Joe: Can you give us an update on what you're doing right now?

Erik: I'm inking page seven of Savage Dragon # 69. It's a November comic, so it'll be out in December. I'm running a little bit late. Currently, I'm pencilling and writing the Dragon/Superman crossover, which is not nearly far enough along, and also I'm still writing Wolverine, at least up until that shifts over to [has trouble pronouncing writer Steve Skroce's name], or however in the world you pronounce it...

Joe: [Ventures a guess at proper pronunciation]

Erik: Your guess is as good as mine.

Joe: So, I take it you've never met him?

Erik: Um, no, I don't know him. I may have met him at a convention, I don't know. I meet a lot of people at shows, and I simply don't retain enough.

Joe: Now that you're off Wolverine, and Nova's been cancelled, are you gonna be doing any more pitches soon?

Erik: Oh, yeah, I can't help it. There's stuff -- stuff and characters, what have you, that still interest me. But I'm really gonna be focusing more on stuff that definitely interests me. Because I think, of the projects I did, over this long haul here -- over the last year, that the one that worked out best was probably Nova -- that's the one that I was happiest with, in terms of the way that the final product came out. There were certainly pieces of both of the other projects that I thought worked out okay, but I thought, overall, it's better if I have more enthusiasm for this stuff in general, coming into the project. I'd like to jump aboard something where I've got a lot of interest in it, whatever that may be.

I'm putting together a pitch for a Fantastic Four maxi-series that I would write and probably partially draw, so you can take that for what it is.  And, really, I have enthusiasm for a lot of the old Marvel stuff, so it would not be unexpected for me to be doing anything along those lines. . . I just like that stuff. I like most anything that [Jack] Kirby came into contact with, and certainly, I've learned to love Spider-Man.

Joe: You have to admit, it's better than fighting ninjas for the umpteenth time.

Erik: Yeah, I've had my fill of fighting ninjas in Wolverine. I think, actually, the stuff on the book was fairly well-received, but I think it was more of a matter of them trying to find something for Steve, or Steve wanting to write his own stuff. Wolverine seems to be kind of a bullet-proof book; it's survived a long time and a lot of people who. . . uh, I'm not going to say anymore... I'll get myself in trouble.

Joe: We all know that everyone from [Astro City creator] Kurt Busiek to [Dogma director] Kevin Smith loves Savage Dragon. Have you tried getting them to plug the book, maybe write an introduction to a trade paperback?

Erik: Kurt is writing an introduction for a book as we speak, or he better be... But, I don't know Kevin, so getting him to do much of anything is beyond my sphere. He's not within my circle of aquaintances or anything else. Certainly, it would not be the worst idea in the world to have him do some stuff. Right now, doing trade paperbacks for me is sort of a vanity press situation -- it's just the pleasure of seeing my own name in print.

I don't know that there's gonna be a lot more after the current one that's solicited -- Gang War. There was a gap there, because I skipped ahead, and I was sort of in this mode of, "Gotta fill this gap." To leave it unfilled would drive me crazy. But beyond that, I don't know if I'm gonna be necessarily going up there to get the next bunch collected. I think there's kinda enough Dragon trade paperbacks out there, and the comics are available.

Joe: From what I've read in [comics news magazine] Wizard, issue 70 has Santa Claus fighting the Easter Bunny. . .

Erik: Yeah, now that's something I told probably Jim [McLauchlin, Wizard Senior Staff Writer] on the phone, off the cuff, just goofing off, and suddenly they're acting like it's this big news item, and making a big deal about it. Issue 70 will have Santa Claus in it in some form, whether it's the real, know-him-and-love-him, can't-live-without-him, livin'-up-in-the-North-Pole, hangin'-out-with-elves Santa Claus, or some bum shakin' a bell down on the street corner. It's a Christmas theme thing, to some extent, and plus it's just another chapter of Dragon's shitty life. I don't know if that answers any questions. I think, my guess is, that the Easter Bunny probably will not be showing up. And there'll be people saying, "Hey, Wizard said the Easter Bunny was gonna be in here!" But Wizard says a lot of stuff.

Joe: Well, that leads into my next question. . .

Erik: Is it, "Why are you so full of shit?"

Joe: Close, but I was gonna say, in the past, you've had God fight the Devil, Hitler's brain holding Dragon at gunpoint, and an intelligent gorilla stuffed into Dragon's arch-nemesis' suit of armor. Why aren't more people reading the book?

