Savage #1 Review: New Title Takes Valiant Dinosaur Hunting
By Matt Conner
Savage launches an original Valiant title pitting a boy against an island of dinosaurs and whetting reader appetites with hints at how it all began.
Savage #1
Written by B Clay Moore
Art by Clayton Henry and Lewis LaRosa
Published by Valiant Entertainment
Savage #1 Cover by Lewis LaRosa
Savage caught our attention months ago with this interview with writer B Clay Moore. He promised a thoughtful character exploration of a boy raised on an island of dinosaurs, and this week, he delivers on that promise.
The present day piece of the book lets Lewis LaRosa shine in a series of gorgeous, largely-silent pages showing a skinny feral teen taking out a dinosaur. I normally flip quickly through sequences like this, but LaRosa’s work is compelling and deserves a slow read.
Moore sets the bulk of his first issue showing how we got to this exquisite action scene. Clayton Henry, a wonderful artist who made Archer And Armstrong zing by playing straight with wacky concepts, takes over the more mainstream parts like this. For the backstory, celebrity soccer player Kevin Sauvage, his manager wife, and their infant son wash up from a plane crash on a mysterious island. I found these scenes even more gripping than the dino hunt. A marriage in trouble? A man with a drinking problem but a sense of honor and duty to his family? That’s the story I want to follow most.
Moore and his art team have hit all the right marks with this first issue. They’ve engaged the reader. They’ve shown off a little. And they have pulled us all in to find out how this troubled couple makes it long enough to get this kid to where he can stab a monster lizard with a talon knife. I don’t know whether the parents are both alive. I don’t know how this clicks in with a publishing world of government conspiracies and psychics and The One Percent. But I know I had a great time this week. And I can barely wait to see what happens next.