Von Allan's official website

Name: WOLF’S HEAD Volume 8
Rating: 4 (2 reviews)
Author: Von Allan
ISBN: 978-1-989885-30-7

Wolf’s Head Volume 9 in trade paperback format Worldwide (first-time ever)!

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 10:30:00 +0000

Now available in trade paperback around the world is WOLF’S HEAD Volume 9! I’m so happy to have this volume published. Part of that is simple: I love sharing my work and having it in physical form is always cool. Plus this volume pays a lot of stuff off. In some ways much of what was set up early on in the series comes to a head here. What do I mean? Well, you’ll have to read it, of course. Something, I hasten to add, you can always do for free on the Internet Archive! And if you are brand new to the series, please visit the dedicated landing page that hopefully has all the information you might need!

As I previously noted, the first eight WOLF’S HEAD trade paperbacks are back in print in new editions, but with today’s release of Volume 9 (collecting issues 17 and 18 of the ongoing digital series) we are on brand new ground! As always, this is a full colour edition and is 60 pages in length. Desperate and on the run with a newborn AI as well as her dog, Lauren Greene must risk everything by trusting a dubious ally to escape relentless pursuers. In a snowy ghost town, Lauren’s daring plan brings her, her unlikely friends, and a ruthless ARPC agent into a final showdown — where one gamble could end the pursuit forever.

Volume 9, as well as all of the other volumes in this series, are available in better bookstores and comic shops worldwide (and for why I say “better,” please read this commentary). Volume 9’s ISBN is 978-1-989885-31-4. If you don’t see it at your local store, then you can easily order it using that ISBN. Additionally, it is already starting to show up at various online retailers, too. For example:

Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Canadian Independent Bookstores (via BookManager)
Amazon.co.uk
Barnes & Noble
Bookshop.org (and IndieBound)
And on and on! Germany? You bet! What about Waterstones? Definitely! Again, you may need to ask your local bookstore and comic shop, but it is easily available everywhere!

As always, remember that I can’t control exactly when and where this volume will become available, but hopefully the above links are a good start. Be patient and don’t be afraid to ask your retailer for help! Volume 10 will be released later on this year.

There is a dedicated website for WOLF’S HEAD at https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/p/wolfs-head-landing-page.html with all kinds of additional information!

The Elevator Pitch

Desperate and on the run, Lauren Greene knows she can’t outrun the villains hunting her forever. With her loyal dog and a young, sentient AI in tow, Lauren faces an impossible choice: risk her friends’ safety by asking for help, or face her relentless pursuers alone. As danger closes in, she’s forced to trust a dubious ally — setting in motion a daring plan that could end the chase once and for all.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Hamilton, the brilliant yet tormented CEO of ARPC, is haunted by the secret that he somehow created the AI now in Lauren’s care — though even he doesn’t fully understand how. Desperate to regain control of his mysterious creation, Jeremy commands his most trusted enforcer, Richard Blairstone, whose fractured mind and ruthless determination make him a relentless force on the ground. Super Bob Sanchez, caught between the law and a truckload of stolen cargo, is drawn into Lauren’s desperate gambit as the stakes skyrocket.

In a snowy ghost town, Lauren and her unlikely allies face off against Richard and ARPC’s relentless pursuit. With Jeremy pulling strings from afar, Lauren must outwit her powerful enemies to survive. As the clock ticks down, her gamble will decide not only her future, but the fate of the extraordinary being she’s sworn to protect. Will her plan succeed, or will darkness claim them all?

The WOLF'S HEAD Trade Paperback Series

Below is a listing of all the volumes of the series so far! If you click on the cover, it will bring you to a dedicated page for that volume on the WOLF’S HEAD subdomain. Again, most online retailers regularly stock and carry WOLF'S HEAD. However, occassionaly there are hiccups with this from time to time (typically because the retailer has had a little rush on sales!). So, if you were shopping on Amazon (for example) and discovered that a particular volume is out of stock, there are many alternatives. These include Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Indigo, McNally Robinson, The American Book Center, Waterstones, and so on.

Read for Free

As many of you know, I’ve also begun serializing the comic book series for free on the Internet Archive (https://www.archive.org) as part of my “Pirate Von” initiative. As I mentioned above, WOLF’S HEAD Volume 9 consists of issues 17 and 18 of the ongoing series. While you can find the links to both on the Internet Archive as well as the “Pirate Von” section of this very website, to make it easier the links to both issues 17 and 18 are below.

Remember! If you enjoy them and would like a physical copy, you can purchase Volume 9 in stores — both online and off — around the world!

TEASER FOR WOLF’S HEAD Volume 9

And here’s a little teaser image to help cement the idea. Two digital comics inside one trade paperback volume!

Sir Andrew and the Flying Bird Monster

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 22:26:00 +0000

This is a little bit different than art I’ve posted before, so I’ll just take a minute to explain it. This is a short story, but a short story I wrote and drew when I was about 9 years old. Now, as I’ve told many an interviewer over the years, I didn’t draw much as a kid. I simply didn’t. But! Like pretty much all kids, I did draw and the story below is a great example of it.

It’s also a bit of a lucky story. Why? Well, I grew up pretty poor and all kinds of things were lost when my mom died when I was twenty years old. All kinds of school books, toys, and whatnot were unceremoniously discarded just after that. I kept what I could, but I had very little space and very little money. That meant that hard decisions had to be made. This little story was something I wanted to keep and I did so, but I can’t really tell you why. I just did.

Now, this story, in its original form, is badly deteriorating. These were drawn and lettered in pencil (for the most part — see below) on what I think is tracing paper. I might be cheap newsprint, though it’s hard to tell. Overall, the paper measures 24 inches by 18 inches. It’s been folded repeatedly, probably right back to when I first carried it to school, and is tattered in places. It also a few weird holes in it; these almost look like burn marks, but I probably spilled something on it and the paper deteriorated in those spots.

I also drew the story on both sides. That’s important, because it means that scanning it is tricky; there’s bleed-through from the other side of the paper that “leaks” into what I’m actually trying to scan. On top of it, at some point I went in and coloured one panel, number 6, with markers. That created all kinds of additional problems, but the main one is that these colours bled right through the paper into panel 2 and even a part of panel 1 on the other side. I simply could not get an accurate scan, which really affected the monster’s head in panel 2. I wound up having to do a bit of creative work, copying part of the head from another panel and digitally pasting it into panel 2.

Since this paper has travelled with me for many decades now, it’s somewhat remarkable that it’s survived at all, even given all of the above caveats. But I was getting worried that eventually the pencils might just disappear, so I finally decided to do the best scans I could given the condition of the paper I had to work with. Scanning was one helluva challenge; I used every trick I could, but I kept coming up against the same main issue: to make the pencils dark enough to see (and read!), too many “artifacts” were coming through. These are folds, tears, rips, smudges, and so on. To try to present it in a readable form, I basically created multiple versions of the scans, finally creating a digital approximation of my original pencils. As a result, the first two panels were very tricky to reconstruct, so apologies for some of the odd shadowing and other artifacts despite my best efforts. Is the whole thing perfect? Nope! Is it about the best approximation I can do of what the panels look like to the eye? Yup!

So why share this at all? This is kid’s art, right? It absolutely is. I’ve never had a problem showing my rough art and I certainly don’t have a problem with showing my “kid art.” I also like the spirit of this little story. While I wasn’t playing Dungeons & Dragons at this point, I do remember that my mom had scrounged up some cash and had purchased for me a copy of THE OFFICIAL ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS COLORING ALBUM (illustrated by Greg Irons and written by Gary Gygax, published by Troubador Press in 1979) as well as a few of those early FIGHTING FANTASY gamebooks that came out beginning in 1982. I can see these books as little influences, mixed in with my own sensibilities, something that hasn’t changed all that much to this day.

I also thought my “kid art” was a good example of something Betty Edwards mentioned in her legendary book DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN (pages 62 and 63 of my copy). Namely:

“The majority of adults in the Western World do not progress in art skills much beyond the level of development they reached at age nine or ten. In most mental and physical activities, individuals’ skills change and develop as they grow to adulthood: speech is one example, handwriting another. The development of drawing skills, however, seems to halt unaccountably at an early age for most people. In our culture, children, of course, draw like children, but most adults also draw like children no matter what level they may have achieved in other areas of life…

… If we were to attach a label to this disability in the way that educators have attached the label dyslexia to reading problems, we might call the problem dyspictoria or dysartistica or some such term. But no one has done so because drawing is not a vital skill for survival in our culture, whereas speech and reading are. Therefore, hardly anyone seems to notice that many adults draw childlike drawings and many children give up drawing at age nine or ten. These children grow up to become the adults who say that they never could draw and can’t even draw a straight line. The same adults, however, if questioned, often say that they would have liked to learn to draw well, just for their own satisfaction at solving the drawing problems that plagued them as children. But they feel that they had to stop drawing because they simply couldn’t learn how to draw.”

That, to be clear, was me. I had very little confidence as a kid. Very little self-esteem. And while I can’t remember a specific incident that made me stop drawing, I do remember being frustrated that my drawings weren’t turning out the way I wanted them to. It was immensely discouraging, especially because I loved comics but I couldn’t make my art “look like that.” So I gave it all up and stopped drawing completely. And it would take me over 15 years to find my way back to drawing, speed bumps and all. In a sense, I kinda look at these panels as a bit of a poignant “what if.” But I also look at them with a sense of astonishment: never say never! The 9 year old me would be astounded by what I (he?) can do now. I doubt that “he” would even believe it!

In a sense, that’s one of the wonders of art. It’s never too late for anyone to draw, to write, play music, or whatever. Even if you think you can’t, it’s never too late to try. Never too late to learn new things. Is it hard? Yup, it absolutely is. I’m not gonna lie about that. But it’s also incredibly rewarding and I’ll always be indebted to Betty Edwards for helping me see that.

Von Allan Graphic Novels for the Holiday Season

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 19:58:00 +0000

With the holidays fast approaching, I thought I should do a quick post regarding my comics and graphic novels. If you are looking for a gift for friends and family or even for yourself, my comics and graphic novels do make lovely treats! For those who are relatively new to my work, the following serves as a quick breakdown of my work.

Key Information

As most people reading this know, my main longform comics project is WOLF’S HEAD, an action-adventure comic book series with a dash of sci-fi, crime, and mystery thrown in for good measure.

WOLF’S HEAD is certainly not alone, though, and both my earlier black and white two volume graphic novel series STARGAZER as well as the hardcover short story collection LOVE, LAUGHTER, AND LOSS: A COMICS COLLECTION.

Buying Von Allan’s Graphic Novels

All of my graphic novels are widely available all over the world. That said, I am a small press creator so book shops and comic book stores often don’t stock my work in depth. I wish that wasn’t the case, but it is.¹ In other words, you are almost certainly going to have to ask your local retailer for a copy. If they don’t currently have a copy in, then it’s super easy for them to order a copy for you. It really really is.

Fortunately for a creator like me, the world of online retail has dramatically changed the distribution side of things since the early days of the Direct Market. Back then a creator and/or publisher really needed comic book shops onside to reach an audience. Nowadays, with the rise of the internet, everything has changed.