Erik: You'd have to ask them. I think, to some extent, it misses the mark on so many levels. The people who like their books dark and gritty, the book isn't dark and gritty enough. People who like straight superhero stuff, it's a little too goofy, and maybe the people who like their stuff goofy, it's not goofy enough. I don't know. It's not a straight-out comedy book, in the way some comedy books are, where everything's funny.

I think in some ways, it offers too much variety. The people who like to be able to read a comic book where there's this dependable status quo, that you can always know, "Wow, thank God Spider-Man's always gonna be doing this or doing that, working for the Daily Bugle. Life's not gonna change too terribly much for a lot of these characters. Dragon is kind of a weird one; everything changes all the damn time. If you miss five issues, you'll come back, and Dragon's a dad, living in a house, no longer a part of the SOS [Special Operations Strikeforce]. It's any number of things, where the book just changes a lot, and some people. . . I know there are people who are like, "I liked your Spider-Man stuff, because it kind of stayed in one place, but the Dragon book, it's just too weird for me." I think Dragon is for somewhat older readers, but at the same time, it kinda looks like it oughta be a big dopey, superhero comic, so I think there's some people who look at it as, "Oh, this is just gonna be a more retarded version of the Hulk."

Joe: . . . with a fin on his head.

Erik: And it's kinda hard to categorize Savage Dragon in a way that somebody can immediately grasp it, and go, "Oh, okay, I'll give that a try."

Joe: This summer, Dragon's world's gonna get turned inside out. . .

Erik: It's gonna get all fucked-up. . .

Joe: How long have you been planning this?

Erik: Um, a lot of my plans are fairly spontaneous. And I sometimes will act in a very rash manner, and then later regret it, and other times I think things through for a long, long time so that I don't do that. This is one of those instances where I thought it through for quite a while, and have been weighing the advantages and disadvantages of it.

At this point, Erik had to take a call on another line. It was the perfect opportunity for him to ditch our fledgling publication's attempt at an interview, but we were delighted when he actually rejoined us a moment later and continued the conversation. . .

Erik: I was talking to somebody at one point, and they were going, "How come everybody always has these stories where they'll completely change reality, and then at the end of it, they'll just change it back to the way it was, and it's like it never happened. You know, there was a three-part story in [Marvel Comics'] New Warriors, fairly early on in that book and they're just, "Oh, everything's different," and then it's all back to normal.

Joe: Like the [X-Men storyline] "Age of Apocalypse."

Erik: Like the "Age of Apocalypse," where, y'know, there were a lot of people who were pretty enthusiastic about it, and thought, "Wow, that's a kind of a cool little world." -- "Oh, it's over..." Everything just kind of gets magically fixed at the end. How come there's never any story where there's long-term ramifications, or that the world gets changed, and then stays that way? And I just thought, if anybody's gonna do it, why the hell not me? And I got to thinking, well, what would those be, what would the ramifications be, how would this change everything? And would it be a better, worse, or the same, situation, coming out of it? Would it make for more interesting comics, or less interesting, what have you. And I just thought it would make for more interesting comics. It would get Dragon to be in a place where. . .

Right now the book takes place in the Image Comics Universe, proper, where you know that the President is Clinton, and you know that this place is here and it's basically the real world that we know outside, with some minor tweaks, and there's superheroes running around. Nobody's gonna invent something that's gonna change the world so much that you don't recognize it anymore, y'know? Nobody's gonna come up with a way of synthesizing stuff, or have electric cars flying through the air. 'Cause it'd be too much deviation of what we know of as being reality outside, and it wouldn't necessarily be reflecting everybody else's books. So, my thoughts were, why not try to take Dragon out of that and make it really different. When I started thinking about it, the more I thought about it, the more excited about the idea I got. And the more possibilities I thought of. . . and it's getting to the point now, where I'm trying to come up with, well, what else could a ramification be that would make this even shittier? Well, this idea might make the world a little different, but I want something, that you're gonna look at this and go, "Oh, wow, yeah, that's nuts."

It's not like another issue of Dragon at all. He goes into this situation and he has the knowledge of the previous 75 issues that we all know, but he is the only one who has that, and everybody else, this is the world that they know.

Joe: From what I've been seeing from the message board on the Savage Dragon website, there's certain people who think that it's gonna be kind of like the "Age of Apocalypse" world, y'know, where the humans are all under someone else's rule. And then there are other people who think that it'll be basically like the real world here, with slight differences, like there's no Cesspool.

