Savage Dragon #42
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeSavage Dragon #42 marks the operational debut of the Special Operations Strikeforce (S.O.S.) as a functional superhero team: after issues of organizational setup, Dragon leads his assembled roster on their first actual field mission, crossing over to the alternate planet Darkworld and coming face-to-face with its dictator, DarkLord. This issue opens the 'Worlds at War' story arc — one of the most consequential in Larsen's run — that would ultimately cost Rapture her life, strand Dragon and Jennifer Murphy in a parallel dimension, and establish the multiverse as a recurring structural element of the Savage Dragon mythology. The issue is also the early showcase for the full three-tier S.O.S. roster, giving meaningful page time to a large ensemble of Larsen's Image-era supporting characters. As a single-creator production from cover to final page, it exemplifies the self-contained authorial vision that distinguishes the Savage Dragon series within the history of American superhero comics.
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The S.O.S. formation was a deliberate editorial pivot by Erik Larsen: after the Shattered Image crossover was used to phase out characters associated with Rob Liefeld from the broader Image Universe, Larsen wrote the U.S. government approaching Dragon to build a new government-sponsored superhero team in Youngblood's place. By the time issue #42 shipped with a cover date of October 1997, the team had been established on the page for several issues, with Dragon relocated from Chicago to Washington, D.C. The issue also carried a backup strip — Chris Eliopoulos's Desperate Times — a comic-strip-style slice-of-life series about two single men that Eliopoulos had introduced as a recurring feature in Savage Dragon while simultaneously hand-lettering every page of the main story, a craft choice Larsen insisted on even as the rest of the industry shifted to digital fonts.
Trivia · 7 facts
- Entirely written, pencilled, and inked by Erik Larsen, with Chris Eliopoulos as letterer and I.H.O.C. (Reuben Rude, Abel Mouton, Bill Zindel, Lea Rude, Jose Arenas) as colorists.
- The S.O.S. is depicted in three operational tiers: Level One (Dragon, Barbaric, Dart, The Kid Avenger, Rapture, Ricochet, Rock, Smasher, SuperPatriot), Level Two (Crusher, GoldBrick, Morose, Radical, The Shrew), and Level Three (Beast Boy, Feezle, Horridus, Lethal, Widow, Sgt. Marvel, Tiger).
- First full S.O.S. field mission: the team is dispatched to investigate sections of U.S. land being supernaturally replaced by terrain from the parallel world Darkworld — setting up the 'Worlds at War' arc across issues #41–46.
- Dragon and the S.O.S. make first contact with DarkLord, the time-traveling despot of Darkworld, who reveals he is sacrificing Earth's land to relocate his dying people — the central conflict that will define the next several issues.
- Mace, who had been left in a brain-dead catatonic state following a prior story, is revived in this issue when one of the Wicked Worms attaches to him and jumpstarts his brain, setting up his return as an active threat.
- The issue includes a backup feature: Desperate Times by Chris Eliopoulos, a comic-strip-style humor series (inspired stylistically by Calvin and Hobbes) following bachelors Marty and Toad, which debuted in Savage Dragon before spinning off into its own Image Comics series.
- This issue is collected in the trade paperback Savage Dragon Vol. 9: Worlds at War, which collects issues #41–46.
Cast · 40 characters
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Reprinted in Savage Dragon #9
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