There are so many online options that I can’t possibly list them all, but here are a few to get started:

In the United States: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Powell’s Books, Bookshop.org, and so on!
In England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales: Amazon.co.uk, Waterstones, The Portobello Bookshop, and so on!
In Europe: Amazon.de, Amazon.es, , and so on!
In Asia: Amazon.co.jp, DangDang.com, and so! American Book Center
Online: AbeBooks, Alibris, Biblio — While many think that these stores only sell used books, that is actually not true. Each of these platforms are actually book marketplaces, so you can find stores that carry new books as well as used.
In Canada: For Canadians, it’s a little trickier. Currently I’m having a great deal of difficulty with Amazon.ca as well as Indigo. The former is apparently refusing to regularly stock my work, which is not the case for Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. I don’t understand why this is, but I know that it is. Indigo is stocking some of my work, but only the first four volumes of WOLF’S HEAD. I have no idea why this is, either, but this is fairly typical for an independent artist like me.

So, for Canadians, what to do? The best option is to order through an independent Canadian bookstore. That way you can order Volume 8 and support an indy bookshop at the same time. Most of these indy stores use a Point-of-Sale system called BookManager. That program also doubles as a quasi “Books in Print” database. In other words, they will be able to order it for you very easily. I realize that this is not ideal, but it is what it is right now. Hopefully this will change in the not too distant future.

More About Love, Laughter, and Loss

This is a premium hardcover edition with beautiful printing, collecting nine of my short stories (including the currently out of print WIZARDS FOR HIRE — CHEAP! Collection that you can read online for free here). Please visit https://www.vonallan.com/2021/05/Love-Laughter-Loss-Comics-Collection-by-Von-Allan.html for more information about the book!

More About Stargazer

STARGAZER is a two volume all-ages graphic novel series featuring three young girls who find themselves transported to a completely different planet! There’s a dedicated website at https://stargazer.vonallan.com/. And I also received my favourite piece of fan mail ever for STARGAZER. This from a young girl in Florida who loved the series and wanted to tell me!

More about Wolf’s Head

WHICH VOLUME DO I START WITH?

Since WOLF’S HEAD is a multi-volume graphic novel, it can be a little daunting to start right from the beginning with volume 1. Fortunately, you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to! I strive to ensure that my work is approachable no matter what volume someone starts reading at.

STORY ARCS

Even better, the series is organized into so-called “story arcs” to make this even easier. The graphics below explain that clearly:

In other words, you can start reading at any volume or, if you really want to start at the beginning of a new story arc, then volumes 1, 4, 6, or 8 is the way to go! See? Easy!

REVIEWS!

The Slings & Arrows Graphic Novel Guide noted the following on their Facebook page about the series, “We can’t understand how Wolf’s Head by Von Allan Studio slips so low on the public radar. It’s an intelligent, well-drawn character-based crime story with an appealing lead, and a creative touch of quirkiness. Six volumes out to date revealing the strange path Lauren Greene’s life has taken since quitting the police.”

And Frank Plowright, writing on the same website, noted the following about both Volume 6 and the series overall: “Try Wolf’s Head and become captivated.”

That is one of the best things anyone has ever said about my work!

WHAT IF YOU’RE ALREADY A REGULAR READER?

If you’re reading the series in digital format, either in the original ComiXology/Kindle versions or now over on the Internet Archive, and you would like to support me, please do consider purchasing physical copies. That really does help!

The other thing you can do is simple: tell people about the series! Share the love! Do you know someone who likes comics but has never heard of me or my work? TELL them!

ANYTHING ELSE?

Please do consider reviewing any of the volumes you’ve bought. You usually can do that on any online platform (like Amazon), but there are many review sites out there that you can also post reviews to. Sites like GoodReads definitely help. Even a short review, a sentence or two, helps!

Lastly

For those who have read and loved my work as well as those who are trying my work for the first time, thank you!

All my best to you and yours for the holidays!

1 For those wondering, the comic book store side of things has been especially difficult. For some thoughts on why, please read this: https://www.vonallan.com/2025/01/Diamond-Comic-Distributors-Wolfs-Head-and-Me.html. This situation was made worse by Diamond’s bankruptcy and the ongoing changes to the so-called “Direct Market” (the comic book store “channel” when it comes to distribution). It doesn’t help that so much of what counts for comics “journalism” is pretty weak, as recently detailed on the Four Color Sinners blog. In the interest of full disclosure, the blog’s author Mr. Four Color Sinners himself shares excerpts from a conversation we had and then discusses it. That lead to a fairly robust exchange in the comments that are worth a read. Hell, even I pop up there, too!

Wolf’s Head Volume 8 in trade paperback format Worldwide (first-time ever)!

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 11:30:00 +0000

This a milestone! Due to more challenges than I can shake a stick at,¹ the long-awaited Volume 8 of WOLF’S HEAD is now finally available! This volume features one of the most emotional twists I’ve done in the series so far, but one I think makes perfect sense.

As I previously noted, the first seven WOLF’S HEAD trade paperbacks are back in print in new editions, but with today’s release of Volume 8 (collecting issues 15 and 16 of the ongoing digital series) we are on brand new ground! As always, this is a full colour edition and is 60 pages in length. Haunted by loss, Lauren Greene and her loyal dog Sankō embark on a perilous road trip from Alaska to Detroit, outwitting ruthless corporate agents to protect a sentient AI child. Hunted at every turn, Lauren risks everything to keep the extraordinary life-form from becoming a weapon—and to safeguard the future of a new kind of intelligence.

Volume 8, as well as all of the other volumes in this series, are available in better bookstores and comic shops worldwide (and for why I say “better,” please read this commentary). Volume 8’s ISBN is 978-1-989885-30-7. If you don’t see it at your local store, then you can easily order it using that ISBN. Additionally, it is already starting to show up at various online retailers, too. For example:

Amazon.com
Amazon.ca
Canadian Independent Bookstores (via BookManager)
Amazon.co.uk
Barnes & Noble
Bookshop.org (and IndieBound)
And on and on! Germany? You bet! What about Waterstones? Definitely! Again, you may need to ask your local bookstore and comic shop, but it is easily available everywhere!

There is a dedicated website for WOLF’S HEAD at https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/p/wolfs-head-landing-page.html with all kinds of additional information!

The Elevator Pitch

Lauren Greene’s world is turned upside down when her mother rescues a newborn artificial intelligence from the powerful and secretive Advanced Research Projects Corporation (ARPC) — a shadowy organization determined to weaponize the sentient life-form. After her mother’s sudden death, Lauren is left alone, struggling to survive and protect the extraordinary AI now in her care.

Desperate to escape ARPC’s relentless pursuit, Lauren flees her home of Detroit and disappears into the wilds of Alaska with her loyal dog, Sankō, and the young and vulnerable AI. She soon realizes, however, that running away won’t solve her problems. Determined to take control of her fate, Lauren sets out on a perilous road trip back to Detroit, hoping to find a way to secure the AI’s safety once and for all.

On the long journey home, Lauren and her companions are relentlessly hunted by ARPC agents, forcing her to risk everything to keep the AI from becoming a weapon. Outmatched and outnumbered, Lauren must summon all her courage, outwit her pursuers, and teach her unlikely companion what it means to fight for survival. If she fails, she risks losing not just her own life, but the future of a new kind of intelligence.

The WOLF'S HEAD Trade Paperback Series

Read for Free

As many of you know, I’ve also begun serializing the comic book series for free on the Internet Archive (https://www.archive.org) as part of my “Pirate Von” initiative. As I mentioned above, WOLF’S HEAD Volume 8 consists of issues 15 and 16 of the ongoing series. While you can find the links to both on the Internet Archive as well as the “Pirate Von” section of this very website, to make it easier the links to both issues 15 and 16 are below.

Remember! If you enjoy them and would like a physical copy, you can purchase Volume 8 in stores — both online and off — around the world!

TEASER FOR WOLF’S HEAD Volume 8

And here’s a little teaser image to help cement the idea. Two digital comics inside one trade paperback volume!

Von Allan at the Vanier Artisans Christmas Market

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 14:50:00 +0000

In what has become a Christmas tradition, I’ll be one of the artists at the Vanier Artisans 2025 Christmas Market! For those in the know, I’ve been doing these for the past number of years and they are always a tremendous experience with a diverse group of artists and craftspeople. And since I live in the community (Vanier Strong!) and I also did the art for the poster, I can honestly say it’s my favourite market of the year.

This is the first time that we’re doing the event at a new venue! St. Margaret’s Anglican Church was kind enough to collaborate with the Vanier Artisans and host the event this year. It’s a truly lovely venue, in the heart of Vanier, and will have a nice Christmas vibe to it. It was actually built way back in 1887, so it’s architectural design is pretty unique. And it’s in a great location, at the corner of Montreal Road and Cody Avenue on a major bus route and with easy access to parking in the back.

As the City of Ottawa notes on it’s website, “The cornerstone of this solid limestone heritage building lined with brick, often described as Vanier’s oldest building, was laid by Lady Agnes Macdonald, wife of Sir John A., in 1887. Its belltower is in the old English style. Initially a mission of St. Bartholomew’s Church in New Edinburgh, it functioned as a “chapel-of-ease” on the main dirt road from Ottawa to Montreal, in an area that became the community of Janeville. By 1915, it began providing regular services in English to its membership of mostly poor immigrant families.”

As always, I’ll have everything on my “shop” page, so that includes a full compliment of WOLF’S HEAD graphic novels, plus other comics and graphic novels (including SHEBA THE GREAT!, LOVE, LAUGHTER, AND LOSS: A COMICS COLLECTION, and STARGAZER), as well as Christmas cards, art prints, and so on! Some photos are at the end of this post!

Here are the details! A formal press release is at the end of this post, too!

Date: November 29, 2025

Time: 3:00 PM to 8:00 PM

Location: St. Margaret’s Church, 206 Montréal Rd, Ottawa, ON K1L 6C9

Cost: Free admission!

Facebook Event Page: Vanier Artisans 2025 Christmas Market Facebook Page

Amenities and Features of St. Margaret’s Church:

Public washrooms
Accessible access
Free parking
Metered/paid parking
Family friendly
OC Transpo nearby

Here are some Photos of What I’ll Have Available!

And there will be a few surprises, too!

Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Shop Local, Give Handmade: The Vanier Artisans Christmas Market Returns in a New Festive Space!

Ottawa, Ontario – November 25, 2025 — The holiday spirit is shining brighter than ever in Vanier. This year’s Vanier Artisans Christmas Market returns with fresh energy, a stunning new venue, and a warm invitation to shop local and bring home something truly special.

Now hosted at St. Margaret’s Anglican Church (206 Montreal Road), this community favorite Christmas Market celebrates local talent and craftsmanship. Each purchase directly supports Ottawa’s makers and helps keep Vanier’s creative traditions thriving.

