Savage #1

Written by: B. Clay Moore
Art by: Lewis Larosa and Clayton Henry
Colours by: Brian Reber
Published by: Valiant Comics

You take Tarzan and Turok and combine their stories and you have the first issue of Savage. We get a story that has parents and their young newborn baby flying in a plane that crashes off the coast of a seemingly deserted island. An Island with dinosaurs. The story opens with a child, the baby from later on in the story fighting and killing a dinosaur, then we head back in time to follow Kevin and Veronica Sauvage as they fly to the USA, with baby Kevin JR, where Kevin is about continue his soccer career. There is an off handed remark about two other children who aren't on the plane that I imagine might be important later on. So the plant crashes in the water, they swim to the island build shelter and find out about the nature of the island.

The story is very familiar if you've read Tarzan or Jungle Book etc. I'm a huge fan of Valiant and love pretty much everything they do, but I'm not sure if this book is a wise choice. Borrowing so heavily from Tarzan is one thing, but also the who Turok vibe of the book. It comes across badly due to the original Valiant's history with the Gold Key characters, but these are my only negatives about this book. It was a good quick read. I'm a fan of this type of jungle character, so it's right up my alley. And who doesn't love dinosaurs. I do wonder if these dinosaurs are more then meets the eye, clearly not robots though considering the first few pages. We also get some nice commentary at the end of the book with the layouts, inks and colours being shown and some insight from B. Clay Moore the writer.


We get two excellent artist on this book, the present day stuff being handled by Lewis Larosa, who does an excellent job with his pages. We get no dialogue in the opening pages, so Larosa really does the heavy lifting with great panels that are very kinetic. The detail is awesome on these pages. The second half, the part of the story that takes place in the past is drawn expertly by Clayton Henry. Really as Moore points out in the commentary section of the book Henry really shoulders a lot of work building dramatic tension in many of the scenes and it works so well, we don't need dialogue explaining that the Sauvages might not have the greatest relationship at this point, because Henry shows it too us. Amazing stuff. I love the art, and I'm a big fan of both artists and they both draw really great dinosaurs, so I can't wait to see way more. As with everything he does Brian Reber's colours are excellent as always. Sometimes it's easy to over look the significance of the colourist in comics but Reber makes a huge difference in the books he's involved with, adding a lot of mood to the pages.


So as much as I'm concerned with the whole Tarzan/Turok pastiche thing, the book on it's own was a good read. I'm waiting for a unexpected turn like they are all dead or something dumb like that, but honestly I hope this book just is what is seems to be, a wild jungle man story that happens to have dinosaurs instead of tigers or bears. Again this has been an archetypal character in literature since Burroughs and Kipling, to the ingredients are all there for a fun adventure. Let's see where we go from here.