Geekscape Comics Reviews: ‘A Town Called Dragon’ Issue #1
What do you know about your hometown? I was born and raised in Edison, New Jersey. Indeed, it was named after Thomas Edison, who stole all his work from Tesla right here in beautiful Menlo Park. And by beautiful, I mean you can walk around at night and you won’t get shot. It has been ranked several times as the #2 or #35 best place to live, I can’t keep track. Or care. Obama came by to eat a sandwich here once. Kevin Smith bought one of his dogs at the mall. Susan Sarandon went to my grade school. It’s really boring. It doesn’t have a dragon or anything.
Yeah, a dragon. Judd Winick, the award-winning comic book writer, has tackled on an epic of sorts in his new series, A Town Called Dragon. And it’s pretty damn good.
Thousands and thousands of years are sandwiched between two major events: the killing of the last known dragon on Earth, and the birth, the hatching of a new egg. After killing the dragon, the legendary vikings — led by Leif Erikson, because of course — travel across the sea to a far away land to hide the egg. They meet a grisly fate, but ensured the egg will not see the light of day. And from there, we are in modern-day Colorado.
Dragon, Colorado is a tourist town. They know about their dragon history and they enjoy banking on it because it’s fun. If you’ve ever been to Salem, Massachusetts, or Roswell, New Mexico, it’s kind of like that except with dragons. Yet, beyond the dragon gimmick it’s a pretty unremarkable town, and only gets traffic from people coming in and out of the nearby ski resort. The town is populated by characters you would come to expect: the local weirdo who loves to tell tales, the Mayor who wants to milk the town’s gimmick for all its worth, and regular people trying to live a normal life. And for the most part, they do.
At the center of A Town Called Dragon is Cooper, a former high school football star who never lived up to his potential. The townspeople remember his time on a battlefield of sorts, and they hold it up high like a folk hero, much to his disdain. He’s clearly not satisfied with how his life turned out, and he refuses to bend to some of their whims. He runs a diner, untouched by anything dragon-related, and struggles to keep it that way. His friend Mickey alerts him to foreign agents seeking the egg, but no one believes him. And then, in the treacherous mountains where no one believes Mickey had survived climbing in such a short time, where he claims to have seen Germans trying to uncover the dragon egg, hell breaks loose.
There is about sixty pages in this comic and it goes by like a breeze. It’s the first issue, so it’s wrong to say that nothing happens, because they clearly and so cleanly do, but it’s obvious that you won’t see the terror you’d want to see on the first round. But again, that’s okay.
Even though you won’t see this tiny little town wrecked to shit by a dragon, you do see some action and it is drawn quite gloriously. The opening viking battle against the dragon is thrilling, and if you let yourself you can see this fight happening like a movie. Brown armor and sandy dust mixed with vivid red blood, it contrasts itself nicely with the more serene midwestern American town later in the comic. The art is remarkably unified. You could whiz back and fourth between the epic ancient scenery with the quaint little town and it looks, appropriately and expectedly, like the same story. While the art isn’t realistic and detailed like you would see in a Marvel or DC book, there is a stylistic edge here. It must come from the compromise between the fantastical element and the modern setting, but it works here even if it largely sticks to a single color palette.
The story has only just begun, and although the book is a pretty lengthy sixty pages, it goes by quick and you’re left waiting for the next issue like I am. It’s a book very much worth checking out, and is probably one of the most unique modern fantasies on shelves right now. It’s just a bummer that you might finish the issue before you leave the parking lot.
Geekscape gives A Town Called Dragon #1 a 3/5 stars. It is available now.
