Now that we’re a couple weeks into the Year of the Dragon, Magma Comix has officially announced The Scale Trade, the new modern fantasy series by Steve Orlando and Megan Huang. Magma mentioned it last month when the publisher started unveiling their 2024 slate.
In any event, the new series sounds great — set in a modern world where dragons still exist but are high on the endangered species list, one man takes a stand against the poachers and corrupt governments that want their scales.
“The Scale Trade was absolutely influenced by the depravity of the illegal exotic meat trade, poaching, and specifically the street-level vigilance against the abuse of horses and sale of horse meat in a variety of parts of the country,” said Orlando. “We wanted to talk about these things, but also thrill and excite on an elevated scale (no pun intended). So we built a world where dragons were part of the animal kingdom, where THEY, these creatures that awe us, were also some of the most valuable commodities in the world. It’s a modern fantasy—not high fantasy or low sword and sorcery. At the end of the day it’s about the way we as a species interact with nature—concepts bigger and older than us—and how we tend to commodify life on this planet. At the core, The Scale Trade is about heroic animal rescue. A man and his dog… if his dog was a majestic flying lizard.”
Continue reading “It’s open season on dragons in Orlando + Huang’s ‘The Scale Trade’”
