Have you read the first two chapters of WHERE WOLF yet? You should! They’re free on FANGORIA.com and the third chapter plops onto the internet tomorrow morning.
Last week, a giant spread on WHERE WOLF was published in the Houston Chronicle and the writer, Jef Rouner, called the book “the greatest comic to come out of Houston since STRANGERS IN PARADISE.” I still haven’t gotten over how fucking cool that is - both the coverage and the compliment. WHERE WOLF is about a lot of things, including my love of print journalism. For the comic book to have a spread in the print edition of one of the biggest newspapers in the country means a ton to me. The fact that it was compared to one of the best comic books of the last few decades? Sour cream on my baked potato, baby.
In advance of the new chapter of WHERE WOLF hitting your eyeballs tomorrow, here are some behind-the-scenes tidbits about the second chapter:
Wolf Pen Creek is a real place in College Station. I used to like going there and reading on a park bench when the weather was nice. I read the entirity of Joe Hill’s 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS at that park. I also once bought a $75 R/C boat and took it out to the lake but forgot to charge it so it died when it was in the middle of the lake and, rather than swim out to get it, I left it there for the ducks to claim as their own. Memories.
When I was working at The Battalion, Texas A&M’s student newspaper, I walked into the newsroom one day to find a giant binder full of reproductions of the paper from the first decade of its publication. As I flipped through the pages and scanned headlines, one jumped out at me: There was a story in the student newspaper about how college kids were being eaten by wolves! Maybe it was an April Fool’s prank, but that headline stuck with me for years. Imagine walking home from the student cafeteria only to be jumped by a hungry wolf. The 1800s sucked!
I discovered Figure One after REPLY ALL, one of my favorite podcasts, did a story on the app. Yes, it’s a real app. And yes, it’s really gross. My sisters and I would play a game where we’d take turns scrolling through the app - looking at close-up pictures of car accident victims and people with flesh-eating viruses until we began to dry heave. The last one standing would win honor and the right to choose what we listened to on car trips. Despite watching a steady stream of horror films, I discovered that real-life pictures of trauma were a step too far for me. I never made it farther than a few swipes before I had to admit defeat.
One thing that was important to me when writing WHERE WOLF was that Gwen Reed should be allowed to be angry. There is a stigma - in real-life and in entertainment - about women who are angry. They’re labeled as “bitches” while men who scream and shout are seen as “hard-asses,” like their anger is an admirable trait. There was a brief period of time about five years ago when I was experiencing some extreme mood swings and found myself getting uncontrollably angry at the drop of a hat. I was a huge asshole - but I was never called out on it or disciplined. Anger is something that both genders have to deal with but, proportionately, women don’t seem to get away with it as much as men do. I wanted to write a female character who is justifiably angry throughout the story but who is never portrayed as a bitch or shrew. When the story is over, you’ll have to be the ones to tell me if I succeeded.
Sophia Ploog was my favorite character to write for WHERE WOLF. She shares my obsession with conspiracy theories and cryptozoology, she doesn’t take shit from anybody, but she has a big heart and is willing to give anybody the benefit of the doubt. She was also originally only supposed to appear in this one scene. She was an exposition dump - designed to give Larry the information he would need in order to make his way to the next scene. I loved writing her so much, though, that I went back to my plot outline and found a way for Sophia to join Larry on his adventure. At this point, I couldn’t imagine WHERE WOLF without Sophia as a part of the story. Sophia is, of course, named after Mike Ploog, the co-creator of WEREWOLF BY NIGHT and a superstar artist at Marvel Comics in the ‘70s. In addition to illustrating the adventures of Jack Russell, Mike Ploog drew for GHOST RIDER and MAN-THING. Ploog also contributed concept art for movies like THE THING, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, WIZARDS and even SHREK. If you're not familiar with the work of Mike Ploog, go seek out THE ART OF PLOOG and its sequel, two gorgeous art books FPG International put out.
God, I love this panel so much:
Hit up FANGORIA.com tomorrow to read the next chapter of WHERE WOLF. You’ll get a real feel for what the story is all about as Larry and his new chum Sophia dig deeper into the mystery surrounding the Wolf Pen Creek murders. Comedy, intrigue, frank discussion of sexual kinks!