[Retrospective]Savage Dragonbert: Full Frontal Nerdity

Bobby Derie

Okay, so this requires a little explanation. You can get it straight from the creator, because the internet's memory is vast and strange.

Okay, so once upon a time the Savage Dragon had a villain called Brainiape.


Sort of a Gorilla Grodd knock-off.

Then Savage Dragon had a crossover with Hellboy.


This was kind of fun.

At which point it was discovered that Brainiape's brain belonged to...Adolf Hitler.




In Mike Mignola's defense, Hellboy already had Nazi gorilla cyborgs and preserved-head technology at this point.

Hitler's Brain did not survive the crossover.


Look out, it's got a gun!

At this point, enter Karl Hornell, who likes Dilbert.



This was a long time before Dilbert got stale, or I started living Dilbert's hell in my own fabric-covered box, or Scott Adams started posting unpopular opinions (which leads to the cringeworthy and yet hilarious MRA Dilbert).

With these basic premises combined, we had...the Savage Dragonbert!



No, really. It's a slice-of-life zany comedy where Dragonbert lives with Hitler's brain (whose official name is "Hitler's Brainbert"). Which ran as a back-up strip in Savage Dragon from #57 to #99. Then Image collected all the strips in an 80-page special one-shot in 2002.

It's kind of a supremely weird 90s artifact. It doesn't just lampoon the Savage Dragon; it takes pot-shots of various Marvel and DC heroes and villains too, merges various Dilbert and Savage Dragon characters, develops little storylines and characters...the art improves tremendously as the series goes on. The humor gets a little crude, but that was the style at the time.



I don't think I have anything deep to say about this one. It starts off with a wacky premise and...well, I can't say it really goes anywhere any more than Dilbert does. It's all good fun.