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SAVAGE DRAGON VOL. 9: WORLDS AT WAR TPB
Mildly Recommended (6/10)
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Image Comics
Writer/Artist: Erik Larsen
Colors: Reuben Rude, Abel Mouton, Jose Arenas, Bill Zindel, Lea Rude & John Zaia
Letters: Chris Eliopoulos
Price: $16.95 US |
Savage Dragon is beloved by a lot of creators who I respect, but somehow, I've never quite been able to share that enthusiasm. Worlds at War, the ninth volume collecting Savage Dragon, contains pretty much all the flaws and the strengths that I see in the monthly book, and it's a little bit frustrating, because for every moment I really loved, there's an opposite one that I really hated. For fans of old school superheroes, Savage Dragon is the place to be, because Larsen has a definite old school sensibility, but that sensibility is filtered through elements that are very much not old school, like big status quo shakeups that actually change things and violence, language and sexuality that definitely wouldn't have made it past the Comics Code. Dragon always feels a little immature, a little too "seat of your pants" for me, but I can definitely understand the love for the book, because Larsen's energy and dedication shines through on every page.
Reading Worlds At War, it's hard not to recognize Larsen deliberately riffing on classic superhero concepts. The government superhero team. The superhero wedding. The alternate post-apocalyptic world. The high concept teams of young gods that Kirby excelled at. The inclusion of gods from other pantheons that Lee excelled at. The heroes being lost somewhere while they're thought dead. It seems that this is the era of Savage Dragon when Larsen really went full-on superhero in his writing, trading in the superhero in cop clothes and really aiming for genre in terms of plot.
Some of it works really well, some of it less so. My favorite aspect of this trade is the first half, while the latter half lost my attention almost entirely, although this may be down to my sensibilities (I've never been a big fan of the New Gods or Thor) as much as any weakness in the second half. At any rate, though, the first half of the book does have some really fun stuff. Larsen sets up the new status quo of the government team, introducing all the characters and poking fun at the uniforms as well as making a few none-too-subtle political jabs as well. He does a fantastic job with the star-studded wedding of Barbaric and Ricochet, pulling in guest stars from the indy realm like DNAgents, Hellboy, a Rat Creature from Bone and Pitt for a classic "villains attack" big 'ol superhero wedding that is just a ton of fun.
Where the book went off the rails for me was when Larsen introduced the villain of the piece. Darklord, all-powerful ruler of an apocalyptic alternate world, is a fairly dull visual design, and a really dull cliche of a character. He talks in cliches ("Resistance is futile." "This time, my old foe, our conflict will, at last, have a resolution." "This world is mine!" etc.) and he acts in them as well. Larsen hints at something a little more complex with Darklord trying to save his world instead of just conquer Earth, but he's such a cackling megalomaniac of a master villain that I can't take the moral complexity too seriously. Also, while I certainly respect Larsen for having the guts to upset his apple cart by changing status quos and killing major characters, it seems like maybe he changes them too quickly, before the potential of the current status quo has been used up. We had very little of the Special Operations Squad before the book turned into a story of survival in an alien world, and very little of that before the book turned into Dragon fighting gods. The constant change means that it's hard to get bored, but it's also hard to get really invested, knowing that any given character or status quo that you like could be gone in just a couple of issues.
One thing you have got to give Worlds at War, though, is that it's got a phenomenal energy to it. Larsen's art isn't always to my taste, especially the overexaggerated anatomy (both male and female), but he's channeling pure Kirby in this volume, whether it's the supertech of Darklord (right out of New Gods), the apocalyptic Darkworld (right out of Kamandi) or the many fight scenes, which have an explosive energy that is very uncommon in the more talky superhero comics of the modern era. Larsen actually excels at the very things that a lot of the top comic writers and artists have trouble with right now, largely because he has an unabashed love of the genre, goofy costumes and sound effects and all, which keeps him from holding back during these all-important sequences.
If only Larsen brought the same strength to the soap opera elements of his story. However, these too are old school, and so they tend to be a bit melodramatic and goofy for my tastes. Dragon is a bruiser sort of in the vein of Mignola's Hellboy, but Larsen doesn't quite capture the regular guy sensibilities with the same skill. Instead, Dragon's wisecracks, riffing on New Coke or Ralph Nader, seem either out of place, out of date or both, and I wind up having a hard time taking the character seriously when I'm supposed to. That's kind of a problem I have with the book in general, actually, as Larsen has some pretty serious stuff here, including a devastated world, the death of a major character and some heartbreaking developments for Dragon, but there's such a goofy off-the-wall sensibility that defines the book that it can never get serious for long enough to really drive these points home.
This comic book was not part of this week's new releases.
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