Savage Dragon (miniseries) #1: Baptism of Fire Review

Savage Dragon (miniseries) #1: Baptism of Fire Review

Medium: Comic

Release date: 7/1/1992

Review date: 10/23/2024

Score: 5/10

“Savage Dragon (miniseries)” #1 is a very efficient issue in many respects: it establishes the (amnesiac) backstory of the Savage Dragon (known as just The Dragon), Chicago’s needs for superheroes, and a moral throughline about the importance of police needing to hold and maintain public trust through good policing, all in a single issue, which is commendable. But how much did I enjoy that efficient introduction? That’s a bit more mixed. “Baptism of Fire” just sort of throws the reader in the thick of things without explaining all too much - for example, at the start of the issue, Chicago is apparently being terrorized by super powered ne'er-do-wells called “super freaks,” and that said freaks recently mangled the local Chicago hero Super Patriot. It's because of these super freaks and their apparent spree of destruction and violence that the Chicago police lieutenant Frank Darling, the man who finds our amnesiac Dragon protagonist, so doggedly pursues the Dragon to join the Chicago PD as his “super” nature would allow him to safely go toe-to-toe with said super freaks. But this first issue doesn’t exactly do the best job of believably presenting the super freaks as a threat, or at least so substantial a threat that there appears to be a need for the Dragon on the police force. The comic doesn’t do a good job clarifying if the super freak menace is new, or if these guys have existed for a while and are only becoming a problem now that Super Patriot is out of the picture, or what. The way the exposition so offhandedly talks about the “super freaks” you’d almost believe they were just an annoying new style of clothes the youths were wearing or something and not a massive threat to the safety of Chicago - it gives the whole issue an air of weightlessness that I’m not sure was intended.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, “Savage Dragon” is another flagship Image title from the publication’s launch, and this miniseries here, “Savage Dragon (miniseries),” is the slightly rewritten origin story that series’ creator Erik Larsen had originally penned as a limited series just called “Savage Dragon” which eventually blossomed into a monthly “Savage Dragon” title at Image based on positive responses from readers. “Baptism of Fire” tells the tale of a giant green man with a fin on his head (our titular Savage Dragon) who is found without his memory unharmed in the ruins of a burning vacant lot. The Chicago cop who finds our protagonist, Lieutenant Frank Darling, sets him up with a loft apartment and a job at a local warehouse, but tries to convince the Dragon to join him on the CPD force, with the Dragon initially turning him down but then agreeing to join the academy after the warehouse he works in is torched by the super freaks. The Dragon cruises through his training, revealing himself to already be a crack shot from his unremembered past. He gets brought on to the force as the first super freak police officer, and experiences some pushback and racism from other members of the CPD and the public, but is set on taking to the streets to do good. The Dragon begins stopping and rounding up the various super freak menaces around the city, meeting another Chicago vigilante by the name of Star at one of the crime scenes, with our hero closing out his first issue (and day on the job!) with an unnamed big bad villain dramatically dispatching his goon Hellrazor to take care of the Dragon.

Like I said at the beginning of the review, this issue was efficient but not the most interesting to actually read. Very few of the issue’s narrative choices, like the Dragon’s boss at the warehouse, Fred, being killed during the attack, feel like they have much weight to them - I think the comic would have flowed better if either the series’ setup had been extended a bit over more than one issue, or if the introduction had been presented as less serious overall, since its hard for me to think “Savage Dragon (miniseries)” takes its own threats seriously when it insists on referring to its antagonists as “super freaks,” a name for the series’ villains that feels like it was ripped right out of a children’s Saturday morning cartoon and not a newspaper headline. And by making the Dragon so good at stopping the super freaks, especially all on his first day on the job, the series ends up making the freaks come across as pretty toothless; the Chicago PD must really suck at their job if they can’t stop the likes of someone called Glowbug, c’mon now. I do appreciate the series’ nod towards acknowledging police brutality and prejudice - the Dragon specifically cites the Rodney King beatings as an example of where the police need to regain the public’s trust, as well as it portraying parts of the Chicago populace as just being racist (interesting to see that the series won’t shy away from having bigoted characters use full on racial slurs, not sure if that’s more of an indication of authorial intent to show how racist a character is or if 90s comics were just a lot looser with that kind of thing). It’ll be telling to see how much the series keeps up that type of police criticism as it goes on and the Dragon becomes more involved and ingrained with Chicago PD.

But overall “Baptism of Fire” was just fine; the art was solid but didn’t stand out all that much, and narratively I’m just hoping things pick up in the following issues. Also peep that “Youngblood” reference - I guess it wasn’t just Todd dropping them early on.