Still Savage After All of These Years (an interview with Erik Larsen)
For the better part of two decades, Erik Larsen has been a driving force in the comic industry. Best known for his run on Spider-man and as one of the founding members of Image Comics, where his creator owned book, The Savage Dragon continues to this day. In addition to writing and penciling his own book, Larsen has taken on the added responsibility of publisher for Image Comics. He also writes a weekly column entitled “”One Fan’s Opinion.” Recently, we caught up with Larsen to talk about the return of The Savage Dragon to its regular schedule and some of his upcoming plans:
Blair Marnell: For those readers who may have forgotten, can you bring us up to speed on what’s going on in Savage Dragon?
Erik Larsen: Oh good lord… (laughs) You know, you can just pick up any darned issue and get caught up with it. We’re 122 issues into it here, so Dragon’s married, he’s got a kid… It all just sounds dumb when I explain it, but it’s super bitchin’ in the comics. It’s too much to go into in any kind of brief fashion that makes it sound supercool. But it is supercool.
BM: As I recall, Dragon was being dragged into the US Presidential election and his wife was badly injured…
EL: Yeah, that has gone on. And there are supporting characters that are…not doing too terribly well at the moment. I do a pretty decent job, I think, of catching people up to speed when you read an issue. You just go “Ok, well these guys are talking about this. So I can read between the lines and figure out what went on.” I would hope at least that nobody is going to be completely lost. All sorts of stuff is brewing and a lot of it kind of gets going a lot more in issue 122. There’s a giant killer robot coming over from Iraq… The Presidential stuff is pretty much winding down at this point. The next issue will get that wrapped in a nice, neat bundle and onward to the next startling direction. Right now, it’s sort of just wrapping a lot of things that have been started and been in the works for a while and then we’ll deal with something completely different five to six issues from now.
BM: Will we finally get to see The Savage Dragon vs. Mr. Glum showdown?
EL: Yeah… The story that’s going on right now is that Dragon’s powers are getting weaker and weaker by the day. Meanwhile there’s a robot that’s tearing up the place that’s coming over with the expressed purpose of killing the President. And Dragon’s just been elected President… After we deal with that whole nonsense, the next major story is Mr. Glum pretty much taking over the world.
BM: Regarding Mr. Glum… Will he be staying at his current size or growing slightly larger?
EL: Oh, his current size… (laughs)
BM: I like the idea of someone so evil and yet so small…
EL: (laughs) At a foot and a half, he’s good to go. It should be pretty cool.
BM: Can you give us a taste of what’s coming after that?
EL: Not really, because it would spoil things too much. But it will be a more similar to the early issues than the current issues. More urban and less all over the world… more of a street level thing again. You sort of build up your hero and then break him down. Then build him up again… At this point, we’re in the process of doing some serious breaking…
BM: In previous interviews, you’ve jokingly mentioned that you want Savage Dragon to run 301 issues…
EL: (laughs) You know… I don’t really have a specific issue number in mind. Ideally, I would like to do the kind of run where you just go “Yeah… I’m not even going to attempt that.” (laughs) “I just did 532 issues in a row!” And then you go “Deal me out!” To do just 301 would be going “Okay, I’m just gonna top what Dave did.” I think if I got to 300 that I would go “I don’t want to stop now.” This is really what I want to be doing for the rest of my career. If I can make it to just 301 issues then I guess I’ll have to stop there. But if I’m able to hang on for considerably than that, then I’m up for it.
BM: Do you have any other Dragon related books in the pipeline?
EL: There’s always things that are in the works. I don’t want to get into too much detail at this moment, because it’s too far off. I don’t want to be announcing that there’s gonna be a miniseries or this whatever… when really, the payoff for that would be in one or two years. At almost any point, there’s always something going on. It’s kind of cool that a lot of guys in the business are fans of the book and want to contribute to that universe. It’s pretty neat to put these guys to work and get something cool out of it. It’s cool for me as a fan of their work and of comics in general. I think some good things will be coming as a result. But that’s too far off to talk about. Frank Fosco and I were working on a fairly long storyline featuring the character Rock, and the diner that he runs. But that may end up being in the Dragon book or it might end up being a one-shot. I’m not sure. There is also a miniseries coming up with a real life, big name pro that will make people go “Ohh… Ahh…”
BM: I’ve got it… It’s Frank Miller. He’s doing the Goddamn Dragon!
EL: (laughs)
BM: I can definitely see that.
EL: Yeah… it’d be damn cool. And who wouldn’t like that? C’mon! Everybody’ll be walking around in their underwear… It’d be great!
BM: (laughs) Definitely a different take on the Dragon…
EL: Yeah.
BM: So… do you have any other creator owned titles in the works besides Dragon? 
EL: At this point, no. Although there may be very shortly. Seriously though, I have a hard enough time keeping up with Dragon on a regular basis. To add another ongoing title would be pretty much impossible. But to go and do a ten page story or a one-shot… something small, I can do that. Anything more that is pretty problematic with my workload.
BM: Now that the Image Hardcover is finally out, what are your feelings towards it?
EL: (laughs) In some ways, I’m glad it’s done. But because I’ve been around that story so long… I drew it almost four years ago… It’s kind of like “At last it’s in print!” But I don’t look at it and go “Yeah this is just what I wanted it to be.” I’m just relived that’s not something hanging over my head any more that readers and retailers are anticipating forever. It just became a bone of contention when the book wasn’t out yet. Now it’s one less thing that I have to apologize for. In terms of the actual work done by the guys in the book, I think it’s a pretty good book. I’m pleased with the jobs that were done and I think everyone put on their best show for the book.
BM: Since the Dragon’s origin is now out there in the hardcover, will you be touching upon it in the series?
