Author: Angela Quinton

I just finished reading the first issue of Southern Dog, Jeremy Holt and Alex Diotto‘s comic series about Alabamian werewolves and racism in the six months before the (first!) Presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama. My skin is crawling, and that’s a testament to Holt’s writing. His script doesn’t waste any time: within three pages we’ve got a battered werewolf, a gaggle of pointy white hoods and a truck full of rednecks. The pace slows considerably after that, but the atmosphere of menace and violence never dissipates.

Every review I’ve read of Southern Dog makes mention of Alex Diotto’s young age (and I guess this is one of them now, too). I sure don’t see anything inexperienced about his art, though – there’s a satisfying, workmanlike quality to his panel layouts, and while I’m not crazy about the “catty” design of his werewolf, it doesn’t detract from his skills with facial expressions and body language.

I enjoyed Southern Dog, and I’m grateful to Holt and Diotto for sharing the first issue with me. For a proper review by someone who actually knows comics, I’ll direct you to Michelle White at Multiversity Comics – her assessments of the issue’s ups and downs are similar to my own, and she’s got more Comix Credibility than I.

Southern Dog is published by 215 Ink. Issue 1 is availablein their online store on comiXology.

Reader Stalker emailed me a link to this Newsarama interview with Bill Willingham, writer / creator of the Eisner-winning comic Fables. Willingham and artists Jim Fern, Craig Hamilton, Ray Snyder and Mark Farmer have collaborated on “Fables: Werewolves of the Heartland”, a 144-page graphic novel set in the Fables world. From the Vertigo site:

Bigby Wolf takes center stage in what might be the most action-packed FABLES story to date. Bigby embarks on a quest through the American Heartland to find a new location for Fabletown. In his wanderings, Bigby stumbles across a small town named Story City, that, amazingly enough, seems to be populated by werewolves. Who are they and where did they come from? They aren’t Fables, but they sure aren’t normal mundys. They seem to already know and revere Bigby, but at the same time they’ve captured and caged him – but why? Unravelling the many mysteries of Story City may cost Bigby more than his life.

Werewolves of the Heartland comes out November 22nd (you can pre-order it on Amazon now, though). It was originally announced in 2009, but was pushed back a few times because, as Willingham explains in the Newsarama interview, there were some problems coordinating all the art:

The principle artists are Jim Fern, who’s doing the layouts, and then Craig Hamilton did primarily the finishes and inking. And one of the reasons for doing the story was to give Craig Hamilton a really nice showcase for his wonderful talents. But there were some delays, as there often are on a big project, but for Craig and Jim, to a certain extent, we needed to bring in some help with some other artists who were able to stylistically keep it pretty much looking the same throughout.

I get so busy with non-werewolfy work at my “pays for my rent and food” job that I don’t have time to read even a quarter of all the great comics and books that get recommended to me, but I am going to have to set some time aside to read this. But first, I better get familiar with the Fables universe – the Newsarama interview makes it clear there’s a lot of story to explore. How many Werewolf News readers are familiar with Fables? Would you recommend it?