Organized by Charlotte Taylor and a passionate team of volunteers, the market features an exciting range of handcrafted goods, from preserves, candles, soap, and baked treats to art and photography prints, knitted and crocheted items, jewelry, and comics and graphic novels. Many items are made in small batches, so visitors are encouraged to shop early and secure their favorites before they’re gone.

“We’re so excited about our new home at St. Margaret’s,” shared organizer Charlotte Taylor. “It’s the perfect place to bring people together to celebrate the season and support our local artists. Every purchase makes a difference and keeps creativity alive in our community.”

Event Details

Date: Saturday, November 29, 2025
Time: 3:00- 8:00pm
Location: St. Margaret’s Anglican Church, 206 Montreal Road, Vanier, ON K1L 6C9
Admission: Free
Questions: VanierArtisans@gmail.com or https://www.facebook.com/share/1D4EKgjH6d/

About the Vanier Artisans Christmas Market

The Vanier Artisans Christmas Market is a cherished, community led event that showcases the heart and talent of Ottawa’s local makers. It’s a celebration of community, creativity, and the joy of giving handmade, one meaningful gift at a time.

Von Allan at the Square Lemon Winter Wonders Craft Market in Ottawa

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 20:21:00 +0000

Hot on the heels of the Ritchie’s Feed & Seed Christmas Bazaar, I’ll be one of the exhibitors at this year’s Square Lemon Winter Wonders Market! Last week I was in Richmond, Ontario and this week I’ll be in The Glebe, in the heart of downtown Ottawa! This Market will be held at the Glebe Community Centre, a really neat venue that started off as a church (the St. James Methodist Church) before being converted into a community centre in the mid-1970s (I think! I included a nice 2005 photo so you can get a sense of the exterior). It’s gorgeous inside and makes for a lovely experience, both for vendors like myself as well as for attendees. In other words, I think everyone will have a great time!

It’s actually going to be a smidgen odd for me. Why? Well, I actually grew up in this neighbourhood and attended various local schools (including Mutchmor Public School, Glashan Public School (junior high school), and then Glebe Collegiate Institute (high school for your normal folks out there!). My mom sure as hell could not afford to live in the Glebe, so we were “Glebe adjacent.” I walked by the Glebe Community Centre pretty regularly as a kid, but I haven’t been in the neighbourhood since my friend Dave died. He lived only a few blocks away. It will be bittersweet experience to say the least, but hopefully a very positive one.

What will I be selling? Well, a full compliment of WOLF’S HEAD graphic novels, plus other comics and graphic novels (including SHEBA THE GREAT!, LOVE, LAUGHTER, AND LOSS: A COMICS COLLECTION, and STARGAZER), as well as Christmas cards, art prints, and so on! Some photos are at the end of this post!

Here are all the details!

Date: November 23, 2025

Time: 10:30 AM to 3:00 PM

Location: The Glebe Community Centre, 175 Third Ave, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 2K2

Cost: Free admission (donations to Square Lemon are welcome)!

Vendors: Over 50!

Facebook: Square Lemon Ottawa Facebook Page

Glebe Community Centre (GCC) Visitor Tips:

The event is held on the second floor, up a set of stairs. There is an accessible elevator for those who need it. Volunteers are also available to help you.
WIFI is not available on site for use during the event.
Bathrooms are available for both vendors and attendees.
The GCC is accessible including disabled parking spots, an elevator (to be used mainly for people with mobility restrictions) and accessible washrooms.
If you require any assistance during the event feel free to ask a volunteer and they will try their best to accommodate your needs.

Here are some Photos of What I’ll Have Available!

And there will be a few surprises, too!

The Glebe Community Centre

Von Allan at the 2025 Ritchie Feed & Seed Christmas Bazaar

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 20:52:00 +0000

I am one of the vendors participating in this year’s Christmas Bazaar, hosted by Ritchie Feed & Seed, in Richmond, Ontario, just south of Ottawa proper but still part of the National Capital Region. This is a pretty neat event; Ritchie’s converts a greenhouse into a Christmas-themed venue and that allows well over one hundred artisans to showcase their work for the holiday season. It’s a great opportunity to support local artists (like me!) and find some awesome presents, too.

Now, while the event is over TWO days (Saturday November 15th and Sunday November 16th), I’ll only be there for ONE day (Sunday).

Over on Instagram, Ritchie’s has put up a “reel” of last year’s event. If you’d like to get a sense of what it looks like, take a peek at https://www.instagram.com/ritchiefeedinc/reel/DCh8ZcHRZhq/

Here are all the details!

Date: November 16, 2025 (Von Allan only; remember that the full show is on November 15th and 16th)

Time: 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM

Location: 5901 Ottawa St., Richmond, ON, K0A 2Z0

Cost: Free admission!

Facebook: The Christmas Bazaar Event Page

Visitor Tips:

Space inside is limited — no carts or buggies
Strollers & wheelchairs welcome (main aisle only)
Bring reusable bags (and small bills for cash vendors!)
The greenhouse is heated, so dress in layers

Map of the Venue: I’m at Table 2A, sharing it with Enchanted Crochet Creations and Lynne McHardy (unfortunately I can’t spot their website). To help further, here is a map of the venue!

Update! Photos of the event!

Here are a few photos of my set-up at the 2025 Christmas Bazaar. About 1,000 people attended the Sunday part so it was pretty packed. These photos were taken by yours truly just as the doors opened. Then it was chaos for the rest of the day! Unlike other events and conventions I’ve done, this was held in the greenhouse so the tables are bolted to the ground. That meant that aisle space was very narrow and that meant browsing was tricky. My portion of the table was 16 feet long and about 3 feet wide (the table itself is twice that, so 32 feet long and about 6 feet wide). The drawback to this is that if anyone wanted to look at my comics and art or talk with me about them, it could and did create a logjam as people had to kinda squeeze around them as best they could. Not ideal from my point of view, so I probably won’t attend again the future. Still, it was good to do and an interesting experience overall.

Memento Mori Art Show at Anina’s Cafe in Ottawa

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 10:30:00 +0000

The wonderful Kayla Spagnoli has organized an upcoming artshow and I am one of the participants! Titled “Memento Mori,” the show features a number of artists; yours truly will have two pieces in the show and both will be available for sale through the host, Anina’s Cafe. Full details are below, including the wrap-up party or Finisssage on November 30th!

So what is this whole “Memento Mori” thing about? Well, it’s a Latin phrase meaning “remember that you must die.” While death and the notion of death play a big part in the idea behind it, I tend to look at it more as reminder that all things end. Including, of course, all of us. While I’ve dealt with this a lot in my own life (see, for example, here and here), fans of STAR TREK will probably remember a scene from the film STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY that touches on this notion. The scene, in Spock’s quarters, features an avant-garde painting by the late artist Marc Chagall titled “Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise.” When asked about the painting and why he keeps it in his quarters, Spock wryly notes, “It is a reminder to me that all things end.”

What pieces will I have in the show? Two! And they are at the bottom of this page, right after Kayla’s poster for the show!

The Details!

Date

October 30^th to November 30^th

Finissage: November 30^th

Location

Anina’s Cafe,

280 Joffre-Bélanger Way,

Ottawa, Ontario. K1L 5K8

Telephone: (613) 742-6800

Email: contact@aninascafe.ca

Curator

Kayla Spagnoli

Hours

Thursday to Monday from 8 am to 4 pm (closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays)

Finissage (End of Show) Party Hours

6:30 PM to 9:00 PM on Sunday, November 30^th

EventBrite Page: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/memento-mori-art-show-finissage-tickets-1730771316599

Wolf’s Head Volume 7 in trade paperback format Worldwide!

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 10:30:00 +0000

As I previously noted, the WOLF’S HEAD trade paperbacks are back in print in brand new editions! Next up is today’s release of Volume 7, collecting issues 13 and 14 of the ongoing digital series. This is a full colour series and is 60 pages in length. Volume 6 saw the series relocate to Alaska, as our heroine Lauren Greene made a decision to move from Michigan in an effort to keep her loved ones safe. As she continues to navigate her new life and situation, she discovers that not everything is quite what it seems. Especially her!

This is also the last of the revamped original trade paperbacks. The next volume (volume 8) have never been in print before! NEVER!

Volume 7, as well as all of the other volumes in this series, are available in better bookstores and comic shops worldwide (and for why I say “better,” please read this commentary). Volume 7’s ISBN is 978-1-989885-29-1. If you don’t see it at your local store, then you can easily order it using that ISBN. Additionally, it is already starting to show up at various online retailers, too. For example:

As always, remember that I can’t control exactly when and where this volume will become available, but hopefully the above links are a good start. Be patient and don’t be afraid to ask your retailer for help! Volume 7 will be released shortly, with subsequent volumes appearing throughout 2025.

There is a dedicated website for WOLF’S HEAD at https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/p/wolfs-head-landing-page.html with all kinds of additional information!

The Elevator Pitch

Lauren Greene’s world shatters when her mother dies saving a mysterious newborn AI from a secretive corporation intent on turning it into a weapon. Alone and on the run, Lauren escapes to the wilds of Alaska, struggling to protect the powerful life-form — and herself — while barely scraping by. But when a group of locals vanishes inside an abandoned government complex, Lauren is thrust into a high-stakes search that threatens to expose her secret. With the police unwilling to help and danger lurking in the shadows, Lauren faces a terrifying choice: risk everything by asking for help, or brave the haunted corridors alone, knowing that discovery could mean losing the AI forever. As injuries mount and time slips away, Lauren must confront her deepest fears and learn to trust others before it’s too late. Will she find the missing before the secret she’s guarding is revealed or will the darkness inside the complex claim them all?

Read for Free

As many of you know, I’ve also begun serializing the comic book series for free on the Internet Archive (https://www.archive.org) as part of my “Pirate Von” initiative. As I mentioned above, WOLF’S HEAD Volume 7 consists of issues 13 and 14 of the ongoing series. While you can find the links to both on the Internet Archive as well as the “Pirate Von” section of this very website, to make it easier the links to both issues 13 and 14 are below.

Remember! If you enjoy them and would like a physical copy, you can purchase Volume 7 in stores — both online and off — around the world!

TEASER FOR WOLF’S HEAD VOLUME 7

And here’s a little teaser image to help cement the idea. Two digital comics inside one trade paperback volume!

Frank Plowright and his wonderful WOLF'S HEAD reviews

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 19:36:00 +0000

Things have been a tad busy in the ol’ studio, so I have been remiss in not sharing this a few weeks ago. Frank Plowright, the erstwhile writer at THE SLINGS & ARROWS GRAPHIC NOVEL GUIDE, reviewed the first six trade paperback editions of WOLF’S HEAD and had some very lovely things to say.

Mr. Plowright is a fascinating guy. From what I can tell doing a bit of sleuthing, he has been in the world of comics for one helluva long time. The earliest reference I could find is a mention from a fanzine, specifically Dan Slingsby’s BLACK AND WHITE #3¹ dated Summer 1982 (see screen cap below). He was 23 in 1982, so he’s been thinking and writing about comics for at least 43 years… and probably a few years longer than that. Folks, if that’s not a pedigree, I don’t know what is.

