Megaton #4
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeMegaton #4 (April 1986) represents the final installment of Erik Larsen's Vanguard feature within Gary Carlson's anthology, and it delivers what retailers and historians have described as a 22-page story — titled 'Dungeons and Dragons' — spotlighting Paul Dragon, the direct pre-Image prototype of the character who would eventually become the Savage Dragon. Coming just two months after Megaton #3 introduced the 'Savage Dragon' name to print for the first time, issue #4 deepens the mythology Larsen was quietly building on the fringes of the mid-1980s black-and-white independent boom, cementing the anthology's place as a genuine seedbed for what would become Image Comics. The issue also carries work by Grass Green — a pioneering African-American underground-comics figure — whose comedic Wildman and Rubberoy strip added cross-generational range to what was already an unusually ambitious self-published title.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Megaton Comics was launched and edited by Gary Carlson, whose anthology ran from 1983 to 1987 and served as one of the early venues for the black-and-white independent comics wave of the decade. Larsen had co-created the Vanguard feature with Carlson beginning in Megaton #1, and the two maintained creator ownership of their respective characters throughout the run — a forward-thinking arrangement that Larsen would later describe as foundational to how he approached creator rights. Issue #4 was the last chapter of that Vanguard collaboration, with the cover provided by Angel Medina, who was himself an emerging artist building early credits through the Megaton pages.
Trivia · 7 facts
- Contains a 22-page Vanguard story written and drawn by Erik Larsen, titled 'Dungeons and Dragons,' featuring Paul Dragon — Larsen's pre-Image prototype for the character later reimagined as the Savage Dragon.
- This is the fourth and final issue to feature Erik Larsen's Vanguard strip, which ran consecutively in Megaton #1–4.
- Paul Dragon appears here two months after Megaton #3 (February 1986), in which the character first bore the 'Savage Dragon' name in print.
- Cover art is credited to Angel Medina, who was building his early professional credits through the Megaton anthology.
- Also features a Wildman and Rubberoy story by Richard 'Grass' Green, a pioneering African-American comics creator and underground-comics figure who created those characters decades earlier in fan and fanzine publications.
- The entire eight-issue Megaton run, including issue #4, was collected in the Megaton Archives trade paperback published by Image Comics, scanned from original art and film negatives.
- The Megaton anthology as a whole is historically noted for providing early professional work to Erik Larsen, Rob Liefeld, Angel Medina, Butch Guice, and others who later shaped the Image Comics era — prompting Liefeld to describe publisher Carlson as 'the Grandfather of Image Comics.'
Cast · 27 characters
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Reprints
Reprinted in Megaton Holiday Special #1 (1993), The Dragon Archives #4 (1999), Savage Dragon #267 (2024)
Key issues in Megaton
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