Title A Town Called Dragon Series --- Author Judd Winick Illustrator Geoff Shaw Publisher Legendary Comics - 2015 First Printing Legendary Comics - 2015 Category Children Warnings None Main Characters Cooper, Mickey, Sam, Eric, Garvey, Kelly, Malcolm Main Elements Dragons

An action-packed modern day myth, this 5-issue series is an original story written by Judd Winick (Batman, Green Lantern), featuring the art of exciting new talent Geoff Shaw. Legendary Comics transports you to a A Town Called Dragon. On the surface it seems like your average all-American tourist trap, but this snow-covered town hides a burning secret. After centuries of lying buried within the depths of an icy mountain, the world's last dragon egg finally hatches -- endangering modern life as we know it. Now an unlikely group of dangerously unqualified, ordinary citizens must band together, battling the elements -- and each other -- to slay this menacing creature.

I didn't really expect to like this graphic novel, looked like there was a lot of violence and gore but I was reading everything dragon related in my library and this was there. But I actually enjoyed it for the most part. See, way back when the Vikings were fighting the last dragon, only to find they couldn't destroy the last egg. So they sailed across the ocean, then walked as far as they could across the continent and there hid the egg with hopes that it would never hatch. Jump forward about a thousand years and there is now a town called Dragon (after the legend of the Vikings and their dragon), a tourist trap with plastic dragons that fart smoke. That is of course till the egg hatches and the townsfolks with no dragon-slaying skills have to come together to figure out how to stop this near invincible and voracious beast.

Other than some distracting stray lines around the characters faces and mouths, the artwork was excellent though I'm never a fan of trying to follow fast action scenes in graphic format. The dragon is a mindless beast that has a ridiculously quick growth spurt (but then hey, it's a mythological creature, guess you can make it grow as fast as you like), and of course a bit unbelievable group of characters (including a student of ancient Norse who just happened to move to town because it was quiet so he could finish his thesis) but I think I kind of liked the spin that everyone had a destiny and one's life when down a certain path so you could be the right person at the right place at the right time, even if you're just telling yourself that to convince yourself you have a chance to get out of things alive, and no, not everyone does.

And sure, in the modern day you could probably easily take the dragon out with a tank or something, the town is conveniently closed off from the outside not just by a snowstorm but due to the phone lines being down. So the people have to make do with what they've got. Fortunately the Vikings were worried this might happen some day and left they dragonslaying equipment behind.

I must admit, being someone who has been reading almost nothing but dragon-themed books this year, living in a town called Dragon, with all the dragon-themed stuff all over the place, sounds kind of cool (but probably ill-advised...)