Erik: Oh, it'll be totally fucked-up. It's much more towards the "Age of Apocalypse" than towards the regular world. Most people, when I say, "Yeah, Darklord won't get to grow up to be an adult, so he can't travel back into time and set off this bomb. . ." Basically, by travelling back into time, he creates another reality, but the reality that he creates is the Image Universe, that we all know. So, if this character isn't able to go back into time, he doesn't create the Image Universe that we all know, so what would it be had he not done that? And the immediate thing is, well, we saw that he, as an adult, killed Rapture in issue 42 or something, or 43. . . So [people say], "You're just using this as a way to bring back Rapture." But that's like the. . . toenail, the pinkie toenail of what goes on.

Joe: Yeah, 'cause if she's in the other universe, it'll be Rapture, but she'll have had all kinds of different experiences.

Erik: Entirely different. To somebody who's read the book, this'll all make sense. To somebody who's never read it before. . . I think if the reader just starts reading it, point blank with this issue, they'll totally understand what's going on. They're not gonna be sitting there, going, "Oh, I don't understand what happened. I don't really get the parameters of this new world, or whatever." It's gonna be spelled out in a very straightforward way, so there's not gonna be any real question about what's going on. And Dragon will discover it, and get caught up. Being that he's gonna be a character who doesn't have access to all the backstory. . . The reason for that -- the biggest reason -- is to have someone to have it explained to, so everybody can get caught up on it. But the domino effect is that the Nega-bomb is never set off, so a character named Young Tough never becomes his name, because part of that -- he loses his partner, and when he loses his partner, he kinda goes nuts. And he also gets his face all messed up, which makes him wear this mask, and he's a butthole. So, this doesn't happen.

And it also created a villain named Cesspool. And the real hard ramifications are in terms of the Dragon book, where the domino effects kinda kick in is around Dragon 4, when Dragon goes down into the underground and breaks up a fight between a villain called Cesspool and Ricochet and Barbaric. 'Cause Dragon doesn't go down there, because there's nothing to break up. He never recruits them to join the police force. If he doesn't recruit them to join the police force, what ends up happening is they're not around to be able to do stuff. So, when they're not around, Ricochet never runs into Rapture, who is in the process of wanting to kill her pimp. Now, because of that, if she doesn't interrupt that, Rapture just kills him. Which makes Rapture now essentially a bad guy, because she's a murderer. Since Dragon doesn't have those three guys along, then there's no way for him to effectively stop the group called the Annihilators from their quest, which is to take over the Vicious Circle. So basically, Dragon gets the living shit kicked out of him by those guys, and they in turn go on and kill Overlord, so Dragon never even confronts Overlord in this reality at all. And Cyberface ends up taking over the Vicious Circle, which results in him basically taking over Chicago, so he becomes mayor/overlord of Chicago.

And eventually, the end result of this whole thing, because of all the other parts of it all, Dragon comes out and he's in [DC Comics' Last Boy on Earth] Kamandi's World. When he comes out of this, he's like, "Everything's fucked up." There's like nothing that works, everything is destroyed, there's giant ants running Australia. There's giant pits of fire here and there, scattered around, Cyberface controls everything. The rich are richer.

Joe: Do the ants ruling Australia have anything to do with the ants in Freak Force?

Erik: I was thinking they'd be leftovers from Mars Attacks but I still have to go through all of my comics to make sure it works.

[Dragon's] put in a position of, instead of being the good guy, he is now a bad guy, essentially because he wants to overthrow the government.  So, what we're used to is Dragon being the good guy and everybody going, "Oh, yeah, Dragon, you're the hero, go get 'im." Now it'll be, Dragon essentially wanting to assassinate the president. And that makes for an entirely different set of stories, than Dragon, cop, or Dragon, member of SOS. And the thing is, there's no way for Dragon to undo killing this kid. It's not like he can just go ahead and not do that.

I haven't really used time travel in these comics, and I'm not really going to be doing that. When Dragon comes out of this, it's the year 2000, which is when the books come out. It's not gonna be Dragon suddenly back in time. All the cast that has been in the book will still be there. The big difference between a book like [Marvel's alternate reality comic] Mutant X and what's going on here, is that Mutant X is pretty much the regular Marvel Universe in terms of the universe is and the world works, but all the characters are different, for some reason. Green Goblin is something else, Spider-Man is Man-Spider or whatever. All the characters are different. With this, all the characters are essentially the same, but the world is completely different and fucked-up. So when you meet any of the regular supporting cast members again, it's not gonna be a question of who's side are they on or what's their personality like, or what their costume gonna be like. They look the same. They're essentially the same person that you've met before. The circumstances that have shaped their lives may be somewhat different, but now Dragon's trying to deal with this whole situation. And he knows he can't go and make it the way it all was, but he's just trying to do what he can with the world the way it is. It should make for some engaging funnybook yarns.