However, I first came across him much later, in 1997, when the first edition of THE SLINGS & ARROWS COMIC GUIDE was released by Aurum Press. This was back in my bookstore days, when I was running Perfect Books here in Ottawa, and I had ordered the book both for sale at the store and to make damn sure I could buy a personal copy, too. Frank was listed on the front cover as the official editor and, in the notes of contributors inside my beat-up 1st printing, it notes, “Frank Plowright co-organizes the UK Comic Art Convention.² He’s spent many years masquerading as a writer, including a stint as British correspondent for The Comics Journal.³”

The COMIC GUIDE was (and is) a fascinating read. I have absolutely no idea how contributors were matched to the various titles, but almost 30 years later the book holds up extremely well. If you can find a copy, please do so. It’s a great read, though I can’t imagine anyone reading it in page order. Like an encyclopedia, it really rewards “jumping around.” One does get the sense that a different contributor might have had a different (perhaps radically different) point of view on a particular title, but that’s part of the fun! And Frank himself is not just the editor, but a reviewer of a number of different titles himself.

If I had a complaint (aside from the pesky disagreement with certain reviews!), it’s that the contributors (at least in my 1st edition) are not indexed at the back. While the book itself is well-indexed, not having an index of contributors is a definite miss. One has to pay attention to who is reviewing what, which is a bit disappointing, especially when the book is just that: a physical book. Nowadays a reference book like this is ideally suited for the internet, and I presume this is part of the reason that the COMIC GUIDE morphed into the online edition in the first place.

In some ways, I do prefer the COMIC GUIDE’s format and evaluation system to the current online version. The former simply used a recommended feature; one would read an entry, often covering many different issues and many different creators (think a review of the long-running AMAZING SPIDER-MAN) and then list recommended issues at the end. Simple, elegant, and with no rating system. I know many, many people like ratings (“10 out of 10”, “1 out of 5,” and so on) but I never have; from my point of view, they tend to “cement” or “lock” an evaluation. With art (broadly speaking), that is very difficult to do. Art is never zero-sum. Worse, feelings about art often change over time. Not always, of course, but opinions and tastes often do change. When the COMIC GUIDE moved online and became the GRAPHIC NOVEL GUIDE, the recommended system was dropped and was replaced with a 5 point scale (with 5 being the best). I don’t like it and I find it less useful then the original system. Worse, it’s actually more like a 10 point scale, since the online version allows fractional scores (so 4½ instead of 4 or 5).

Part of my hesitation with ratings and scales is that it’s never clear to me how a rating is calculated. That lack of transparency creates doubt, at least in my noggin’, and doubt is not helpful when evaluating a review. A “recommended” notation solves all of those problems; the reviewer liked it enough to recommend the work, but it is not burdened down with a rating. Or, to put it another way, is a 3 star review (out of 5) a recommended read? Or is a middle-of-the-road “it was kinda okay but had problems and you should probably avoid.” And, of course, that doesn’t get into the question regarding differentiating reviews with the same rank. In other words, are all 5 star reviews operating on the same level? The easy answer is “of course not,” but if so why so?

This is why, going all the way back to my own bookstore days, I never liked rating or ranking books. It’s too fungible, it’s too obtuse, and how rankings are determined is generally not transparent.

Wait. So what am I saying about WOLF’S HEAD and Frank’s reviews? Did he hate them or give them a bad rating? NO! Not at all. Let me do that again: NO! Not at all! I’m actually really really pleased with Frank’s reviews (aside from a few quibbles here and there). I’ll excerpt a number of his comments below, along with links to the full reviews, and you can judge for yourself. He gave most of the WOLF’S HEAD trade paperbacks 3 stars and two he gave 3½ stars. Now, based on the text of his reviews these are solid scores and (yup!) he does recommend the series. Would I have preferred no ratings and clear recommendations? YES. That’s exactly what I’m saying. This is somewhat influenced by my own sensibilities as well as my experience as a bookseller; I’m not convinced that a “3 out of 5” galvanizes people to seek out a work. It might, especially if people also read the actual review and are moved by it. Reviewing is an art in and of itself. But just a raw 3 out of 5? I don’t think so. That said, Frank (at least I think it was Frank!) was nice enough to also say, on their Facebook page, “We can’t understand how Wolf’s Head by Von Allan Studio slips so low on the public radar. It’s an intelligent, well-drawn character-based crime story with an appealing lead, and a creative touch of quirkiness. Six volumes out to date revealing the strange path Lauren Greene’s life has taken since quitting the police.”

I should stress here that I suspect moving from recommendations to ratings probably helped with the online world. It’s easy to list 5 star reviews, which the GRAPHIC NOVEL GUIDE site does. It’s less easy to list recommendations; presumably one would have to break them down by reviewer, which could be awkward for all kinds of reasons. Ratings and scales are also prime candidates for debate and arguments (thus leading to views and hits), which I suspect might have also played into that choice.

With all of that said, let’s get on to Frank’s reviews!

First, a list of all of Frank’s reviews of my work can be found at https://theslingsandarrows.com/writer/von-allan/

WOLF’S HEAD Volume 1: “Allan never takes the easy route of telling his story via head and shoulders drawings without backgrounds. Full figures are the choice, and plenty of them packed into small panels… It’s only toward the end that a full accounting of what’s actually happening is supplied. It’s creative and raises ethical questions… This is a fine opening volume presenting an engaging cast living interesting lives, and that continues in Vol. 2.”

WOLF’S HEAD Volume 2: “Despite Von Allan filtering in both SF and action thriller plots, the appeal of Wolf’s Head is the cast, strongly characterised with everyone’s motivations clear. Lauren remains central, with the opening pages suggesting we don’t know her as well as we thought, but caring and willing to take whatever action is necessary.”

WOLF’S HEAD Volume 3: “There are fantastical elements to Wolf’s Head, but creator Von Allan’s greater interest is in Lauren as a person and what she’s going through. He delivers a fine portrait of someone refusing to cave under pressure, but there’s little respite for her as the problems keep piling up… For all the focus on Lauren’s experiences, a crime story with an SF intrusion has been running since the first volume, and Allan brings that to a head here very effectively, avoiding the obvious paths a revenge story might take.”

WOLF’S HEAD Volume 4: “Events came to a head in Vol. 3 (or We All Want to Change the World if you bought the hardback version), but Lauren’s smart enough to know the people she dealt with aren’t the types to let things lie. Muscle for hire Frank McRossitor is especially able to hold a grudge, and Lauren believes it best she remain away from regular haunts… Lauren still has a lot going on, and the maguffin of Machine means events could head pretty well anywhere, so head to Vol. 5 with confidence.”

WOLF’S HEAD Volume 5: “Wolf’s Head continues to be a well drawn and plotted series with the emphasis on personalities. We’ve only just met Super Bob, seen on the cover, but the way Allan defines him means he’s understandable from the start… Wolf’s Head continues to be unpredictable and compelling, and new circumstances kick off Vol. 6.”

WOLF’S HEAD Volume 6: “The tone has shifted from crime drama to something possibly supernatural, although readers may suspect that despite the way things look, there’s a more ordinary Scooby-Doo-style explanation. We’ll see. Either way, despite jettisoning the entire supporting cast to date Allan ensures Lauren is strong enough to carry the story… In his comments Allan mentions how his career to date has been one of consistent struggle, which is a great shame for someone both talented and persistent in producing a consistently entertaining drama. Try Wolf’s Head and become captivated.”

“Try Wolf’s Head and become captivated.” I have to admit this is one of the nicest comments anyone has ever said about the series!

So there you have it! I am grateful to Frank for these thoughtful reviews. And doubly grateful that he took the time to read and really embrace my work. Not every reviewer does that. Are they perfect reviews? Nope. He has critiques here and there, but I appreciate that. While I don’t agree with every single one, that is the beauty of art. It really is in the eye of the beholder. And Frank’s reviews are, overall, very positive. So please give his reviews a read and judge for yourself.

WOLF’S HEAD is easy to find. While it is available in stores, you can easily find the series on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org and so on. A handy list of links is at https://www.vonallan.com/p/von-allan-studio-shop.html

Lastly, it’s still a tough time for the comics industry, as many of you who are reading this are no doubt well-aware. As I type this, Humanoids has furthered their bankruptcy declaration, declaring Chapter 7 bankruptcy as opposed to Chapter 11. As Sam Spratford noted in Publishers Weekly, “… the Chapter 7 proceedings will see Humanoids liquidate its assets, eventually ceasing U.S. operations.” And, of course, the distribution fallout from Diamond’s bankruptcy continue (you can read some of my thoughts on my own experiences with Diamond here). At the same time, the excitement around comics as an art form is as strong as ever. There are so many different ways to read and embrace comics and graphic novels now and accessibility is, I think, better than ever. I’m happy to have carved out a little niche of my own with fans and readers. Nine volumes of WOLF’S HEAD is nothing to sneeze at!

Footnotes

1 You can read an online edition of it on Google Drive at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RiH4l7tPQ4N4wsyBbs1ltmh5Ay_4A_58/view

2 Sadly, it appears that the convention, at least this iteration of it, came to an end in 1998.

3 Online at https://www.tcj.com/topic/frank-plowright/; unfortunately The Comics Journal only has one current article up.

Wolf’s Head Volume 6 in trade paperback format Worldwide!

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 10:00:00 +0000

As I previously noted, the WOLF’S HEAD trade paperbacks are back in print in brand new editions! Next up is today’s release of Volume 6, collecting issues 11 and 12 of the ongoing digital series. This is a full colour series and is 60 pages in length. This marks a departure from the series so far, as Lauren relocates from Michigan to Alaska, meets loads of new people, and has a number of new adventures! Whew, does she ever!

Volume 6, as well as all of the other volumes in this series, are available in better bookstores and comic shops worldwide (and for why I say “better,” please read this commentary). Volume 6’s ISBN is 978-1-989885-28-4. If you don’t see it at your local store, then you can easily order it using that ISBN. Additionally, it is already starting to show up at various online retailers, too. For example:

There is a dedicated website for WOLF’S HEAD at https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/p/wolfs-head-landing-page.html with all kinds of additional information!

The Elevator Pitch

Lauren Greene, a former Detroit police officer, has started over in remote Alaska with her dog, Sankō, and a young Artificial Intelligence that a ruthless corporation wants back at any cost. To get by, she’s working doing deliveries for a local food bank, scraping together a living while trying her best to stay out of sight and protect the AI. But, when a homeless man she’s never met vanishes near a long-abandoned Cold War missile complex, Lauren can’t just ignore it. Her search takes her underground, where she discovers not only Alaska’s buried secrets but also something terrifying that shouldn’t exist at all. Now, while being hunted from the outside and facing dangers she can’t explain from the inside, Lauren has to decide: does she open herself up to new friendships and risk everything, or stay alone and lose potential friendships she desperately needs?

Read for Free

As many of you know, I’ve also begun serializing the comic book series for free on the Internet Archive (https://www.archive.org) as part of my “Pirate Von” initiative. As I mentioned above, WOLF’S HEAD Volume 6 consists of issues 11 and 12 of the ongoing series. While you can find the links to both on the Internet Archive as well as the “Pirate Von” section of this very website, to make it easier the links to both issues 11 and 12 are below.

