Savage Dragon #148

Now this is more like it! Gone is the moping and gore that had turned me off of the last few issues of Erik Larsen's long-running series. This issue has good fighting, an entertaining new guest-star, and the resolution to the too-long missing kids story. The "classic" Daredevil shows up and offers to use his "newsboy legion" type buddies to help Dragon find his kids. While Dragon has been anguishing and busting up town, his new allies resolve the problem in one issue. I loved the flippant and confident attitude that DD exhibits all issue long. I don't know if he was like this in the old comics, but this guy was really likable, I hope he sticks around. Larsen likes to reward his long-time readers, having an old hero seemingly turn in this one, but at the same time, this is clearly new reader friendly. Dragon and DD each recount their origins in nice simple terms and it was nice to see the core elements of the title distilled so easily. I hope this is a sign of things to come, that the book will be a little more fun and not quite as tough to power through. I don't want to read the Dragon barely scraping by through a gruesome, sad life. I want to see him wallop neat bad guys and banter, so this was a fun book.

The fight had a few really great artistic moments too, like when the Viscious Circle goon turns around and gets a boot to the face for his trouble, the timing was well done between those panels. I do love it when Larsen is on his game.

Good