Recommendations
By Alex Ness
April 22, 2026I am writing not for any specific reason. I didn't get paid, didn't have a greater theme. I am herein just answering a question I am rarely asked. Why do I like and appreciate Erik Larsen so much that I've covered his work, asked his opinions in interviews, and simply paid attention to him? If I have a question about a work by an artist, he'll know the answer. If I have a question about who was known for ____? He'll know the answer. Over the 24 years of knowing him, he has always been able to send me in the right direction, and that has improved my work. I am very grateful for such a thing.
In 2002 he was featured in review found on RobinGoodfellow.Net, a comic retailer site, but with an outsize reach. He had clearly read it, because something I said resulted in a mailing. And that response to an unrequested comment, meant, of all the people I ended up interacting with, he was clearly "one of us". Oh others have done kind things. Steve Niles paid for some of the postage when my signers pack came up short. Tim Truman sent me a gajillion things in trade for what wasn't even close. Paul Gulacy sent me a gorgeous Batman page. I like all those people, seriously do, but Erik was different.
I like Erik's work, in many ways not like others. My enjoyment of books comes with a past of reading many hundreds or thousands of comics, and I have my particular taste and interests. Some writers have only read comics, some artists are only moved by comic art. Some great storytellers aren't interested in what others do, how others tell a story. Erik was a person who was driven to create comics, but his mind was fed by a father who was an Academician. He had a life that experienced the cultural mix that his comic books show. He eloquently spoke to both high minded principals and did not speak to the false power fantasies that most males entertain.
His writing is something that deserves greater praise. It tells stories that nearly never have holes in plot, nor dialogue simply to fill in the lack of noise. His interest is in telling the correct story, even if other writers would do differently, and other readers would go out of their way to stroke their own way of saying something. As the first Savage Dragon was made a cop for the special crime unit used to fight super powered or costumed, or both, super villains, you might suspect that Erik is out to tell stories without a mature edge, since he seeks by such to serve the public good. Well you'd be wrong. His characters age, they use rather spicy words, they think, they respond. Erik is excellent in aiming his dialogue for the purpose of making it sound correct. They are real, and rather than serving the public good, he serves entertainment's true demands.
Larsen's art is powerful, but it isn't delicate or "pretty". Some perceive this as weakness, wrongly. It is his style, however you measure it, and is used for the kind of stories he tells. I consider his penciling work to be a mix of Jack Kirby and Neal Adams, and maybe John Byrne. But even speaking to influences, it is by far his own. You may or may not like that, but I think it is something in a world where AI and swipes and people seek to ape someone else's art, that it is damn difficult to do that with Erik Larsen works.
I believe that the greatest powers in comic book creating, that Larsen possesses, is his storytelling. His writing informs his art, and his art tells the heart of the plot and events. But the complete mastery over the page before one, where it flows, there aren't wasted pages but no rush to finish, comes from the mental cinematography in Larsen's mind. The best storytellers know that the audience is reading the story to have a new experience. Larsen challenges himself to tell works in mature ways, but also, in today's cancel culture, he takes a stand where he has beliefs, and does not back down from challenges by those who do not politically agree, nor readers who demand that their heroes reflect their own values.
Erik is someone who sought to know how my reunion with my birth family went. He was a kind listener when I struggled with doctors and cancer. He expressed condolences when my many family members and friends left this world. People rarely get such kindness in people who work 12 hours a day and produce enough work that on their own they will arrive at 300 issues of his major character Savage Dragon.
In time he and I have developed a kind of friendship. And we are very different humans, but our interests, lives, and love of comics are shared in many ways.
Thank you Erik.
Below are some images of his work. All are copyright Erik Larsen
