2 out of 5

Covers Savage Dragon vol. 1 #2 – Savage Dragon / TMNT #1 (crossover 1), TMNT / Savage Dragon #1 – Savage Dragon vol. 1 #22 (crossover 2)

Yes, well, whoulda thunk.

So what’s most interesting about these two crossovers, separated by 2 years – the first in ’93, second in ’95 – is the difference in the creators involved between the now and then.

But before I get into that, let’s confront that the story is utter tripe, but that the Savage Dragon portions are actually a tad more digestible because at least Larsen’s bombastic style matches his half-in / half-out dialogue… which teeters on a not-so-fine line between super cheese and cheese.  Dooney’s dialogue, on the other hand, has a cheesecake note to it, which totally matched the silly sci-fi of Gizmo, but when he tries to inject it with the beefed up Image method of muscles and veins… ech.  The first crossover is plotted by the deft hands of nonsense.  Chicago PD sends Dragon to New York all the time because he’s big and strong and crazy shit happens in NY.  I accidentally bought issue #1 of SD (thinking there was a Turtles appearance) and there’s totally no mention of him going to New York, but page 1 of issue 2 treats it like we should know he’s already there.

Oh well.  Chalk it up to Larsen’s “advanced” plotting pace.

So the problem is this giant stone creature that’s mauling the city.  Dragon and the Turts team up to punch it to pieces.  The end!  Oh, did you want an actual reason for this to be two issues?  Howzabout the same battle with a different stone creature?  Is that good enough?  Well then by golly, you’ll be floored by SD / TMNT #1.  Battle over?  Sweet!  See ya!

…In TMNT / Savage Dragon, where we attempt to be all canonical by bringing back Complete Carnage and Raphael – oh, he’s such a hothead – traveling to Chicago to fight him.  Chicago??  But that’s where Dragon Lives!!  And this time it’s one battle stretched over two issues.  Neat.

So as you can tell, there’s nothing here to shake up the sense that Image was a pretty dunderheaded company back in their big ol’ Spawn days, just madly muscled dudes hitting things.  Are these books entertaining?  Barely.  But y’know what?  The art is pretty fun, if you can ignore Dooney’s second issue and the general absurdity of the steroid look.  And SD #22 – though pointless as a tie in – drops evidence of how Larsen did start to shape up the Dragon world, so it’s non-turtle moments are… not interesting, exactly, but… unexpected?  The writing is still dumb, don’t get me wrong, but the dude’s been doing this title for years, and I’ve always wondered what sustained it, and I think we start to see some of that forward momentum in this issue.  You also get the tail end of the stoooopid Peter David / Erik Larsen debate in the letters pages, so there’s that.

Regarding the art – SD #2 is still more influenced by Erik’s Marvel days (and Todd’s use of angles and extra linework), which to me always lacked personality.  It has a sense of energy, but all the turtles look exactly the same and each girl looks the same, and etc.  The book also has two extra shorts – Star and Vanguard (on the reverse side) – the former Larsen penned, the latter Gary Carlson – things which tie into Larsen’s world, I guess, but are imcomprehensible plot-wise and do nothing for me except add money to the cover price.  SD / TMNT starts to show us the beefier side of the Turtles, as drawn by Dooney, but it’s still mostly in his bubbly, friendly style, and the dragon’s musculature is reigned down somewhere closer to reality.  I love Dooney’s ‘classic’ look, and this is definitely more WIDESCREEN action than he normally delivers, so though it’s a little much for him to handle, it maintains a sense of fun.

The second crossover is where the art goes bi-polar.  Whatever I do or don’t like about Larsen, I think he’s developed an insanely flowing pencil / paneling style, and he had it in place for SD #22.  The figures are still massive and the chicks still boobed and waif-thin, but every page just zooms by with Erik’s thick, zooming lines and further adaptation of Miller’s use of negative space to tell the tale.  The book looks great, very zippy.  And though his version of bulking dudes up is to add patches of weird looking veins, Larsen at least seems to understand anatomy.  Whereas… poor Dooney.  In TMNT / Savage Dragon, I feel like I’m looking at a teenager’s drawings of his favorite Image characters.  Extra muscles that don’t exist tacked on to beef up our ridiculous looking Turtles, and in one panel transition, a character “gains” about 4 extra ab separations on his ab wall.  That happens.  It’s really a sad book, like a “how the mighty have fallen” kinda feeling.

…And that’s way too much to say about these books.  G’BYE.