Savage Dragon #43
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeSavage Dragon #43 serves as the thunderous conclusion to the 'Darkworld' arc, a multi-issue storyline that permanently reshaped the series by killing Rapture — one of Dragon's most significant romantic partners and the mother of his son Malcolm — at the hands of DarkLord, a loss that set off years of emotional and narrative consequence for the title. The issue simultaneously delivers the first appearance of Super-Tough, an aged veteran hero whose entire backstory ties together the Nega-Bomb mythology and the origin of the villain Mace, demonstrating Erik Larsen's habit of seeding major lore through single, densely packed chapters. DarkLord himself meets his end here, bisected by his own inter-dimensional portal, closing a threat that had been building across multiple issues while leaving Dragon and Smasher stranded on a dying parallel Earth — a cliffhanger that directly propelled the next phase of the series. As one of the few creator-owned, single-creator ongoing titles of the Image era, the issue exemplifies Larsen's long-game approach to serialized storytelling, where deaths and debuts carry genuine permanence.
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Written, penciled, and inked entirely by Erik Larsen — consistent with his unbroken solo run on the series — issue #43 was published by Image Comics with a cover date of November 1997, lettered by Chris Eliopoulos, and colored by a team including Reuben Rude, Lea Rude, Abel Mouton, José Arenas, and Quantum Color Fx. The issue arrived mid-run during a period when Larsen was systematically expanding the Image Universe's multiverse mythology, having introduced Darkworld in issue #42 via the S.O.S. team's first field mission, making #43 the payoff to that immediate setup. No special production variants or alternate editions have been documented for this issue.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Super-Tough (real name Adam Ward), the veteran hero and longtime nemesis of DarkLord who survived the Nega-Bomb explosion of roughly 1980 and was stranded on Darkworld.
- First appearances of the Eternal Youths team from Darkworld — Big Lug, Charisma, Cowbloke, Lovechild, and Might — five super-powered youths whose psychic connection to She-Dragon had been a running subplot.
- Death of Rapture (Sharona Jackson): DarkLord incinerates her after she openly defies him, marking the first of what would become multiple deaths for the character across the series' long run.
- Death of DarkLord: attempting to escape through his own inter-dimensional portal, he is caught mid-transit when it closes, with his bisected torso falling to the ground on Darkworld.
- Death of Damien Farrell is also recorded for this issue per Grand Comics Database indexing.
- Dragon and Smasher are left stranded on the dying Darkworld at issue's end, a cliffhanger resolved across subsequent issues (#44 onward) that kicks off a months-long 'lost in space' subplot.
- She-Dragon's subplot runs concurrently on Earth: she is beaten by Volcanic, hospitalized, and reports that the voices in her head — the Eternal Youths — are warning of Earth's danger, tying her arc directly to the Darkworld conflict.
- Written, penciled, and inked solely by Erik Larsen, with lettering by Chris Eliopoulos; published November 1997 (Diamond ID: SAVAGE043); the story is collected in the Savage Dragon Archives and Ultimate Edition hardcover reprint lines.
Cast · 19 characters
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Reprinted in Savage Dragon #9
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