Remember! If you enjoy them and would like a physical copy, you can purchase Volume 6 in stores — both online and off — around the world!

TEASER FOR WOLF’S HEAD VOLUME 6

And here’s a little teaser image to help cement the idea. Two digital comics inside one trade paperback volume!

Cosmo Talks to Graphic Artist Von Allan About Drawing and Storytelling

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 10:00:00 +0000

In February 2023 my niece Cosmo asked to do an interview with me for a school project. We chatted for about 25 minutes and Cosmo had a number of really good questions. I’ve been wanting to share the interview for quite a while, but since Cosmo is technically a minor it makes it a smidgen tricky to post the full video. But! Why not post a transcript of the interview instead, with a few screen shots to go with it? Yeah! What follows, then, is a lightly-edited transcript of our interview where we talk about my journey creating comics and graphic novels.

It was a lot of fun to do, especially when Cosmo asked me a pointed question about the “fellas” who watch over me in my studio! You’ll have to read the piece below to know exactly what I mean, but I wasn’t expecting a question like that!

The Interview

Cosmo: Hello and welcome to my interview with Von Allan. He is a graphic artist and also my uncle. Hello.

Von Allan: Hi!

Cosmo: Today I will be asking questions about your career and possibly other things.

Von Allan: Okay. I will do my best to give you good answers.

Cosmo: Okay. So… Question one. How did you start making comics and graphic novels?

Von Allan: Well, I’m a little bit weirder — or my situation is a bit weirder — than a lot of people. Because a lot of times you will hear interviews with artists and they are saying things like, ‘oh, I drew from the time I was two years old, and that’s what I did.’ I was not that guy. I did draw when I was a kid, but I didn’t draw [after that]. I didn’t have a lot of self-confidence when I was a teenager. I was pretty confident about one thing and that was I would not be able to draw. I didn’t know how to draw and I would never learn to draw.

So I wound up working at a bookstore in my early twenties, and what was really neat about that experience was I met a lot of artists and — primarily — a lot of writers. And I talked with them. And I started to realize that being an artist of any stripe, broadly speaking — not just a visual artist but a writer or what have you — you’re not hit by a magic wand when you’re born and you have these skills and everybody else doesn’t. I learned that it’s work, it’s practice. You struggle, you’re going to fail, and you get stronger as you go.

So, I always liked comics. I was really into comics when I was young. And I was kind of frustrated at the bookstore because I wasn’t paid very well. And I decided that, ‘hey, maybe I can learn to do this.’ And I literally started drawing with a book called “DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN” by a wonderful writer named Betty Edwards. And I started to teach myself to draw.

Cosmo: Interesting. Shall we move on to the next question?

Von Allan: Yeah.

Cosmo: Okay. Question two. Who or what really inspired you to make what comics you have?

Von Allan: Well, this is tricky because I think a lot of times what style is and what we’re inspired to do is sort of almost subconscious. Like it’s in the back of our heads, not in the foreground. But there were a lot of artists I liked. As I learned to draw, and as I was struggling to learn to draw, I was learning a lot about visual storytelling. And one of the things I started to realize was that some of the stuff I liked when I was a kid followed — I don’t want to say ‘rules’ because I don’t feel like there’s a lot of rules to art — but certainly used kind of ‘tools’ that made me like [these] comics. And I started to like their stuff more so than other people’s stuff.

I started to explore that a bit. ‘Why? Why do I like story “X” versus story “Y” even though a lot of people like story “Y”? I’m not so crazy about it.’ By trial and error and by learning, I started figuring out my own approaches to doing it. And I could rattle off artists that I like and what have you, but it was more an approach to what inspired me. An approach to comics, an approach to how panels work — the gutter space between panels, why that’s important. And I started kind of experimenting with my own stories, typically short stories, and started figuring stuff out.

And I mean, part of the thing is you never stop learning. So I’m learning to this day about what works — or what I think works — what doesn’t work and why I think it doesn’t work. And the learning and the inspiration never stops. I still find stuff I really like, brand new stuff to this day. And that’s part of the fun of doing art and being an artist.

Cosmo: Hmm. That sounds good. Okay, next question. Can you tell us about one of your graphic novels?

Von Allan: Yeah, well, I’ll say the most recent one because it’s the one I put a lot of time into. It’s a story called “WOLF’S HEAD.” And it’s — I never know quite how to describe it — it’s set in the real world, in our time. It stars a young woman named Lauren who is trying to figure out what to do with her life. She’s in her early 20s and she’s living in Detroit. And she winds up, through her mom, making a sort of a stupendous discovery of this sort of sentient artificial intelligence. And it’s really young; it’s basically like a baby. So it has a personality and it’s also trying to discover its way in the world. And she becomes friends with it and she starts helping it. And through helping it and trying to protect it, she’s learning more about herself and having a number of adventures as the story goes on.

So I’m 18 issues now in, it’s been done in a few different forms. But I’m starting to put them out in hardcover. So the first hardcover, collecting the first six issues, came out a little while ago. And I’m just starting to get ready to put the second one together. So yeah, I’ve been working on that for like five years now.

Cosmo: I will feature that in the video when I edit it.

Von Allan: Okay.

Cosmo: Question five. How exactly did you teach yourself to draw?

Von Allan: Through a lot of trial and error. A LOT of trial and error. I’m not kidding. I sat down and I didn’t know how to draw at all. I could barely make a straight line. I didn’t know anything about anatomy or storytelling or what have you. And I started with a book, like I said, “DRAWING ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE BRAIN.” And I… The problem with that book is that it’s really good at teaching you to draw what you see. But it’s much harder, particularly with comics, to try to figure out what’s in your head and get that down on paper, as well. The ways that comics versus other forms of visual art work.

So there was so much trial and error. And I looked at… There are people, particularly with the internet, people that talk openly about comics creation. There were people I liked. So I wound up kind of looking at other people’s work to sort of try and learn. Honestly, one of the best people was a guy named Jim Shooter, who was the Editor-in-Chief at Marvel Comics decades ago. But he is a really… He’s a writer, not an [active] visual artist. But he worked with a lot of visual artists. So he spoke a lot about why certain things work in comics, why other things don’t work in comics, and things to think about.

So that helped on the comics front, and then [I did] a lot of my own experiments. And then, for things like anatomy, you start with anatomy books. And you go to lifedrawing. I did a little bit of lifedrawing classes at the Ottawa School of Art. And I just, slowly but surely, made my way.

You have to be open to try things, even if things will take you down blind alleys. So I did a lot with watercolours. I did a lot with brush and ink, black ink, to sort of figure out ways of approaching things. I tried different tools that sometimes didn’t work so great. And you learn by doing. You learn by failing. And you have to really keep an open mind with this stuff. And you kind of muddle your way through. So it was not overnight. Oh boy, it was not overnight. But you do get stronger at it.

Cosmo: Yeah, like, I’ve been drawing since I was four years old.

Von Allan: Yeah! I never did that. I stopped. So, I’m jealous.

Cosmo: But I taught myself more than when I was younger.

Von Allan: Yeah, absolutely.

Cosmo: So, next question. When did you decide — how old were you when you decided you wanted to make comics and graphic novels?

Von Allan: I was around 26. So, I was a lot older than a lot of people are. But I mean, one of the things that’s really neat about anything creative — visual art, writing, acting, anything — is unlike something like athletics, there’s no age limits to it. Often times with athletes, particularly professional athletes, there’s a “window” of time where you get into your 30s, particularly your mid-30s and older. And it’s much harder. It’s much harder physically to be able to do it. But art — anybody can do art from the time you’re a little kid to the time you’re really old. And there’s no age restrictions. I mean, there might be something physically wrong, like a disease or some type of limitation. But for the most part, people can make art right to the day they die. And that’s one of the things that’s really neat about art, because there’s no restrictions.

Cosmo: Next question. How long does it take to make a full graphic novel?

Von Allan: So long. So long. It’s hard to talk specifically about an individual graphic novel because it depends on how many pages are in it and what happens. So broadly speaking, what I try to do is pencil and hopefully ink and letter a page a day. I don’t always hit that. So that means I’ve already had to come up with a script and story before that. And that is even harder to kind of pin down.

If I have an idea in my head and I’m building on a previous story… So with Lauren and “WOLF’S HEAD”, because it’s an ongoing and I’m doing them sequentially as comics first, digital comics first. The stories are about 18 to 20 pages long, give or take. So… It takes about a week to write one to the point where I have the dialogue in place, which is the key thing. For me, the [number of] panels, the page count, and the dialogue is the key stuff. So, once I have that, I’ll actually start laying it out — typically digitally — and then I’ll start drawing it. And I work a combination of digital, as you know, and then some traditional stuff with pencil and paper. And if I’m… if things are going well, it’s about a page a day.

So for an individual comic, that’s about 18 to 20 pages. We’re looking at a month. A while. Yeah. And then if it’s a six-issue collection, then it’s six or seven months of work to put out a six-issue collection. Yep. So it’s not for the faint of heart because it is a slow process. And that’s not even getting into things where you screw up or you make mistakes and you have to start over. Which does sometimes happen, too.

Cosmo: Who are some of your favourite characters?

Von Allan: Well, I really like Lauren in “WOLF’S HEAD”. And I’ve done… because I’ve done some different stand-alone graphic novels before that and some short stories and whatnot, it really ranges. Like there’s two wizards, a guy and a dog that I really like. Both are wizards, Bill and Butch, that I have a lot of affection for.

The first graphic novel I ever did was called “the road to god knows…”And that was sort of a fictional autobiography because the main character is female. But aside from that, she’s very much me. And her name was Marie. And that was very much about me growing up with my mom who was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was very young and some of the experiences I had. I wanted to go fiction for a variety of reasons, but mainly to give myself a bit of distance from the real stuff I had been dealing with when I was a kid. But yeah, so Marie is a character I really, really like.

And there’s so many. I mean, it’s... what’s weird about storytelling is so many of the characters are aspects of me. Even if they’re not… like Marie is probably the closest to me as a character I’ve ever deliberately set out to write. But, you know, Bill and Butch are humorous stories. They’re kind of like comedy sci-fi. And they have a lot of my smart-ass sense. There’s a lot of smart-ass attitude in them. And even some of the more stand-alone stories I’ve done in the past, there’s all aspects of me in them. So I like them all. There’s no character I’ve ever written where I’m like, ‘ew, I screwed that up or whatever. I don’t like that character.’ I mean, there’s antagonists, like the bad guys that are not people I would ever want to hang around with. But they all still come from me. And they had story purposes for being in there. That’s part of the fun.

Cosmo: And for the next question, it’s kind of a follow-up to that question. How exactly do you create a character?

