BUSTED OUT: SAVAGE DRAGON LOOKS ELITE. LOOKS ARE WHERE ELITE ENDS

Savage Dragon is exactly the character that makes a great action figure, at least in theory. He’s huge, green, built like a tank and has a giant fin running down the middle of his head. Erik Larsen created one of the most recognizable characters to come out of Image Comics, and Dragon has managed to stick around while plenty of other characters from that era faded away.

Larsen was one of the seven creators who launched Image Comics in the early ’90s, and Savage Dragon was part of that original wave. More than three decades later, the series is still going, which makes Dragon a pretty damn appropriate choice for McFarlane’s Image Comics Founders Series.

McFarlane made Dragon part of its Elite Edition Image Comics Founders Series, and everything about the box is designed to make this thing look expensive. It’s huge, it has the gold Elite Edition branding, there’s Savage Dragon artwork all over it and the whole presentation screams collector piece before you ever open it.

The problem starts when you pick the thing up. He looks massive, especially through the chest, shoulders and arms, but I would have liked him to have a lot more heft. He’s top-heavy while somehow still feeling pretty hollow, which is a weird combination when you’re holding a figure that’s supposed to be one of McFarlane’s premium releases.

That hollow feeling irks me a bit more once you start looking at the price. GameStop had him about ten bucks higher than everywhere else, but even around the $50 mark I wasn’t interested. There just wasn’t enough here for me to look at this figure and think that price made sense.

I found mine on clearance at Target for $24, and that’s the only reason he came home with me. ShadowHawk was sitting there on clearance too, which tells me I probably wasn’t the only person who looked at these figures at full price and decided to keep walking.

Opening the box didn’t do anything to change my first impression that this thing looked pretty bare. There’s a lot of cardboard, a lot of empty real estate and a lot of presentation being used to sell the idea that you’re getting something special.

For this kind of price I expect a hell of a lot more. Look at the Elite Edition Absolute Batman coming out in October '26. That figure is $50 and comes with a shit ton more accessories. When something at essentially the same price point gives you that much more, Dragon’s oversized box starts looking less like elite presentation and more like an attempt to create value that really isn’t there.

Once I get past the price, there’s plenty about the actual figure that McFarlane got right. The sculpting is top notch. Dragon has the ridiculous upper-body proportions he should have, and the muscles are sharply defined without looking like somebody just carved random lines into him.

The paint is just as good. There’s enough variation in the green to keep all that exposed skin from looking like one giant chunk of plastic, and the white tank top and dark pants break everything up nicely. Visually, I don’t have much to complain about here.

The biggest surprise in the whole package isn’t even Dragon. It’s the wooden comic sign styled after the Savage Dragon cover art. That thing is probably the coolest part of the entire set, and it immediately gives me something useful to put behind the figure on the shelf.

I love extras like this because it actually adds something to the display. It isn’t another paper card that gets looked at once and shoved back into the box. The sign looks great behind Dragon and it’s probably the one part of this package that actually feels like something you’d expect in an elite edition.

The articulation has one standout that deserves some credit: those elbow joints are excellent. They’re smooth, they bend without fighting me and they actually look good while doing it. On a character with arms this big, ugly joints would have been impossible to hide.

Swapping parts is just as easy. The hands and alternate head come on and off with minimum effort, and I never felt like I was about to break a peg or had to fight with the figure just to change the pose. That may sound like a small thing, but anybody who collects figures knows how quickly a stubborn hand or head can turn into a pain in the ass.

The accessories themselves are fine. You get the extra head, additional hands, sunglasses, weapons, the display base and the comic sign. There’s enough here to give Dragon a few different looks, but outside of that wooden sign, nothing about the accessory loadout makes the original asking price feel any better.

That’s where this one lands for me. At $24, I’m happy with him. The sculpt and paint look great, the elbow joints are excellent, swapping pieces is painless and that comic sign is absolutely staying on the shelf behind him. At $50, I’m thinking twice. At $60, I’m walking right past him. McFarlane made a good Savage Dragon figure and then put him in a giant collector’s box carrying a price the figure itself never quite earns.