow) super-hero sex satire, or is it a cute kids' adventure? It's definitely more the former than the latter, but neither is done particularly well. 1/10