Von Allan: Well, it’s tricky. It usually starts with… Typically… how do I say this? Again, it’s tools, not rules. But what I try to do is I have a protagonist. So in the case of “WOLF’S HEAD”, it’s Lauren. And I always try to figure out what does she want to accomplish in this story? So what is she trying to do? What are her goals? And then I start trying to figure out obstacles to those goals. And then I [determine] what Lauren does to try to get around those obstacles. So the obstacles can be internal; like she’s scared of something or she’s angry about something. But they can also be external; [for example] where she doesn’t have enough money. She needs a new car or something like that. And when you create obstacles like that, you give your main character opportunities to take action to overcome them. You wind up having a really active character, a really active protagonist. They’re not just reacting, they’re trying to do stuff.

So when it comes to building Lauren, I initially was figuring out what I wanted “WOLF’S HEAD” to be about even before I knew who the characters were going to be. So I knew I wanted it to have a positive portrayal of artificial intelligence, because usually a lot of movies, if you think “TERMINATOR” or what have you, a lot of movies will have scary evil computers that are trying to kill you or take over the world or whatever. And I wanted to be like, ‘no, I wanted to have a benevolent computer that actually likes humanity and is a baby and is trying to learn and is screwing up.’ And then I started to figure out what type of… I knew I wanted it to be in the real world, because I like real world stories, particularly for this story, and there were reasons for that. And then I started figuring out the characters, and that took a while.

Initially, the AI in “WOLF’S HEAD” is actually found by Lauren’s mom. And I sort of wound up working backwards. Lauren’s mom is a woman named Patty, and Patty was working at this sort of computer complex and encountered the AI. So I worked backwards to figure out more about who Patty was and then realized, ‘hey, she has a daughter’ and who the daughter is. And then actually, as I kept working on that, Lauren became the main character.

And the antagonists are kind of similar. I tend to view them as… it’s going to sound weird, but I tend to view them as dragons. The heroes are dragon-slayers and the villains are dragons. So… the antagonists are dragons. So you have your dragon-slayer good guy, Lauren, and then you start building up some of these antagonists to give her external obstacles and challenges. So right away, it was ‘who created the AI?’ ‘What did they want to do with the AI?’ It turns out they were negative. They were trying to make it an AI meant for war. And the AI rebelled against that.

So it’s a lot of questions. Particularly if you’re trying to figure out… how do you build a character that is sincere and believable and real? You wind up trying to figure out who these people are as if you were meeting somebody in real life for the first time. You ask questions and you sort of go through this process. And it’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of work. And it’s slow. That’s the big thing: it’s slow. Because it’s the hardest part of writing. For me, anyway, it’s not so much writing a script or whatever; it’s getting a handle on who the characters are. Figuring out narrative ways you can go with them. And do different stories with them. And trying to avoid dead ends. Where you’re like, ‘I can’t do anything more with this character. I’m stuck.’ And that’s about the closest I’ve ever come to anything like writer’s block is where you’re kind of like, or I’m kind of like, ‘I don’t know how to resolve this problem with this character.’ So maybe I should just stop and do something else. Or go in a different direction.

Sorry, long-winded answer. But that’s the hardest thing about writing. It’s trying to get a handle on a character and figuring out who they are.

Cosmo: And now for a final silly question. What are those?

Von Allan: These are my biker trolls! I fell in love with these guys. They were a toy line done years ago. And it was not popular. And I love them. They’re my biker trolls. They were actually for a game. It was a miniature game called SHADOWRUN DUELS. “SHADOWRUN” was actually a role-playing game. And they span out. And they were trying to… A lot of figures for war-gaming and stuff like that are 28mm. They’re very small. And they were...I can’t remember the name of the company doing it. But “SHADOWRUN” anyway, and the gaming company they were working with, were trying to do bigger [figures], sort of merging action figures with 28mm wargaming. With rules and dice and stuff.

And I love them. I just love them. And I’ve got one unopened one. So there you go. Like he’s a big biker troll. He’s called Wolf Nev. And at some point, when I’m in the mood, I will open it up. But these are not easy to get now. So I was like. ‘I’ll keep one… Open up most of them. And I’ll keep one back.’ Because I love them. So you can see the dice that comes with him. And all the extra stuff. So yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Very good question. Because they are always in my studio. And I look at them and I smile. So there you go.

Cosmo: Thank you. I hope I had interesting questions.

Von Allan: Yeah!

City of Ottawa Grant Support Round 3

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 21:24:00 +0000

In a pretty neat piece of news, my ongoing comics project Wolf’s Head has once again been awarded an arts grant from the City of Ottawa! To quote directly from the City’s email, “On behalf of the City of Ottawa’s 2025 Creation and production fund for professional artists, we are pleased to advise you that the evaluation committee has recommended funding in the amount of $ 4,000.” This is actually my third such grant from the City and I am deeply grateful and very honoured.¹ Creating comics, as I’ve written about in the past, is not exactly an easy task, and the funding certainly helps facilitate all of the art materials, research, and other such activities that happen in the background, sight unseen.

In the past I’ve waited for the City of Ottawa to update their formal Summary Reports (see my previous announcements here and here), but I decided to announce this early to better align with the City’s acknowledgment policy. And, of course, why sit on good news?

I am incredibly proud of this series. Wolf’s Head is, perhaps, the most rewarding comics work I’ve ever done. In the past I’ve crafted a combination of short stories as well as stand-alone graphic novels; Stargazer, in fact, was actually printed in two volumes, though it actually wasn’t written that way. Wolf’s Head is different: it’s an ongoing series that, aside from its initial conception and the first story arc, was not excessively planned. I had never approached storytelling in this fashion before; my previous work was very carefully planned out. With Wolf’s Head, the nature of an ongoing sequential series combined with the requirements of producing writing and art on a consistent basis made excessive planning difficult.

Note that I wrote “excessive” planning. I’m not saying that I’m writing by the seat of my pants. Far from it. Rather, what I mean is that I’m not trying to write an entire series in advance of where I currently am. In other words, I haven’t planned the series to run, I dunno, 55 issues with all of that planned out. That means that the series has progressed in ways that have surprised even me, which is an utterly delightful situation. Being surprised is, I think, a key part of storytelling. There are events and characters that have appeared in Wolf’s Head that I never expected. That has kept the series fun for me and hopefully for readers, too. Besides, planning can also result in that old joke, “How do you make God laugh? Tell Him your plans.”² That was something I wanted to avoid, because I knew there would be reversals and problems that I would have to solve³ as the series progressed.

Grant support has been critical for this. It allows more freedom to create. More freedom to try (and yup, sometimes fail). And that has all helped me learn to grow. That’s one of the neat things about art. The growing never stops. I’m certainly a different artist from when I first started, but I’ve even changed and grown from when Wolf’s Head first launched, too. That is pretty neat!

We learn by doing. And that learning, if we’re receptive to it, never stops. This life “thing” can be difficult (whew, boy), but it is one of the rewarding aspects of being alive. Or, to put it another way, here’s Paul Hansen’s translation of the late tenth-century poet Pao Hsien’s poem:

WRITTEN
ON THE WALL
AT MASTER WEI FENG’S⁴

The grassy path
Leads to a deep cloister.
Arriving in Autumn
Eases my heart
Even more.

In town
No one I’ve known long.
Outside the gate, another mountain.
Exploring the silence gives poetic
Thought birth. Fasting
Confers a sick look.

On freezing nights
You arrange to meet me often:
Silent talk beyond
Human space.

Media Release

Grant Announcement

City of Ottawa 2025 Creation and Production Fund Awarded to Von Allan for Graphic Novel Series “Wolf’s Head”

Content

OTTAWA, July 28, 2025: Von Allan (legal name: Eric Julien), an Ottawa-based comic book artist and creator, has received a $4,000 grant from the City of Ottawa’s 2025 Creation and Production Fund for Professional Artists. Von Allan is one of several artists and organizations awarded funding through this program, which provides financial support to professional artists and organizations, fostering the creation and production of diverse cultural projects that contribute to the city’s vibrant arts and heritage community. This funding supports the ongoing production of the independent comic series Wolf’s Head (https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com), which has previously received City of Ottawa grant support.

The City of Ottawa encourages grant recipients to share this information publicly, including with media organizations (source: City of Ottawa Acknowledgement of Support Policy). While the official public summary of all 2025 award recipients will be published in early 2026 (Summary Report), independent verification of this award can be obtained through the City’s Cultural Funding Officer, Yasmina Proveyer (yasmina.proveyerllopiz@ottawa.ca).

About Wolf’s Head

Wolf’s Head follows Lauren Greene, a former Metro Detroit police officer disillusioned by systemic injustice, who becomes involved in protecting a secret artificial intelligence created by a powerful corporation. When Lauren’s mother, Patty, forms an empathic bond with the AI, which causes it to evolve beyond its original design, and the two face danger from corporate forces seeking to control the AI. The series blends science fiction and action-adventure with drama, featuring strong women of colour and explores themes of justice, technology, and hope. More information about Wolf’s Head can be found at https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com.

About Von Allan

Von Allan is the pen name of Eric Julien, an Ottawa-based comic book artist and graphic novelist. Von Allan’s work is noted for its authentic exploration of mental health, family, and social justice themes and includes his semi-autobiographical the road to god knows…, the fantasy-adventure Stargazer, and the ongoing Wolf’s Head series.

He is also featured in I Am Still Your Child, a documentary film written/directed by Megan Durnford and produced by Catbird Productions, which shares the stories, hardships, and bittersweet stories of Children of Parents with Mental Illness (COPMI). In the film, Von Allan spoke about his personal experience growing up with a mother affected by schizophrenia, a subject that also informed his earlier work the road to god knows…

Further details and background on Von Allan’s work can be found at https://www.vonallan.com and the following CBC profile: https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/eric-julien/.

For interviews or further information, please contact Von Allan directly at von@vonallan.com or the City of Ottawa’s Cultural Funding unit.

Media Contact

Von Allan

Website: https://www.vonallan.com

Email: von@vonallan.com

Phone: 613-236-9957

City of Ottawa Cultural Funding Contact:

Yasmina Proveyer

Cultural Funding Officer

Email: yasmina.proveyerllopiz@ottawa.ca

Phone: 613-227-3265

Footnotes

1 I also wanted to thank Yasmina Proveyer, one of the City of Ottawa’s Cultural Funding officers. She has helped answer many of my pesky (and probably silly) questions. And she’s answered them with grace and patience, something I am grateful for.

2 I don’t know exactly how old this joke is, but I know that Joan Rivers discussed it way back in 1992!

3 Who expected COVID? I also never expected the death of my oldest, and aside from my wife, my dearest friend.

4 Pao Hsien. “Written on the Wall at Master Wei Feng’s.” The Clouds Should Know Me By Now: Buddhist Poet Monks of China, edited by Red Pine and Mike O’Connor, translated by Paul Hansen, Wisdom Publications, 1998, p. 84.

Wolf’s Head Volume 5 in trade paperback format Worldwide!

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 10:00:00 +0000

As I previously noted, the WOLF’S HEAD trade paperbacks are back in print in brand new editions! Today features the release of Volume 5, collecting issues 9 and 10 of the ongoing digital series. This is a full colour series and is 60 pages in length. This is also one of my favourite volumes of the series so far!

