Back Issue #168 July 2026 (magazine review).
This edition of Back Issue is sub-titled Here There Be Dragons! I’m a little curious about some of the choices, but you certainly couldn’t leave out Dragon Man, who first came to life against the Fantastic Four. Writer Paul Burns provides his history. I know Dragon Man is an android and probably had some sort of plug-in that gave him the ability to speak and think, but it does seem a little pat.
There are a few entries here that I’m not familiar with. One I ought to mention is Dragonlance, the story extension of Dungeons & Dragons. Writer Marc Buxton goes over its history and explains how TSR had problems with DC Comics because of the limits imposed on the latter and a failure to understand the differences between the markets. The fact that the comic-book series sold well should have spoken for itself.
It’s quite understandable that Kitty Pryde’s companion Lockheed is included here. I own some original pages from the Nightcrawler mini-series showing him at a different size, which demonstrates how quickly he became integrated into the X-Men mythos. Writer John Kirk goes over his history. I did wonder whether Chris Claremont was influenced by Anne McCaffrey’s fire-lizards from the Pern novels and simply created a more pudgy version.
Joshua Winchester interviews Erik Larsen about his creation, the Savage Dragon, about whom I knew absolutely nothing. I’m still not entirely sure, other than the art panels suggesting that he was also a police officer, that his story unfolded in real time and that he was eventually succeeded by his son.
Killer Croc was created by the late Gerry Conway. While he was still alive, Conway explained to writer James Heath Lantz that he wanted an intelligent but physically powerful opponent for Batman, one who controlled territory in Gotham’s sewers, which Batman rarely visited.
Conway’s sources included the film The Third Man, although he thought it took place in Paris when it was actually set in Vienna. Killer Croc, also known as Waylon Jones, had a skin ailment that gave him his scaly appearance, but later writers played up the crocodilian menace rather than his intelligence. Croc has survived the various updates to the DC Universe, so he has to be regarded as a successful creation. The thing is, he isn’t a dragon.
Writer Amanda Powers interviews Jeff Smith about his creation Bone, which appeared in both newspaper-strip and comic-book form. Again, the dragon connection is incidental. A red dragon lives underground and pops up from time to time, but there are barely a couple of pictures of it here. Although I’ve never read Bone, I have some idea of the Bone family and its comedy elements, but I’m not sure it would be on my reading list.
Lastly, writer Ed Lute looks at KnightWing Restorations Ltd, although Colleen Wing and Misty Knight are better known as the Daughters of the Dragon, a name taken from one of their stories. I hadn’t known that Misty’s first name was actually Mercedes. I thought Misty was a legitimate forename. One thing Marvel did have was a lower-level infrastructure of crime-fighters, and these two ladies were at the top of it.
After reading the issue, I had a think about who had been left out. There was the alien dragon connected to the power rings acquired by the Mandarin. Fin Fang Foom was another member of the same species. Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders Of Pern was also adapted into comic books.
If anything, you have to wonder why there weren’t more dragons in comics. Clearly, there still aren’t enough.
GF Willmetts
July 2026
(pub: TwoMorrows Publishing. 82-page illustrated magazine. Price: $10.95 (US). ISSN: 1932-6904. Available directly from the publisher for $10.95 (US))
check out websites: www.TwoMorrows.com and https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_54&products_id=1885
