Happy America Birthday! As I write this, my dogs are all freaked out because it sounds like a warzone in the neighborhood. There are many irked folks on Next Door but I remember loving fireworks when I was a kid so maybe this is for kids. Although it's almost midnight. I suspect it's just drunk adults. Hope they don't blow any appendages off!
Since the show is prerecorded, & since I've already turned it in, I can tell you that I talked to my "youngest friends" Alyssa & Jason today & I asked them when their first exposure to dragons happened. They seemed to remember (slight spoiler alert) but of course didn't give me the chance to tell them mine because I was interviewing them & not vis vossa. Can I tell you here, though? Since you're interviewing me right now?
The truth is, I can't remember. I suspect I read a King Arthur type story that had a dragon, or perhaps there was a Japanese monster based on a dragon, or there was a dragon in a comic book - maybe when Superman went back in time in one of those corny 60s DC comics. I loved them, of course. What's not to look about dragons?
My favorite dragon however is not the trio from Game Of Thrones or Smaug from The Hobbit or any of the cool ones you might get to battle in Dungeons & Dragons. My favorite dragon came way late in my life. It's Jack Of Fables.*
If you don't know what Fables is, you can read the Wikipedia entry about it. It's basically a comic book by Bill Willingham & many artists which the article summarizes thus: "The series features various characters from fairy tales & folklore – referring to themselves as 'Fables' – who formed a clandestine community centuries ago within New York City known as Fabletown, after their Homelands have been conquered by a mysterious & deadly enemy known as 'The Adversary.' It is set in the modern day & follows several of Fabletown's legal representatives, such as sheriff Bigby Wolf, deputy mayor Snow White, her sister Rose Red, Prince Charming, & Boy Blue, as they deal with troublesome Fables & try to solve conflicts in both Fabletown and 'the Farm,' a hidden town in upstate New York for Fables unable to blend in with human society. The series also deals with such other matters as the main characters' personal lives, their attempts to hide the Fables' true nature from regular humans (or 'Mundies'), &, later, the return of the Adversary."
In one of the spin-offs of the series, called Jack Of Fables, which features Jack Horner, there is an explanation of a dragon that I found fascinating. Jack accumulates so much gold & gems & treasure that he becomes fatter & fatter, gorging on wealth. He basically turns into a dragon. It's the origin of both dragons & their caverns full of riches. I thought Willingham came up with this independently, but Wikipedia tells me it's based on the Norse mythological character Fafnir. Who was an inspiration for Smaug. Who is the favorite dragon of many.
Also I always liked Lockheed in the X-Men comics. I wanted a Lockheed so badly.
It's safe to say that dragons still charm me. I hope the show is able to capture some of that.
* Here's something embarrassing. When I save comics on my computer, I usually just put them in a folder with the title in small letters without spaces. So there's a folder in my comics folder called "jackoffables." I might as well have just named it "porn."
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