Did Jim Lee Kill Off a Major Savage Dragon Character In a Fill-In Issue?

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Jul 12, 2019

In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, see whether Jim Lee seriously killed off a major Savage Dragon character will doing a fill-in issue!

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and thirty-ninth installment where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.

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COMIC LEGEND:

Jim Lee killed off a major Savage Dragon supporting cast member when he "swapped" books with Erik Larsen

STATUS:

False

Recently, I wrote about how Savage Dragon had two issue #13s. It was part of a 1994 gimmick where the Image founders would each "Swap" books with each other. So Jim Valentino would do an issue of Youngblood, Rob Liefeld would do an issue of Shadowhawk, Marc Silvestri would do an issue of Spawn, Todd McFarlane would do an issue of Cyberforce, Jim Lee would do an issue of Savage Dragon and Erik Larsen would do an issue of WildC.A.T.s.

Anyhow, my pal Shawn noted that he heard that Larsen was irked that Jim Lee killed off a major supporting character in his fill-in issue.

As found on one site out there, "I mentioned a few posts earlier that Jim Lee drew one issue of the Savage Dragon before he retired penciling for a couple years during the 90s. Erik Larsen (creator/writer/penciler of Savage Dragon) was in an uproar when he discovered that Jim killed off one of the Dragon's central characters. That just goes to show you how scattered Image Comics was in those days. So Larsen took it upon himself to write and pencil another version of issue #13 of the Savage Dragon and told Dragon fans to disregard the events that took place in Jim Lee's version of #13."

That's just not the case.

Alex Wilde debuted in the very first issue of Savage Dragon...

Soon, she was one of Dragon's closest friends...

Although they really didn't partner up that much...

However, she was a pretty prominent character, as seen by Jason Pearson drawing her in a pin-up in Savage Dragon #11...

So it's natural that Jim Lee would feature her in his issue of Savage Dragon (along with scripter Brandon Choi and a bunch of finishers, most notably Richard Bennett)...