Rich Tommaso’s “She Wolf” could be my comic of the summer

SheWolf-01This one’s got its hooks in me. Following on the heels of his crime series Dark Corridor, writer/artist Rich Tommaso is bringing a new werewolf comic to Image this summer: She Wolf.

Set in New Jersey in the 1980s, “the story follows a teenage girl [Gabrielle] who believes she’s been bitten by a savage werewolf. Soon after she begins to experience feverish nightmares that seamlessly bleed into her everyday reality.”

This interview with Tommaso on The Frog Queen has some great background on the setting and his reasons for writing a book about werewolves:

I’ve always loved werewolves and I’m always disappointed when they’re given such small parts in fantasy/monster movies (Harry Potter is the best example of that). It was just a matter of coming up with something interesting to do with them. Once I thought about my High School years and trying to hide your bad habits (drinking, smoking, etc.) from your parents I felt like I had a good place to work from.

DarkCorridor_06-1The dreamlike nature of Gabrielle’s situation is underscored by the curving elegance and surreal high contrast of Tommaso’s artwork. Frankly, I can’t stop looking at it. This post took an afternoon to write because I kept opening new tabs to check out Dark Corridor original pages. This cover he designed for Dark Corridor #6 is insane. The creative force behind that kind of imagery, applied to werewolves? Yes PLEASE.

She Wolf issue 1 comes out June 22nd, 2016, and issue 2 follows on July 20th. I asked Tommaso on Twitter how many more he has planned, and to my simultaneous delight and consternation, he said “I’ve got it written as a 4-issue series. If it does well, I’ve got more I can do with it.”

Werewolf comic fans, help She Wolf do well because [altruistic: it’s important to support creators] [greedy: I want Tommaso to make as many issues of this as possible]! You can order issues 1 and 2 from your local comic shop right now with Diamond IDs APR160661 and MAY160656, respectively. A trade – presumably collecting the first 4 issues – will be out November 16th, but don’t wait that long to get into it or there won’t be more issues to collect in a second trade.

Check out this io9 post for a look at the first few pages of She Wolf issue 1, or scroll down for some interior artwork Tommaso has been posting on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/RichTommaso/status/722127973562892288

https://twitter.com/RichTommaso/status/721390312984162304

https://twitter.com/RichTommaso/status/717754712951549952