In SAVAGE #2, available from Valiant Entertainment on March 17th, 2021, Kevin “Savage” Sauvage suffers the insane ramblings of a wacky mad scientist bent on linking our world with The Faraway to harness its energy and secrets for his own, selfish gains. Savage is not willing to play along or donate tissue samples to help the mad scientist out and decides to quit the secret lab, London, and possibly the world.
The Details
- Written By: Max Bemis
- Art By: Nathan Stockman
- Colors By: Triona Farrell
- Letters By: Hassan Otsmane-Elahou
- Cover Art By: Marcus To, Rico Renzi
- Cover Price: $X3.99
- Release Date: March 17, 2021
Was It Good?
It was fine. Bemis leans hard into the corny jokes, witty banter, and eye-rolling wordplay here, so it’s amusing in some spots and cringeworthy in others. On average, it was mildly amusing.
The art felt cartoonish in the first issue, but with the second issue’s hard lean into wise-cracking humor, the cartoonish art style is an appropriate fit. It feels like an issue-long skit from MAD magazine, and if that’s what the creators were going for, they succeeded.
Take a gander at our SAVAGE #2 preview to see what we mean.
What’s It About?
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
Following his capture at the end of issue #1 (read our SAVAGE #1 review to see how that happened), Savage is given the mother of all evil villain monologues from Professor Hanley Nealon. The Professor, as Savage puts it, comes off like a “ratchet Bond villain,” and that’s a pretty accurate assessment.
The Professor gives Savage a grand tour of his lab to show him all the failed projects his family had developed over the decades for an assortment of terroristic purposes. With each project, Bemis describes the weapons’ designs as a subversive jab at everything from the British Royal Family to the military.
Mid-way through the tour the Professor introduces his super-intelligent and restrictively sheltered female ward, Mae. Savage is almost immediately smitten with Mae, but she is unaware of Savage’s notoriety and is not impressed.
The Professor reveals his next master plan, a portal bridging Earth with The Faraway. The goal is to permanently link the worlds under his sole control and exploit whatever scientific discoveries and natural resources he can find. And he wants tissue samples from Savage to study the long-term effects of human exposure to The Faraway.
Savage refuses to cooperate and is thrown into a pit with a dino. It’s clear the Professor hasn’t been paying attention as Savage has already proven he can kill dinos much lager than the one in the pit, and he’s left completely unattended.
Mae comes by and secretly tells Savage she’s staying with the Professor to sabotage his grand plan, and you can tell from the banter between Mae and Savage she’s warming up to him. When Mae throws Savage a bone (literally), he easily escapes the pit and the two-part ways.
Without spoiling the ending, Savage runs a very long gauntlet, Henry smells an opportunity for success, and Kevin plans to take the “solo album” approach.
Final Thoughts
SAVAGE #2, available from Valiant Entertainment on March 17th, 2021, keeps the action high but turns up the quippy banter to 11. This series has quickly turned into all tongue-in-cheek, all the time, so that might be right up your alley.
Score: 7/10
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