Spy caper His Name is…Savage returns from Grant and Portaveritas today

What is IP can never die! There’s a newish publisher with a reboot of a very old charater out today: His Name is…Savage, a a new spy comic written by Steven Grant with art by Jesús Antonio Hernández Portaveritas.

It’s published by new player Paper Movie (more on that below), but Savage is a concept that goes all the way back to 1968 – when it was one of the very first modern era graphic novels, although no one called it that then. Savage was the creation of well-known superhero artist Gil Kane, (co-creator of Green Lantern and the Atom), and it was a hard-boiled violent spy yarn born of a time when James Bond ruled supreme.

Well, Bond is still around, even if he’s teaming with Billie Eilish these days. And now so is Savage. Grant (creator of Whisper and 2 Guns, the 2013 film starring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg) is bringing it back as part of Paper Movies, a new publishing company owned by him and producer Shane Riches (The Fog), and Jeff Davison.

In this new version, Savage is a nationless spy devoted to eliminating other covert ops groups. The main cover is by Timothy Truman, but here’s a look at Eric Shanower’s variant below.

Paper Movies will be putting out more books and comics, including something called Her Name is…Savage. Looks like another job for Eilish perhaps?

Btw, the history of the original Savage graphic novel is very interesting, as recounted by Geoff Boucher in the Deadline article linked to above.

His Name is…Savage was created and illustrated by the late, great Gil Kane, one of the elite comic book artists of his generation and the Silver Age co-creator of Green Lantern and the Atom for DC Comics. The magazine-sized, single-story epic featured a no-nonsense character inspired by John Boorman’s 1967 neo-noir classic Point Blank (as the unauthorized use of Point Blank star Lee Marvin’s image on the cover makes fairly clear) while the story draws on Ian Fleming’s considerable bookshelf.

Tragically, ninety percent of the 200,000 copies printed of His Name is…Savage never reached magazine stands. Distributors fretted about provoking established comics publishers and merchants were leery of the lurid curiosity and wanted no part of it. No surprise, the crestfallen Kane abandoned plans for a second issue.

The book was later reprinted by Fantagraphics, of all places.

The new His Name is…Savage is available now.