With Kill Bill doing pretty well in theatres, now seems as good a time as any for DC to try and bring back one of its '70s-era martial arts fad heroes, Richard Dragon, in a new ongoing. And Dixon and McDaniel, who were such a great team on Nightwing, seem like a pretty good match for an action-heavy series. Unfortunately, Richard Dragon the hero and Richard Dragon the series lack something in common, and that's heart. The first issue of this series features some reasonably impressive martial arts sequences and a couple of characters I have an odd fondness for, but it doesn't do a great job in making me care about the characters, and the presentation is a bit flat, nothing like the stylized throwback of Kill Bill or even the slick '90s style that made the Dixon/McDaniel Nightwing work. Mind you, it took a while for that series to really get its feet under it as well, so I hold out hope that this team will show me something cool with Richard Dragon as the series goes on.
One of the biggest mistakes that creators can make with third-string characters like Richard Dragon is assuming that the audience already cares about them the way they would one of the big icons. I have more fondness for Richard Dragon than most, thanks to his role in reshaping Oracle under John Ostrander's tenure, and even I wasn't really won over to the character in this issue. Dixon seems to think his audience is people who have read adventures of the character before, because while the information needed for newbies is in this issue, the connection that would make folks care about the character isn't. So Richard Dragon is a guy who's lost his way, fighting in pit fights and living a somewhat unemotional existence? Well, who cares, unless you already knew that Dragon was a sort of honorable martial artist beforehand? His old friend comes to pull him up? Who cares, unless you know that friend or the history between them? Dixon is someone who has always excelled at accessibility, but he misses that mark here, because while the book is informationally accessible, it's emotionally distant.
The big selling point of Richard Dragon at this point has to be the martial arts, and in that respect, the book is better than average. McDaniel and Owens can't live up to Dixon's Way of the Rat collaborator Jeff Johnson in terms of flashy martial arts action, but they do deliver a pretty impressive splash of Dragon taking on a pair of unworthy opponents, and a quick and dirty throwdown between Dragon and the Bronze Tiger that shows off both mens' skills. McDaniel's panel layouts also show a maturity that has developed since his early days on Nightwing, with some very nice intercutting sequences between past and present that are clever and yet easy to read.
I think a big part of what's missing from Richard Dragon is a sense of humor. The whole thing is played straight, and when you're dealing with a kung-fu character of the '70s, that kind of straight approach just doesn't fly. Kill Bill was an homage to the '70s grindhouse flicks by someone who loved them, but Tarantino also recognized the inherent silliness of some of his source material and played that off, and Dixon could have used a similar tone here. There's a touch of that in Dixon's introduction of six martial arts villains with different styles and origins, but that too is played as something dire and serious rather than something with a wink to the audience.
Mind you, if you're a fan of the formula '70s martial arts, than Dixon and company have emulated that pretty well in this first issue. The fighter who has lost his honor and must regain it with the help of a friend, the array of deadly martial artists who must be defeated, the earnest seriousness of it all, it's like it comes right out of a Bruce Lee flick. Bronze Tiger especially, who gets most of the best lines, comes off as the epitome of '70s cool, and actually is considerably more engaging and likable than our lead in this first issue.