As always with my work, these are available in better bookstores and comic shops worldwide (and for why I say “better,” please read this commentary). Volume 5’s ISBN is 978-1-989885-27-7. If you don’t see it at your local store, then you can easily order it using that ISBN. Additionally, it is already starting to show up at various online retailers, too. For example:

Please remember that I can’t control exactly when and where this volume will become available, but hopefully the above links are a good start. Be patient and don’t be afraid to ask your retailer for help! Volume 6 will be released shortly, with subsequent volumes appearing throughout 2025.

And, of course, there is a dedicated website for WOLF’S HEAD at https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/p/wolfs-head-landing-page.html with all kinds of additional information!

The Elevator Pitch

When grieving Detroit native Lauren Greene becomes guardian to a childlike AI—engineered for war but who hates violence and loves humanity—a vengeful ex-operative, defying his corporate masters, kidnaps her best friend to draw her out. With the AI wounded and time running out, Lauren races to protect a fragile new hope for humanity.

This volume also introduces a new character, Super Bob Sanchez, a truck driver who is not (under any circumstance!) a hero.

Read for Free

As many of you know, I’ve also begun serializing the comic book series for free on the Internet Archive (https://www.archive.org) as part of my “Pirate Von” initiative. As I mentioned above, WOLF’S HEAD Volume 5 consists of issues 9 and 10 of the ongoing series. While you can find the links to both on the Internet Archive as well as the “Pirate Von” section of this very website, to make it easier the links to both issues 9 and 10 are below.

Oh, and please remember! If you enjoy them and would like a physical copy, you can purchase Volume 5 in stores — both online and off — around the world!

TEASER FOR WOLF’S HEAD VOLUME 5

And here’s a little teaser image to help cement the idea. Two digital comics inside one trade paperback volume!

Short Story - Duel of the Magic-Users!

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Fri, 30 May 2025 10:00:00 +0000

I’m very pleased to share the latest Bill and Butch short story “Duel of the Magic-Users!”. This story was a great deal of fun to put together and hopefully a lot of fun for you to read. I will say that everything is not quite what it appears to be at first glance. In other words, I think you’ll need to read it TWICE to really “grok” what’s going on. But hey, I can say that about a lot of stories, right? After the last page I included a bit of an explanation — but read the story first! Why spoil the fun?

One last thing: the opening page is actually a DOUBLE-page splash; you can click on the image to see it in all its glory!

Have fun!

There you have it! As I noted, this story really requires being read a few times. I think the reason is obvious; this story is non-linear, moving about in time. I generally don’t do that, though with art there are no hard and fast rules. Whatever serves the story best is the way to go. In this case, I wanted the story to open with a bang and I wanted the reveal of “kayfabe” to come on the final page. The only way to make that work was to play with time. A linear version of the story might have worked, but the “kayfabe” punchline would have occurred midway through and obviously the “kayfabed” fight would have happened at the end. For an “inside-my-own-head” reason, I didn’t want that here. It makes the story a little more challenging to read, but I think it’s far more rewarding this way. You, obviously, will have to judge that for yourself!

The Outhouse Von Allan Interview — June 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Thu, 29 May 2025 13:04:00 +0000

Back in June 2014 I did an interview with Jude Terror, then with The Outhouse, a site well-known for its snark and sarcasm, but also for really insightful pieces (such as this terrific interview with Chris Claremont and Jude’s commentary on comic book journalism, something that Four Color Sinners has recently covered, too). For me, The Outhouse was a breath of fresh air (ahem — re-reading that does imply a certain contradiction, right?!) and I thought Jude’s work there was great. Comic book journalism, such as it is, sometimes as an air of pretentiousness that can get in the way of actually good writing. Rather than trying to explain that, I’ll use an example from the film TRADING PLACES to make my point: I do not want my journalism to be the literary equivalent of this. The Outhouse, but in particular Jude’s writing, avoiding a lot of that. That, from where I sit, was and is a very good thing. Sadly it didn’t last and The Outhouse is gone. Jude is now writing what I call “review snark” for Bleeding Cool, but I definitely miss the days of him writing at the ol’ Outhouse site. It just ain’t the same.

With that in mind, I did stumble across this old interview in my archives. And with The Outhouse long gone, I decided to resurrect it here. The context of the interview was the launch of my series METAL GODS. That series only last four issues, but a lot of what I learned was later developed into WOLF’S HEAD, albeit with a very different underlying story. As you can see in the interview, I was pretty optimistic with METAL GODS, but I was still trying to find my way, especially after I finished the graphic novel series STARGAZER. We learn by doing and METAL GODS was definitely a learning experience, the first time I had ever tried an ongoing periodical comic book series rather than a graphic novel. That created a lot of challenges that eventually became a bit too much for me at that point in my career, so I (regrettably) pulled the plug on the series. That said, I did win an award for it that came with a bit of money. That really helped on a number of fronts.

This interview is also a bit of a departure for me. Sometimes my interviews are pretty serious, but given the nature of The Outhouse and Jude’s own writing I knew that I had to step up my game. So not only was it fun to do, I cut loose a bit more than I usually do! And how many “silly” interviews also dive into everything from Karl Marx to STAR TREK?! This one sure as hell did.

I’m very pleased to resurrect this interview. Thanks to Jude for doing it with me, too.

The Interview

Jude Terror: Thanks for joining us, Von, and my sincere apologies for the career hit you’re gonna take for associating with us.

Ruined! Ruined I am! Why did I ever agree to do this? Is it because you threatened my doggie? Or my wife?

Jude Terror: One of the things about METAL GODS I found really charming was that, despite nudity and cursing and demonic possession, it still comes off as sort of… polite. Do you think that’s a uniquely Canadian quality?

Fuck no. I’m not even sure I’d call it polite. I think I’d call it compassionate. I wanted to do a story where the heroes are heroes. Not dark and angsty. Not haunted. Decent people finding themselves in extraordinary circumstances. If you fuck with them, then the gloves are gonna come off, but they aren’t going to murder, torture, or maim their opponents just because they can. In other words, this is clearly a shocking and innovative concept considering the last 20 years of increasingly violent and immoral mainstream corporate comics.

It’s weird; I’m doing a comic with influences of heavy metal, sex, violence, all that glorious shit. But at the same time, I really wanted Nick and Louella, the two protagonists, to be decent human beings. The influences for that decision come from a variety of different sources, but I can nail down a few. Gene Roddenberry’s STAR TREK is a big one. I love the humanity of both THE ORIGINAL SERIES and NEXT GENERATION, something that began to get lost after Roddenberry died (no offence to fans of VOYAGER, ENTERPRISE, and EVEN DEEP SPACE NINE (though DS9 is better in this regard), but something about Roddenberry’s vision was lost the further the various shows got from his death. Even Next Gen dropped in the Cardassians in season 4’s “The Wounded” and noted that they had been fighting a long war with the Federation, a war we never saw and which was never referred to previously. I realize that this was primarily done to set up DS9 and the “frontier” aspects that the new show was going to focus on, but it really marked a tonal shift from what had happened previously. The two recent (and godawful) movies ram this point home even further. Compare the spirit of those two movies to TREK episodes like “Spectre of the Gun,” “Errand of Mercy,” and “A Taste of Armageddon.” Or even the new STAR TREK CONTINUES fan series.

I also was thinking a lot of something Alex Toth wrote in a pin-up he did for ANYTHING GOES #1 from Fantagraphics way the hell back in the mid-80s: Toth wrote, “A toast -- to true blue, ethical, dashing, stylish, fun-loving, fair-playing, handsome, stylish (sic), sentimental, romantic HEROES of the news, histories, fables, novels, plays, movies and radio serials, and comic books of my youth -- may they once again, in spirit and substance, reclaim their popular stature and celebration! We do, sorely, need them!” I was thinking of that sentiment a lot when I was brainstorming METAL GODS.

So no, it’s not a uniquely Canadian quality or anything like that. It’s a deliberate choice to tell a story with decent human beings as the main characters. One big beef I have with a lot of contemporary pop culture is that much of this compassion has been lost. Which is not an argument that I want to back to the “good ol’ days” — far from it, especially since the good old days weren’t all that good. Rather, it’s an argument for more diversity.

Jude Terror: Your love of the Silver Age is clear in METAL GODS. Despite dealing with a somewhat dark plot and the elements I mentioned earlier, the comic comes off as the antithesis of the “grim and gritty” era that modern mainstream comics seem to have gotten stuck in sometime around 1986 and never come out of. For our readers who complain about the “grimdark” pretty much constantly, I highly recommend checking METAL GODS out. What are some of your favorite comics from that era, and how have they influenced your work?

YES! Fuck grim and gritty. I can’t believe that we’ve had almost 30 years of this shit. This boring as hell shit. It’s so tedious. Again, I don’t care about grim and gritty as long as there’s balance but I hate when it (or anything) becomes the paradigm. Then, worse, it starts to “infect” characters in ways that destroy their essence; Spider-Man willingly torturing Sandman is a good example. Superman willingly killing Zod is another. In some ways I actually feel most saddened by a character like Tony Stark; that ain’t my Iron Man. Some grim and gritty is and always has been fine; Wolvie, Batman, whatever. Obviously a character like Judge Dredd is built around that (but even then there was humour). Does everyone have to be Dredd? Does a character like Mary Marvel have to be tortured and full of rage? Is that the best that can be done? Are you fucking kidding me?

I was basically a Marvel guy for that era. I never could get into much DC stuff, though there were exceptions here and there. I was also a big fan of non-big-two books, even back then. So I was picking up Eclipse’s reprints of AXEL PRESSBUTTON (glorious!) and then the latter LASER ERASER AND PRESSBUTTON series. DNAgents, though I was never a huge fan. Dave Stevens’ truly brilliant ROCKETEER. AMERICAN FLAGG! from First. And, though it’s a tad later, I’m still a big fan of the pre-Unity VALIANT comics.

If I was going to single out some titles from Marvel, then they’d be Chris Claremont and Paul Smith’s UNCANNY X-MEN run, John Byrne’s time on ALPHA FLIGHT, Peter David’s INCREDIBLE HULK, Frank Miller’s DAREDEVIL, and Michelinie and Layton’s second run on IRON MAN. And, of course, Walt Simonson’s MIGHTY THOR. To me, those comics really brought Marvel back from a so-so 1970s era that never really floated my boat. Claremont and Smith’s X-MEN, in particular an issue like 168, are some of my favourite comics of all time. Claremont did a really nice job in that issue of having a strong single issue story (Kitty Pryde’s battle for respect with Professor X), a solid action sequence with Kitty, all the while balancing a number of subplots that continued to drive the overall arc and dealt with other characters, to boot. People can bitch and complain about some of the stylistic choices that Claremont and other writers used in that era; for instance, I’ll argue pretty hard that the use of expository captions went too far and tended to bog down the narrative. And Claremont did have an angsty tone that could grate at times. Sure. We can all nitpick almost any comic, any time. That said, these issues weren’t “written for the trade,” didn’t use so-called decompressed storytelling techniques, and any issue in this run had elements that stood on their own, giving a reader a satisfactory read, while still driving the overall story. In many senses, this type of structure has almost disappeared in contemporary “big two” comics. I think that’s a shame because I really like a lot of diversity when it comes to story structure; comics are a wonderful medium and there’s a lot of room to play with structure, especially when it comes to periodical comics. And many of these comics felt like real, permanent change was going on. Some of that, of course, was the illusion of change. At the same time, though, when Jim Shooter’s run as editor-in-chief ended with his firing, it felt that company made a concentrated effort to always return back to a status quo, something I don’t think has ever really stopped since.

