Publication History
The regular series began in June 1988, intended as the flagship title for a line of American-format, monthly comics from Marvel UK. It was written by Simon Furman and drawn by Geoff Senior, Furman's first choice for artist and a collaborator on Marvel UK's Transformers. Original marketing for the comic in other Marvel UK comics called the team and comic Dragon's Teeth, but an independent comic already had the title. Shots of the cover to the first issue reflected this.
The series was promoted with the tagline "Earth, 8162. Not a nice place to live..."
The UK market was never big enough to support the series, which was cancelled due to low sales at #10. It was exported to America in limited numbers. Furman has said one reason for the failure was the size of the comic: the US monthly format was smaller than the standard A4 size of UK comics, meaning newsgents weren't sure where to place it and it was "lost" when placed with the A4 comics. The comic was also "quite explicitly brutal... boys love that kind of stuff", but this meant that it was quite likely "the parents of Transformers and Thundercats readers drew the line at Dragon’s Claws.”
Furman has said that the behind-the-scenes politics and sports-as-panacea plot of Rollerball, the costumed gangs of The Warriors, and the future dystopias of 2000 AD all had a strong influence on Claws, and "even the NURSE/Matron thing is an affectionate nod to Hattie Jacques and the Carry On movies I grew up with." Live Aid had a mark too, leaving "so the concept of starvation on a global scale... indelibly printed on my brain."
Read more about this topic: Dragon's Claws
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