Where's Where Wolf

A status update on my comic book writing "career"

I came really close to shelving my completed sophomore graphic novel, THE CURSE OF THE WHERE WOLF. Last fall, I was in a creative free spin. I was depressed, motivationless, and completely unsure of the future of my writing career. I had just finished my second graphic novel and had zero desire to look at it, let alone try to release it into the world. I honestly believed nobody except for my accountant would care if I just filed the comic book into a folder in my Dropbox account and moved on with the rest of my life.

Here’s the thing most creative people will discover at one point or another: It’s a hell of a lot easier to give up on your dreams than to keep chasing them. I had started working on the sequel to WHERE WOLF before the first book was even published. While the sales of the first book were solid, it did not light the comic book world on fire as I had imagined in my daydreams. I wasn’t getting offers from publishers to write for them. My quarterly royalty checks were usually enough to pay for a week's groceries, but not much else. My only brush with Hollywood was when I received an email from the production studio of a comedian I admired, inquiring about the rights to WHERE WOLF, but I was ghosted within the month. All the while, I kept working on THE CURSE OF THE WHERE WOLF, mostly because I was riding the momentum of a project in the middle of production. With every new chapter I finished, it was harder for me just to give up mid-book. And so I kept sinking money into a sequel to a book that not that many people had read.

Cut to the fall of 2025, and THE CURSE OF THE WHERE WOLF was finished, but I didn’t care. I would look at the book, sitting on my Desktop as a PDF, and I could only see the mistakes and the things I wish I had done differently. Writing is hard, and writing comic books is expensive. With everything else going on in my life and the deep depression that had sunk in, I wanted to give up on something, and my writing career seemed as solid a candidate as anything else.

But then I reread WHERE WOLF.

I had promised my wife I’d go thrift-store shopping with her and her mother, but I told her I’d bring a book so I could sit on the bench outside the store and read if I got bored. As we got ready to leave, something compelled me to bring a copy of my first graphic novel. And so, outside the Family Thrift, I started to reread WHERE WOLF for the first time in almost two years, and I found myself laughing. A lot.

I once told somebody that the only three books I’ve ever laughed out loud at were a collection of GARFIELD comic strips, Judy Blume’s SUPERFUDGE, and my own comic. Not the most humble quote, I know, but I do occasionally find myself funny. And, that afternoon, I found WHERE WOLF very, very funny. While there are definitely things I would have done differently, it was precisely the book I set out to make, and I was very proud of it. I started wondering if I should give my second graphic novel another look. It took two months, but I finally sat down and reread THE CURSE OF THE WHERE WOLF.

WHERE WOLF 2 is also precisely the book I wanted to make. It’s weird and messy and emotional and not quite as laugh-out-loud funny as the first book, but still pretty clever. It’s a self-portrait of my weaknesses and a testament to my unwavering belief in second chances. It’s a book about a man who must become a literal monster to become a better version of himself. My partners, Debora Lancianese on art and Jack Morelli on lettering, both did incredible jobs and elevated my words in every way. I want people to read this book. I think they’ll really enjoy it.

THE CURSE OF THE WHERE WOLF is proof, to me at least, that I’m a pretty decent writer when I try to be, and rereading the book made me sure that I wasn’t ready to give up writing. Telling stories makes me happy. Having people read those stories makes me happier. I want to keep writing and, like Larry Chaney himself, I’m ready to put in the work.

This afternoon, I made up a list of writing goals I want to accomplish this year:

Publish THE CURSE OF THE WHERE WOLF
Write a screenplay
Write a short story/essay collection
Write a YA novel
Start writing WHERE WOLF III (possible names: TAILS OF THE WHERE WOLF and SELF, A WHERE WOLF)
Publish this newsletter more frequently

I’m not sure I’ll finish all those goals, but I want to try. I want to keep writing, even if I never become rich off my words. Writing is something that brings me happiness, and, after a year particularly devoid of happiness, sitting down to tell a story for a few hours every week seems like one of the best possible choices I can make going into 2026.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a graphic novel I need to get read for publication.