Savage Dragon #5
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeSavage Dragon #5 is the narrative lynchpin of the series' opening arc, delivering the first appearances of CyberFace (Sebastian Khan) and the Annihilators — the rival criminal faction whose power struggle with Overlord's Vicious Circle would shape the book's mythology for years. It is simultaneously the debut of Freak Force as an assembled team, the super-powered police unit whose popularity would spin off into its own eighteen-issue series beginning in December 1993. By resolving the Frank Darling blackmail subplot and staging the first full Freak Force deployment in a single issue, Larsen accomplished a rare feat in early Image Comics: tight, consequence-driven serialized storytelling that paid off seeds planted since the ongoing's first issue.
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Written, pencilled, and inked by Erik Larsen — the series' sole ongoing creator — issue #5 also carried a backup Mighty Man story with pencils by David Williams and inks by Karl Kesel, with coloring by Steve Oliff and associates at Olyoptics and lettering by Chris Eliopoulos; Jannie Wong served as editor. The issue appeared with an October 1993 cover date, making it the fifth installment of the monthly ongoing that Larsen had launched earlier that year after the three-issue miniseries proved commercially successful enough to justify a continuing series. The material was later collected, with supplemental new pages, in the trade paperback Savage Dragon Vol. 2: A Force to Be Reckoned With, which reprints issues #1–6 alongside bonus story pages and sketchbook material.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of CyberFace (Sebastian Khan), Overlord's former second-in-command who gains technology-manipulation powers and forms the Annihilators as a rival gang to the Vicious Circle; CyberFace becomes the series' second major villain arc.
- First appearance of the Annihilators as a group, including Animal, Bloop (Cyril Wilson), Dung, LowBlow, and Shard among their ranks.
- First appearance of DoubleHeader (Larry and Harry) — though the Savage Dragon Wiki notes his first appearance is sometimes attributed to a trade paperback edition rather than this monthly issue.
- First appearance of Freak Force as an assembled team, comprising Dragon, Barbaric, Dart, Horridus, and Rapture operating together under Captain Stewart's direction for the first time.
- The issue resolves the long-running Frank Darling blackmail subplot: Darling confesses to Dragon that the Vicious Circle had been coercing him into manipulating Dragon's activities, and that this arrangement indirectly caused the death of Dragon's girlfriend Debbie Harris.
- Main story written, pencilled, and inked solo by Erik Larsen; backup Mighty Man story pencilled by David Williams with inks by Karl Kesel — the backup was later reprinted in the A Force to Be Reckoned With TPB's bundled Back-Up Stories comic.
- Contains a pin-up of Mighty Man by Adam Hughes, as credited in the issue's production details.
- Collected in Savage Dragon Vol. 2: A Force to Be Reckoned With (Image Comics, first printing 1996), which reprints issues #1–6 with additional new story pages including the first meeting of Dragon and Rapture.
Cast · 33 characters
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in Back-Up Stories #1 (1996), Savage Dragon #[2] (1996), The Savage Dragon #3 (1996), Savage Dragon #3 (2024)
Key issues in Savage Dragon
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