EL: Nope. That was the idea, to have a backstory for the readers. But in terms of the Dragon, it would be difficult to touch on it in any real way. I kind of like the idea of him not knowing, so at least for the immediate future, it’s unlikely that I’ll be touching on it.
BM: What comics are you reading these days?
EL: At this point, the comics that I really like are the ones that don’t come out nearly enough. Things like Sin City or Hellboy. I really like those but they’re just not there enough… A lot of Image books… Godland and Amazing Joy Buzzards are high on my list, stuff like that. Most of the time when people ask that question, they mean “what are you actually going to the story and putting down money for?” There’s not a lot out there from other publishers that I’m super-psyched about at this point. I’ll go buy The Jack Kirby Collector or I’ll get Marvel Essential books or Marvel Masterworks that I think are cool. It’s nice to see that the best of comics are being collected now so that people that can get to see a lot of stuff that haven’t really been able to see in fifty to sixty years. I love the Jack Cole Plastic Man collections.
BM: Which upcoming Image titles are you most looking forward to?
EL: I look forward to Girls, Invincible, The Walking Dead, Godland… most of them really. When it comes down to it, there’s an awful lot of stuff that I get excited about and can’t wait to see more of… I think Ferro City is a beautiful looking book. Some of the stuff I kind of wait until all the issues are done so I can sit down and read them one right after another. It’s cool to be here as books come in. It’s a really exciting time to be a part of this process… I should just make a list of what I’m reading or following, just so that when anybody asks I can just rattle it off. There’s a pile of stuff in the other room that I’m excited about that I just can’t think of at the moment.
BM: Which creators are you keeping an eye on?
EL: There are an awful lot of creators whose stuff I’ll check in on, because I like their work. I like John Romita Jr.’s stuff a lot, so whenever he does something I’ll generally buy it. Or “wait for the trade” as they say. Since a lot of the stuff from these guys are collected on fairly regular basis, you can actually wait for a lot of these things. But don’t do it with my book…
BM: Yeah, I was about to say…
EL: (laughs) My trades are just too far behind! I’ve done a bunch of trades, but we’re still about 45 issues off from the current issues. So it’s a long wait if you’re waiting for the trade.
BM: Have you thought about doing an Ultimate Savage Dragon hardcover similar to Ultimate Invincible hardcover?
EL: I like the idea, however the problem with Savage Dragon is that those files don’t exist as files anymore. They exist film, not computer files. In order to do something like that, we couldn’t really do an oversized book unless we did more recent issues, which would seem a little weird. I really do like the idea and I think it would be cool to go into a store and see a 200 page Savage Dragon with a whole mess of issues instead of just a couple. But I can’t do the oversized one because of the file problem. When we started out, people didn’t have CDs or DVDs to burn these things to. So storing these files was enormously cumbersome. They were huge… and it would take multiple floppy disks to store these things in some way. Unfortunately, these files just don’t exist in a digital form.
BM: I’ve noticed that the Image style of publishing doesn’t seem to be working quite so well for publishers other than Image. Why do you think that is?
EL: All of those companies are dealing with books that we said no to. And I think part of it is that they’re just not strong books to begin with. I think that people can or try to duplicate the Image deal, but the problem gets to be when the numbers aren’t there.
BM: How’s the American Flagg hardcover coming?
EL: I don’t know. I did a ton of corrections on it, in terms of coloring and actually ended up spending two months going over those files by myself and making all sorts of corrections. I know that they came back and said, “here are some more corrections that we want to get done.” At that point I was like, “I can’t do this anymore. I’ve got way to much other stuff I need to be doing so get your own guys to do it.” And it has not been forthcoming. I keep hearing that it’s near, but at this point I don’t have the files in hand. I was hoping to have this out by Christmas but that’s not going to happen. It is something that I want to have out. Again, it’s one of those projects that people are bellyaching about. Same thing with Hellshock. Jae Lee was all “I can finish this thing up, no problem!” And it’s clearly been a problem.
BM: I had actually forgotten about Hellshock. Wow.
EL: Yeah, well… You know, that’s one of those things where when he wanted to do it, he was like “let’s get it re-colored. I can do that now, I have a new colorist. Blah, blah, blah…” I just think that he is so close to that material that he has real tough time letting it go. To the degree that he’ll start redrawing pages, redrawing scenes, rewriting stuff and tweaking things… It’s a real task for him to say “The End” and walk away from it. And it’s a difficult situation for everyone involved, but at the same time there’s an audience out that expects it on a timely basis. It comes down to that old saying “Do you want it good or do you want it on time?” We want both, but it doesn’t always work out that way. A lot of people get caught up in minutia that the audience really doesn’t care about. “We waited all this time because you wanted to fix a face here?!” I would rather have had it six months ago and not have to wait that that long for a bunch of changes which to their eyes it’s insignificant. But when you’re doing creator owned stuff, you feel really close to it. And you really want it to be what you want it to be. It’s tough to let go of. When you’re working on someone else’s stuff then it’s just a job. When you’re doing it on your own, it’s kind of like you’re making your own house. It’s got to be perfect
BM: Last question, where do you think the comic industry will be like five years from now?
EL: I think we’re gradually getting to the point where there’s going to be more trades. I think that formats are going to be changing quite a bit. You’ll probably see a lot more original graphic novels. More stories being told in one shot rather all these serialized comic books. I think you’re just going to see a lot of people doing different things. It’s a pretty exciting period for comics, really. You’re going to see a whole lot of people coming and saying “there really aren’t any rules that we all have to play by.” We can kind of do whatever we want to.” If that means having it be six inches by six inches square, that’s fine. If somebody else wants to do some other kind of format, that’s okay too. I think there’s always going to be a place for the traditional American style comic book. 
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