I recently came across a comic book called THE WILD. This 1988 book - from creators Darin Calhoun, Mike Witherby and Josh Diffey - followed a post-apocalyptic world in which mankind has gone extinct. In humanity’s place have risen anthropomorphic animals - bulging with muscles and wielding rad-looking weapons. There are evil cyborg ducks, fungi-dwelling land sharks, and a bunny with a gun. Honestly, what more could you want from a comic book series?
Unfortunately, it appears as if only one single issue of THE WILD was printed before the series met its untimely end. A 2012 page on Blogspot promised that the comic book would return as a webcomic with the original creative team at the helm. There were no further blog entries.
I have not been able to get THE WILD out of my mind. The comic is fun and the artwork is quite good (seriously, look at these panels) but it’s not the quality alone that has kept the comic book haunting my thoughts.
I just came back from a work trip to Austin. One evening, after I finished my work-related tasks for the day, I took a little drive around town and visited a few different bookstores and comic book shops. I didn’t necessarily expect to find copies of WHERE WOLF in these stores, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me hoping to be pleasantly surprised.
WHERE WOLF was released by a smaller publisher - great folks! - and is a print-on-demand book. It’s not listed on the Diamond Catalog, an industry-standard ordering service for comic book publishers. More importantly, to order it stores need to actually know about it. Despite getting some nice local press, WHERE WOLF’s national press was, let’s say, lacking.
So, as I said, I wasn’t exactly hoping to find heaps of copies of WHERE WOLF sitting alongside MAUS and WATCHMEN at BookPeople, but I was still a little bummed not to find a single copy at any of the stores I visited. WHERE WOLF is out there in the world - I’ve personally sold over 500 copies while on my book tour - and the reviews folks have been leaving on GoodReads and Amazon are very nice but it’s still very much what generous people would call “flying under the radar.”
I’ve come to the realization that if people are going to read WHERE WOLF, it’s probably because I’m going to directly put a copy in their hands. But you know what? That’s OK.
One of my literary heroes is John R. Erickson, the 79-year-old author who - in 1983 - began self-publishing the HANK THE COWDOG series of children’s books. Erickson borrowed $2,000, printed some copies of his books and began selling them out of his pickup truck at any location where cowboys might be gathered. Today, there are 79 books in the HANK THE COWDOG series and Matthew McConaughey starred in a podcast adaptation of the book series directed by Jeff Nichols. Not bad, Mr. Erickson. Not bad at all.
I don’t expect to achieve an ounce of the success of the HANK THE COWDOG series with my writing, but I’m also content to be patient. The most important thing I can do as a writer is actually write. It’s important to get my book into people’s hands, but it’s even more important to continue improving my skills as a storyteller by, you know, telling some stories.
Sure, WHERE WOLF may not be stocked at your neighborhood Barnes and Noble, but there are copies available to buy at some cool indie bookstores, such as Brazos Bookstore in Houston and Whose Books in Dallas. I also plan to continue to do events and screenings throughout the next year - as my schedule allows. I love doing the “movie screening and book signing” events that I’ve been doing all summer at the Alamo Drafthouse. They combine two of my favorite things: sharing movies I love with an audience and making some money with something I created.
And, if all else fails, I really do think I’m perfectly OK with being a curiosity like THE WILD. My childhood was shaped by weird lil’ books I found in thrift stores and libraries and handed down to me by friends. As a webcomic, WHERE WOLF was released and then promptly disappeared into the labyrinthian maze that is the Internet. It might as well not exist. As a physical book, though, WHERE WOLF definitely exists. You would have to physically destroy it to remove it from the world - and I just don’t see folks getting riled up enough by what I wrote to set fire to the book. If WHERE WOLF is discovered in a used book store years from now or under a stack of James Patterson novels in an estate sale, that would be just fine with me.
I want WHERE WOLF to be read. The fact that I read a copy of THE WILD thirty-five years after it was published because I found the issue in a stack of donated comic books at a non-profit free library proves that life, uh, finds a way.
PS - Go follow Josh Diffey on Twitter. It appears he’s still drawing cool AF anthropomorphic animal warriors.