Savage Dragon #255
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeSavage Dragon #255 marks the first appearance of North Force, Erik Larsen's all-Canadian super-team whose debut proved popular enough that Larsen reformatted a later issue (#259) as a standalone North Force #0 special just months afterward — a direct, creator-acknowledged measure of the team's immediate impact on the readership. The issue also delivers one of the series' most consequential plot turns of the 2020 run: the on-panel death of Dart (Alison Summers), the grim resolution of the Jennifer Murphy mystery in Dimension-X, and the cryptic revelation of a Dragon-baby lurking in the shadows that seeded story threads carried forward for years. As a document of Larsen's commitment to real-time continuity — the story openly incorporates the COVID-19 pandemic and Joe Biden's incoming presidency as in-universe facts — #255 is one of the clearest illustrations of what makes Savage Dragon structurally unlike any other long-running superhero comic.
ComicBooks.com Value
This exact issue on ebay
Raw / ungraded ▾ $10–$19.4 3 listings
More listings for this title
Read it digitally
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 issue was written, drawn, and cover-illustrated entirely by series creator Erik Larsen, maintaining his decades-long practice of solo authorship on the title he co-founded Image Comics to publish in 1992. Colors were shared between Nikos Koutsis and Mike Toris, with lettering by Ferran Delgado and editing by Gavin Higginbotham — the same core production team in place for the surrounding story arc. The issue shipped December 16, 2020 (Diamond ID: OCT200219) and was accompanied by a Cover B 'Retro 70s Trade Dress' variant; it was later collected in the trade paperback Savage Dragon: Vicious Circle Triumphant! (ISBN 9781534322035), which gathers issues #253–258.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of North Force, Canada's assembled super-team, whose members include The Canadian, Blue Jay, The Flame, Grizzly, Jet, The Knight, and Raptor — confirmed as a first appearance by the official Savage Dragon Wiki and by Erik Larsen himself in a February 2021 Image Comics press release.
- Dart II (Alison Summers) is killed on-panel in this issue when North Force overruns her Vicious Circle forces in Toronto, a major status-quo shift in the villain roster.
- Paul Dragon and Alex Wilde travel to Dimension-X to investigate Jennifer Murphy's empty grave; they discover Jennifer's remains have been desecrated, and the issue closes on the shadowy reveal of a Dragon-baby — a plot thread with significant forward story implications.
- The issue is told in Savage Dragon's signature real-time continuity framework: the COVID-19 pandemic (including Angel Murphy's pandemic weight gain) and Joe Biden's incoming U.S. presidency are both explicitly referenced as current, in-universe events.
- A Vanguard backup strip is included, continuing the series' tradition of short feature stories spotlighting corners of the Image Universe.
- Full creative credits: story and art by Erik Larsen; colors by Nikos Koutsis and Mike Toris; letters by Ferran Delgado; edited by Gavin Higginbotham. Two cover editions exist: Cover A (standard) and Cover B (Retro 70s Trade Dress), both with artwork by Larsen.
- The popularity of North Force's debut directly prompted Image Comics to publish North Force #0 in May 2021 — a reformatted, biography-enhanced presentation of Savage Dragon #259 — making #255 the acknowledged creative origin of that spin-off publication.
- The issue is collected in Savage Dragon: Vicious Circle Triumphant! (trade paperback, ISBN 9781534322035), which covers the full #253–258 arc.
Cast · 33 characters
Full credits
Reprints
↩ Reprints Vanguard: Ethereal Warriors #1 (2000)
Key issues in Savage Dragon
Variants (1)
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.