LEGO Ninjago Magazine Issue 144: The Dragon Zane Bag That Closes the Team Out
Four ninja have already made the jump. Jay went first, Lloyd followed with the form that started the whole arc, and Nya turned a pair of one-offs into something that looked like a run. So the fair question about LEGO Ninjago magazine issue 144 isn't whether it's good — it's what it does that the four issues before it didn't. The answer is simple enough to state and harder to shrug off if you collect by theme: this is the one that finishes the set.
Cover art for LEGO NINJAGO Magazine Issue 144. Image via Mags Direct / Immediate Media, under licence from the LEGO Group.
Dragon Zane, Element by Element
The covermount is catalogued as L0002205 Dragon Zane, a taped paper bag rather than the older foil-pack format, building a single Draconus Form Zane with no filler parts and no half-build padding it out.
Zane is the interesting one to render in this form, and the design team clearly knew it. Where Lloyd's Draconus gi leans on green scale printing and Nya's on deep blue, Zane's runs white with medium azure limb elements and icy-blue accents — a palette that reads as the Ice Ninja first and a dragon second. The crystalline treatment across the torso and legs does most of the work, breaking up what would otherwise be a large flat white area at minifigure scale. Add the dragon mask headpiece and wing element and the silhouette changes enough that the figure doesn't need a nameplate to be identified from across a shelf.
That's the practical test for any covermount minifigure, and it's where a lot of them quietly fail. Plenty of magazine gifts are simplified versions of a retail figure with printing dropped to keep costs down. This one isn't — the print density holds up next to the boxed Dragons Rising Season 4 versions of the character, which is exactly why the Draconus covermounts have held collector attention across the whole run.
A Numbering Quirk Worth Knowing About
Here's the thing to check before you order, and it's the sort of detail that costs people a return. UK retailer listings attach the Dragon Zane covermount to issue 144. Some collector catalogues file the same L0002205 paper bag against issue 143 instead — a mismatch that comes from the UK edition and the continental European editions running their own numbering and release orders, which they've done for years across this line.
Neither source is being careless; they're describing different distributions. But it means the issue number on its own is not a reliable way to buy this figure. Buy from the cover image, not the number: the Dragon Zane bag is visible on the front, and one photo settles it. If a listing shows only the loose minifigure and quotes an issue number, ask for a picture of the cover before you commit.
What Else Is Between the Covers
Under the bag, the issue runs the format Immediate Media has kept remarkably steady: a self-contained NINJAGO comic strip pitched at the current season, a double-sided pull-out poster, a sticker sheet, and a block of puzzles, code-breakers, character profiles and competitions.
The comic remains the most undervalued thing in the package. These strips aren't collected into graphic novels, aren't reprinted, and aren't posted anywhere official — an intact copy is the only realistic route to reading one in a few years. It's a reasonable argument against the standard habit of tearing the covermount off the front and recycling everything behind it.
Why This One Earns Shelf Space
A single Draconus figure is a curiosity. Four in a row is a display with an obvious hole in it. Zane is the piece that turns the run into a complete team, and completed runs behave differently on the second-hand market than individual figures do — the last one people need is the one that stops being easy to find first.
There's a second reason, less about scarcity and more about display. The Draconus Form palette across the five ninja was clearly designed as a set: green, blue, red, and Zane's white-and-azure sitting at the cold end of the range. Lined up, they read as one design language. Missing one, they read as four figures that happen to share a hood mould.
Worth remembering too that this is a UK newsstand exclusive. Unsold copies get pulped rather than warehoused, so the entire long-term supply of any issue is whatever collectors and specialist stockists deliberately set aside during the on-sale window. Availability on this line doesn't taper — it stops.
Where to Pick Up the Trail
Start with our LEGO Ninjago collection to see what's currently on the shelf, then work back through the wider LEGO magazines archive for the other Draconus issues if you're filling gaps. If importing UK magazines is new territory, our LEGO Ninjago Magazine guide covers how the line works and what actually turns up in the post.
And if LEGO Ninjago magazine issue 144 is the gap on your Draconus shelf, this is the phase of the hunt where it's still a straightforward purchase rather than a search.