Customer Reviews

Image Comics Limited Edition

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For any comic fan, this book holds someting of a historical value. For those who, like me, started seriously reading and collecting in those crazy Nineties, a sentimental value is also attached.
Those, and the prospect of reading the origin of beloved, and much underrated, Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon, made me buy the book as soon as I could...
Which means, as soon as they put it in the bargains bin in my local comics store!
Much as I would have loved to buy the book on Image's 10th anniversary (as was the plan), getting it four years later wasn't as historic: The momentum had been lost somehow (the book itself had been delayed four years!) and I had developed more demanding rading tastse as those that might have been satisfied by the Image founding partners' writing skills.
Because the big point of the book was to show how the four remaining Image founders (Jim Lee had sold his creations to DC Comics, Rob Liefeld had been kicked out even before that, and Whilce Portacio never accepted full partnership) were still faithfull to the origial spirit of indipendence that fueled Image's birth, by watching them come back to write and draw the books they started at Image in that fateful 1992.
Since Erik Larsen had never left the Savage Dragon, though, in his own words he was only left with what he never intended to do: Telling the Dragon's origin!
And a damn good job he does at that!
Larsen has always been a most unique voice in superhero comics: While being the very last of the old school, he was able to bring modern sensibilities to the field, by having the book proceed in real time, having characters behave and even die as realistically and pointlessly as in real life, by showing bloody violence and strong hints of sex, to the point of sometimes bringing the book into the mature readers territory (i.e.: for sale to 14 years and older in the US).
A very rare occurrence in mainstream superheroes.
He should also be credited for taking this approach some years before Warren Ellis took it to new extremes in Stormwatch and made it ground-breakingly popular in The Authority alongside Mark Millar.
As I said before, Larsen's uniqueness also rests in being true to the classics as well, while Ellis openly rejects them in the above work, and Millar puts them aside (his Marvel work will show he still has a lot of use for them).
So the Dragon finally has an origin I won't spoil here, and that will make me enjoy his new adventures once I can get my hands on the collected editions.
The art is stunning, it really is Larsen at his considerable best, and it is a dramatic piece very well executed in a mere 22 pages!
22 pages of goodness can also be found in Marc Silvestri's comeback to Cyberforce, his X-Men knock-off that kick-started his Image days.
It is such a pleasure to see 22 full pages of Marc Silvestri on his first indipedent comic, that you almost forget the lack of originality of the group's origin as given here, and the fact that this is little more than a lead-in to the future and ill-fated Cyberforce relaunch, which, incidentally, Silvestri didn't draw at all...
Some of the same goes for Jim Valentino's Shadowhawk, but this one builds more on the past (including the Alan Moore's addition to the mythos of Shadowhawk being an ancient spirit of justice going through different incarnations, sometime at the same time) and it is completely self-contained. The story builds the foundations for the upcoming book that Valentino only edited, but it is not the first part of, or the hint to a larger tale like the Cyberforce yarn: It ends here, so the casual reader is happy enough and those who are hooked have something to look forward and back to.
I'm not a big fan of Valentino's work, but I have to say: good job!
And that brings me to the low, painfull note of the whole hardcover...
McFarlane's illustrated prose story of Spawn.
First off... A illustrated prose story? After years away from the drawing board? On the much awaited, much delayed (and Todd McFarlane bears 50% of the responsibility for that) anniversary book?
Sigh.
The good here is that it clears some ground, after so long for a book I quit reading because it was going at the most crawling pace, walking in circles as it barely updated some of its parts, but never really made sense of them.
The ground cleared here
- SPOILER ALERT -
is the revelation that Al Simmons was never truly Spawn, but that Spawn ever only had a piece of his soul in him, the little bit that enabled Hell to steer his emotions and training. Great news! Now Spawn can finally move on, can't he?
I only wish he did it some other way, since McFarlane is quite poor at prose and not a bit less boring and wordy and slow-pacing than as a comic book writer.
Boy, how I miss his Spiedr-Man tales... !
So like Cyberforce, this is a lead in to the book's n-th relaunch.
Sigh.
Plus, it has a masked appearance from Miracle Man, back when McFarlan was still fighting for the rights to the character, which lends it some more historical significance (as a footnote in comic books history, at least) and even less sense...
Art-wise, the little illos that go with the story are good but really barely an appetizer (Todd still has it, and watching full pages would have been a blast!), while the typography could have been much, much better, so that at least you'd have gotten extra value from that too.
Aw, well.
This long rant should thus explain the 3 stars: Mixed feelings abound, as I wallow in some sentimentality and regret of what could have been if these great artists had been a bit better (Larsen being the only true exception) at writing too.
If you ever thought of buying this, maybe you sould do like me and wait for a bargain if you need it for your collection, or borrow it if you're just curious. The only seriously important bit is Dragon's origin (which you won't find anywhere else!), otherwise...

This is a must have for any comic book collector or fan, this limited edition comes in a factory sealed (shrink-wrapped) slip-case, and the books are each signed by Erik Larsen, Todd McFarlane, Marc Silvestri, and Jim Valentino. Four comic masters on one book! Each Limited edition book is also numbered,(i got # 132/1000) only 1000 available!

I think that the book delivered exactly what I was anticipating. The four stories were correct and went back to the beginning so that a new reader would know what has happened in each of the four stories. When a new reader picks up a new issue of one of these stories he or she, will know the origins. Buy It!

Since Eric Larsen has stated many times that the Savage Dragon story in this book will not be reprinted in the near future nor would there be a softcover edition I decided to buy this hardcover version. Thankfully, Amazon.com sold it for less than it's $25 cover price.
I bought it JUST for the Savage Dragon's Origin Story. I liked that story. It was not expected. Of course Larson really didn't want to tell the story either.

The Spawn story is a bore and Todd McFarlane couldn't even be bothered to properly illustrate it. It's a text job with some panels here and there. Spawn is a lost cause anyway.
I quit Spawn at issue 50. I had stopped caring around issue 28.

Cyberforce? Who cares about them? Because this book is very very late (I think it was due on IMAGE's 10th anniversary and I believe we're at year 14.)
The Cyberforce story IS continued in an already published JLA/Cyberforce one-shot (Spring 2005?) Nobody bought that either. Nobody cared.

Valentino's Shadowhawk story is next. I never cared for this character and this story is just average. Maybe Shadow Hawk (2 words?) have an interest.

There is also an IMAGE comics timeline in the back. It even makes light of the lateness of this book. It's cool.

Bottom Line. IF you are an Eric Larsen fan then by all means you will want this book.

If you like Spawn a lot (and there are 14 of YOU left!) you will might want this book. But I'm sure Todd will repackaged this tale a few more times just to milk it.

You get the idea....

Buyer Beware.

This book supposedly has the origin of Savage Dragon which interests me. The rest of the properties don't really do anything for me, but I think mr. Q Public needs to do more research before he speaks about something. There are only 4 founding artists on this book: Larsen, McFarlane, Silvestri,and Valentino. There were only 7 original founders in total. Regardless of which of these you were going for, it's a 10th Anniversary book by founding artists. It is not 10 founding artists on an anniversary book. I would hope that one would work on their own literacy before speaking of literary respectability...