Joe: Now that you've gotten Dragon to where he was at the end of his old [pre-Image Comics] continuity, does it feel like anything goes?

Erik: Once I'd gotten to the point where I. . . really, it was those two issues that took place over the summer that were these stories that I did as a kid, and I kinda wanted to re-work them into continuity. . . Once I'd done that, it was, okay, now anything goes. And now anything does go.  And really, what I'm trying to do now, over the next seven issues or so is kinda wrap up most of the dangling plot threads that have been going on in the book ever since it started, so that you're not going to be sitting there, going, "Yeah, but we never got the resolution of. . . " Y'know, where's She-Dragon goin' with Bludgeon? Or whatever. Just not a lot of dangling shit, that you'll be sitting there going, "Oh, now we'll never know."

Some of the obvious stuff that can certainly roll over is Dragon's origin. Well, that's not gonna change. It's not like this world is so radically different, that, oh, now you weren't bit by a radioactive spider, now you were, y'know, whatever. He'll be essentially the same as he was.  Everybody's gonna wonder what the hell happened to him, because the last time they met him, he had his brain pretty well intact, and now he's gonna be going, "I don't remember any of you, I don't remember this situation, or this relationship or anything. Who are you? What happened?  How come I'm involved with this person? What's going on here?" He'll be somewhat confused, but that will make for some cool stories, and that's really what this is all about.

Joe: A big theme in Savage Dragon is that eventually the next generation of characters is going to take over the book.

Erik: And now I've tossed that all out the window! Hahaha!!! What I would like to do eventually, is that this, essentially, is a multiverse. So, the world that existed in the previous 75 issues doesn't cease to exist for anybody but the Dragon. All those characters who were there in that situation will continue to be there. So what will probably happen at some point, is that somebody's gonna need Dragon to do something, like "Oh, you're the only guy who can face this particular foe. But you're dead, so we gotta go and surf the realities and find a world, a reality, a dimension, where Dragon is still alive, so we can use him to go and meet this foe. And at that point, the worlds will essentially come into contact with each other, and hopefully enough years will have passed, where you'll go, "Oh, so Dragon is going back to the world that was pre-75. Cool!" But, in those intervening years, now there's been all these other developments that have gone on with those characters, so I don't know if he can really go home again, because he's been away for so long that, y'know, his wife is remarried, or whatever else. Things have just changed.

Joe: She just won't, like, remarry to his best friend and have a kid. . .

Erik: Hey, now there's an idea!

Joe: Has Christopher [Erik's oldest child] started learning about what you do?

Erik: Sure, he knows what I do. He's five years old, and going to kindergarten right now.

Joe: You're the only Image founder who still pencils, inks, and writes your own book.

Erik: That is true.

Joe: When Image started, did you guys think, seven years later, it'd be this way?

Erik: Had we known, I don't know that we'd all done it. I don't know. I certainly didn't. But I got in this business 'cause I wanted to do comic books, so that's why I'm still doing comic books. I thought that the group of people who I was getting into business with also wanted to do comics, and in some cases, that was not the case. But, you know, whatever.

Joe: Do you view this as a positive or a negative sign?

Erik: I would certainly like to read comics by my former partners in crime, or my partners in crime, I guess. I like Marc Silvestri's artwork. I would like to see some Marc Silvestri artwork on a regular basis. And it's a pisser that I don't get to see that. But, if he doesn't wanna do it, then that's what I gotta put up with.

Joe: Has he ever drawn Dragon?

Erik: Not that I've seen.

Joe: Way back when Dragon started, his fin was made up of 8 parts, but after he came back from William's body, it's been reduced to 5. Why the change?

Erik: It's evolved as time has gone on. In the beginning, it would be anywhere from 5-13 sections, depending on the panel. As time went on, I gradually reduced the numbers of sections, forever looking for the number that looked best. Five seemed to be the magic number.

Joe: Do you have any convention appearances planned this year?

Erik: I will go wherever somebody will send me. Oh -- I usually go to WonderCon, which is a local, Oakland convention. I usually go to the San Diego show. And the Chicago show -- the big Wizard deal there. If those folks are still willing to put up with me, I'm still willing to show up.

Joe: Well, that looks like that's about all the questions we've got. Thanks for taking the time out of your schedule to do the interview. And now, if the book's late, you can just blame it on me.

Erik: Luckily, I've got a headset. I've been sittin' here, getting all kinds of work done, so the telephone works out okay.

Joe: Well, take it easy.

Erik: I'll talk to you later. Bye.

Copyright 2000 Cecil & Tiffany Adkins