Graphic Fantasy #1
Graphic Fantasy #1 is the true first published appearance of the Dragon — the character who would become Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon — predating the widely cited Megaton #3 by several years and establishing him as a retired member of a government-sponsored super-hero team called the Society of Superheroes. The book also introduces a constellation of characters (SuperPatriot, Mighty Man, Mako, Zeek, Kill-Cat, and others) who would later migrate into Larsen's long-running Image Comics series. Because it circulated in only a few hundred hand-numbered copies, the collecting community largely missed it for decades, and the issue's canonical status went uncorrected in major grading databases until a graded copy finally surfaced in the 2010s. Its eventual recognition reshuffled the accepted first-appearance history for one of Image Comics' founding characters.
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
The book was self-published in June 1982 by teenage creators Erik Larsen, Al Harris, and Kevin Keyes under the name Ajax Comics Group — essentially a fan-zine operation in which each copy was hand-signed and sequentially numbered on the back cover by all three creators. Larsen had been developing the Dragon since childhood, sketching and stapling his own homemade comics long before Graphic Fantasy existed; the character was originally inspired by elements of Captain Marvel, Batman, Speed Racer, and later the Incredible Hulk. Because no commercial distributor was involved, the print run was tiny — numbering are found in the 200–300 range, though the exact ceiling is disputed — and the book went effectively undetected by the wider industry until graded copies began surfacing at auction around 2015.
Trivia · 6 facts
- First published appearance of the Dragon (here called 'Paul Dragon'), the character later known as Savage Dragon, in the lead story 'Revenge!' — written, penciled, inked, and lettered entirely by Erik Larsen.
- Self-published under the Ajax Comics Group imprint, cover-dated June 1982; Larsen's first published comic work.
- Co-creators on the anthology: Al Harris ('Presenting Prism' story/art) and Kevin Clark Keyes ('The Saga of Delta Nine…'); Peggy Nahas contributed the 'Domestic Tranquility' strip.
- The centerspread functions as a character pin-up gallery introducing dozens of the Society of Superheroes cast in print for the first time, including SuperPatriot, Mighty Man, Mako, Zeek, Kill-Cat, The Kid Avenger, Battle Tank, Rock, Sgt. Marvel, Star, Smasher, Poison Dart, and PowerHouse, among others.
- In this pre-Image incarnation, the Dragon is portrayed as a widower and retired superhero — a meaningfully different characterization from the amnesiac Chicago police officer of the later Image series.
- The 'Revenge!' story was reprinted in The Dragon Archives #1 (Image, June 1998), as a backup in Savage Dragon #225 (July 2017) in colorized form, and in a full recolored facsimile edition published by Image Comics in February 2021, making the contents accessible to modern readers for the first time.