A Skeleton Key to THE DRAGON’S GIFT

While I was waiting in a super long line to get a sketch from John Romita Jr. a nice old man struck up a convo with me about comics. He asked me about my favorite characters and stories, which at the time were Spider-Man all the way. So we talked extensively about all things web-headed while the line slowly moved forward. Eventually he would shake my hand and wish me well, then he walked behind the table and sat down to start a signing session. Wait, what? Lo and behold that whole time I was talking to Jazzy Johnny himself! John Romita Sr., what a nice guy :)))

So now it’s time to get my sketch from JRJR and I requested a drawing of Wolverine, which he sketched out first in rapid pencil lines, creating a faint image of Wolverine chomping on a cigar.

As he’s drawing he keeps yelling things across the aisle.

He then switches over to a marker to ink his Wolverine sketch while his yelling across the aisle becomes more frequent and much louder. Then I notice an absolutely unmistakable voice is screaming back! It turns out I’m stuck in the middle of a shouting match between JRJR & Mr. T!

I can’t really tell if they’re joking or not! JRJR is cracking up the whole time, so probably? Maybe? IDK!

JRJR is yelling to Mr. T that actually he is the one who is a fool, contrary to popular belief, and that JRJR, in fact, pities Mr. T.
A dubious claim to be sure!

I walked away with my super awesome Wolverine sketch and not sure what to make of anything anymore :)))

Additional contextual support for THE DRAGON’S GIFT

1.) IMAGE SUCKS

My neighbor was a super big time comic book collector. One of those guys that would buy 3-5 copies of EVERYTHING that came out on a weekly basis, and boasted a comic collection of hundreds of thousands of issues, with complete collections of numerous big name titles. He also had a subscription to the Comic Buyers Guide, which in those days was printed like a newspaper and delivered bi-weekly through the mail. After he was finished with it he’d pass it along to me, and I loved it!

To a 12 year old it felt like I was getting a real look behind the curtain at the workings of the industry. Probably mostly it was advertisements and public relations, mixed in with some genuine heartfelt fandom. In any case, I loved it, esp Peter David’s “But I digress…” column.

CBG was, generally speaking, not particularly crazy about Image Comics.

Back in those days the creation of Image was defined in much different terms than it is today. These days the creation of Image is rightfully celebrated as a revolutionary victory for creators’ rights. But that wasn’t the discussion I was hearing back then, so far as I knew, Image was about writers vs. artists & style vs. substance.

The Image stance, from what I understood, was that the art was more important than the story, which I very much disagreed with! And my experience of those early Image books was, sure it looks cool, but the stories are so dumb.

At Comicfest ’93 Peter David & Todd McFarlane participated in “The Great Debate” which I didn’t attend, but assumed was in regards to this disharmony between writers and artists.

Though actually the debate was about whether Image had been treated fairly by the media.

The fact that I had no clue at the time that Image had anything to do with creators’ rights suggests maybe they were not treated fairly after all.

Maybe I was being fed bad info from a comics media with a vested interest in maintaining corporate hegemony?

Or maybe I was a kid who misread the situation?

Or maybe there actually was a genuine antagonism between some artists and some writers in the industry, which the creation of Image exacerbated?

Most likely a heady mixture of all of the above and then some!

So basically, when I said “Image sucks” I thought I was saying that I valued substance over style, but it turns out not to have been so simple :)))

2.) MY HAT

In the comic I am sporting an Atlanta Braves baseball cap, which by itself is pretty unremarkable, but at the con itself caused quite a commotion, because this event happened to coincide with the Philadelphia Phillies playing against the Atlanta Braves in the 1993 NLCS.

I came by my Braves fandom somewhat honestly, with a step brother from Georgia, and my Dad’s cable service only coming with 10 channels, 1 of them being TBS. The Braves were on TV every goddamn day and I was lured in by their winning ways. Also, at school, it was considered pretty dorky to root for the home team, and it was much preferred to have your own team.

Wearing a Braves cap at that time & place was considered treason, probably especially with the ’93 Phils being so super cool & beloved that their legend has only grown in the decades that have followed.

The Phillies would go on to beat the Braves 4 games to 2 and advance to the World Series. So the last laugh was def on me!

3.) The Comics

The original Savage Dragon mini-series, at that point in time, was pretty damn expensive. All 3 issues were def wall books at Comicmania, my local comic book shop.  All told Larsen’s gift probably cost him at least $25, which seemed like a fortune to a 12 year old in 1993.

Also, now that I think about it, this experience almost certainly led directly to this one.