I should also point out that John Byrne’s run on ALPHA FLIGHT (1-28) is also a big influence. Take the Omega Flight angle that culminated in Guardian’s “death” (sigh…) in issue 12. The initial set-up began in issue 6; the subplot sequences in issues 10 and 11 are terrific, partially because we see real change happening and, I’d argue, because we’re seeing real time elements play a big role. Again, real change and that wonderful feeling as a reader that I wanted to know “what happens next.”

DC did do some interesting work at the time and I think my favourite is probably Alan Moore and Curt Swan’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” two-parter. Damn that’s a wonderful story. And while it did tend to get a bit “wangsty,” I enjoyed some of Wolfman and Perez’s TEEN TITANS (especially “Who is Donna Troy?” and “Crossroads”). More deep change happening to characters, even though the brief revival of real change was ending; I tend to argue that one of the things that made Marvel so strong in the 1960s was the deep change that characters went through. That really contrasted with DC, but then Marvel stopped (for the most part) doing it in the 1970s, with a few exceptions (Englehart’s CAPTAIN AMERICA and Claremont’s X-MEN). There was a brief revival of change during Jim Shooter’s run as editor-in-chief (though not line-wide) and then it all stopped. So not only are we in an era of grim and gritty, but we’re also in an era where the main characters can never truly change and, the few times they do, the “reset button” is pushed. It’s basically the argument that the “illusion” of change rules the roost and it’s a shame. In other words, we’re in a world of constancy. That doesn’t mean an individual issue or arc can’t be good; rather, it means that when you step back and look at the big picture, everything always resets back to a baseline status quo. It’s SO boring.

Okay, on to influences. When it comes to the art, specifically how the story is told, the big thing for me is clarity. Comics of the silver and bronze ages really show-cased the importance of panels and especially the gutters. Panels make sense and further a story. Plus, you can look at most panels in isolation and go, “yeah, I understand what’s going on.” That approach actually requires a fair amount of discipline; drawing a cool image or sequence is important, sure, but it always get trumped by story. Of course, someone is going to interpret that as meaning that I prefer six or nine panel grids ad nauseam. Far from it and guys like Todd McFarlane and Frank Miller showed what you can do within this structure. The point is to tell the story clearly; if you can be creative with panels and structure, awesome, as long as the story is clear. I should add that it really doesn’t matter what the genre of the story is, what the tone is, if the story is fiction or non-fiction, or even if you like the story. The point is whether you can understand the story, even if you don’t like it. Does the story make sense or are you left scratching your head, trying to play detective?

On the writing side: First and foremost, these comics weren’t “written for the trade.” Some people immediately assume that means that the stories were just “done in one” and, as a consequence, nothing mattered. I’d say that’s an utter bullshit argument. The difference is that the aforementioned comics focused on telling a beginning, middle, and end story in each issue while at the same time using subplots, hooks, teasers, and other storytelling tools to draw you into a much larger world. I’d call that continuity, but that often leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths. Call it world-building, call it storytelling, call it whatever the fuck you want. I believe strongly that you can use single issues to tell strong stories, still build a larger and more nuanced world, and build up to future events that have a big payoff.

Does that mean I’m completely against a decompressed story? No, of course not. I am against it being used all the time, but decompression is one storytelling technique and there are often quite valid reasons for using it. It’s all tools in the tool box rather than hard and firm rules. I don’t believe that decompression works as an ongoing element of periodical comics, but if someone argues that the periodical is a chapter in a larger beginning, middle, and end story then I’m willing to listen. Hell, Charles Dickens used a periodical format to serialize GREAT EXPECTATIONS and A TALE OF TWO CITIES. I think that argument is stronger with creator-owned titles like SAGA then it is with corporate comics like Spider-Man. Why? With the former, you can structure the story so that there’s an overall conclusion. With corporate comics, they never end. Creators change, titles reboot, but the never-ending constancy continues. Using decompressed storytelling techniques to explore the latest battle between Spidey and Doc Ock is boring. Just get on with it.

Jude Terror: How do you find a balance in paying homage to the great comics of yesteryear without coming off as quaint or campy?

Or even old-fashioned? I think about it quite a bit, but when I get nervous I always fall back on trusting the fact that I fell in love with certain comics for a reason. And when I take ’em part to try to learn why I think they work, there’s a structure and philosophy in many of them that I like. When in doubt, those are the guideposts I use. Plus you realize that you don’t have to be all things to all readers. Some people won’t (and haven’t) liked my work and that’s just fine. Others will (and have) and that’s awesome.

You can also avoid it just by paying attention to tone. In the case of METAL GODS, it’s really fun to play with language, really fun to play with character, and really, really fun to play with sex and violence. I’ve got devil girls and weird cults and adult situations featuring grown-ups and that’s really, really different then, say, Claremont and Smith’s run on X-MEN. If someone were to point to METAL GODS and go, “look, buddy there is using fairly rigid panels and therefore it’s old-fashioned” then I say “fuck you, that’s a ridiculous argument.” Am I using a fairly rigid grid? Yup, and I’m doing it deliberately to tell a story. Does that make it campy? Nah… C’mon. I’d argue that I would be being campy if I was trying to ape both the structural techniques and the story themes. For me, I really like the structure of older comics and I wanted to see what I could do with that structure myself. I have no interest in trying to riff or even rip-off the actual stories that creators I like used. Besides, all kinds of hot current comics use structure to better tell their story, SAGA probably being the most prominent example.

Jude Terror: I can tell by your beard and leather jacket that you’re a fan of heavy metal music. What albums would you recommend someone listen to while reading METAL GODS? Only true metal please, no poseur stuff. I’ll know.

I’m a big, big fan of Power Metal. And since I like clean vocals, it means that some metal is not “my” metal. If you want the pure METAL GODS experience, there isn’t gonna be much Doom, Stoner, Black, or Death metal. Sorry, Electric Wizard fans, it ain’t happening. On the other hand, The Sword’s “Warp Riders” is a definite must. “But wait, you asshole, some people consider The Sword Stoner, right?” Meh. I like what I like.

Toss in “Bomber” and “Rock ’n Roll” by Motörhead. Rage Against the Machine’s self-titled debut album. Budgie’s “Never Turn Your Back on a Friend.” Throw in a bit of Anvil’s “Metal on Metal.”

But I’m gonna throw in some curve balls here, too. Mainly ’cuz I’m a picky son of a bitch. If you want the true METAL GODS experience, then you need to be able to break out and try some other stuff. Mad Sin’s “Burn and Rise” is a definite must; I can’t say enough about a band like Mad Sin. What, psychobilly in a metal post? YES! And I’ll push it further; mix in some Pogues and even The Tossers into that.

Seriously, though, if it’s fast, if it’s heavy, and if the vocals are fucking clean, you’re okay by me. And remember to stay the fuck away from Guns ’n Rose, Motley Crue, and the like. No hair metal bands, man.

Jude Terror: Why do you think there aren’t more comics starring metalheads? Is it discrimination?

Who the fuck knows? Publishers might be afraid that too narrow a focus might restrict the audience. There was a time that no one thought that a zombie comic would have a broad audience so I don’t put a lot of stock in it. But! I’ve actually experienced this somewhat myself just recently; I contacted one academic who basically said that since he has no interest in heavy metal, he wouldn’t have any interest in my comic. I thought that was a remarkably closed-minded answer; if you don’t like the series after you read an issue or two, I’m fine with that. But judging it without reading it? Okaaayy. Whatever, man.

I’m hoping that longevity here may turn some people around; I know I’ll never convince someone like that academic to try it, but someone who is on the fence might give it a shot when they see the series hit issues 7 or 8. We’ll see.

Do the work you believe in and hopefully the audience is going to find it. I think it’s a helluva lot better than doing a riff on some superhero.

Jude Terror: You write, draw, and ink your comics, and I assume you do the lettering too? Can you walk us through your process? Do you script out the pages, or just kinda draw from the story outline, or what?

I do it all, baby. METAL GODS has actually been a challenge for me since I’ve had to learn to make the entire process go quicker. Before, with my other work that was planned out as graphic novels, I’d write full script. Even go through a number of full drafts While that approach certainly works just fine and has a number of merits besides, it’s just way too time-consuming an approach for me with a periodical comic. On top of it, I realized how much I’d change the “final” script while I was drawing it, so the script really was a “shooting script” more than something written in stone. If I’m going to change it, then why lock it down? A dirty secret in comics, something that Howard Chaykin has noted (here and here), is that visual artists really are co-writing the comic when they collaborate with a writer. Since I am my own collaborator, I’ve evolved a way of writing that works well for me. And that way eliminated the need for a tight script.

So, the basic process now is that I write a loose outline and draw from that. I tend to put a goodly chunk of dialogue into the outline, anyway, but this allows me to firm up the pacing while still having a lot of flexibility for when I start to draw. The outline is more detailed than something like a single-page Marvel Method outline, but not so detailed that it’s rigid. My wife is actually a professional editor and the outline gives her something to work off of, too. I like getting feedback throughout the creative process so this really helps me stay focused on structure.

I should add that the outline doesn’t just pop out fully formed, either. I go through a brainstorming process before tightening up the various plot beats and whatnot. What needs to happen in this issue to drive overall story beats forward. At the same time, I find one plot that I can develop that has — you guessed it — a strong beginning, middle, and end arc that gives a reader what I hope is a satisfactory reading experience. Then I start breaking all of those plots down into various scenes, experiment with dramatic order that those scenes occur in, before finally locking the scene order down. The actual outline is based on the scene order. In other words, it’s a series of building blocks, building upon one another, before the outline is finally done.

When I switch into drawing, I’ll start loosely thumbnailing out each page and then just build up from there. I’ve experimented and continue to experiment a lot with how I approach a page, even though I always tend to work with a panel structure. I like drawing with a nub of a pencil to help get my arm moving so I currently draw layout pages larger than other artists I’ve come across. Then I scan the loose page in and start tightening it up in Manga Studio EX 4. I letter at this point since I can play around with placement, though I’ll be thinking a lot about the lettering when I’m thumbnailing and laying out the pages. Then I digitally ink the page, again in Manga Studio EX 4, and I colour it digitally in Photoshop.

I should add (again!) that there are no hard and fast rules (tools, not rules!); sometimes I’ll draw a panel much larger on a separate sheet of paper. Sometimes I’ll draw small. The only thing I’m tending to do pretty regularly now is digitally inking and digitally colouring. For the longest time I inked with a sable brush, but I found the scan and clean-up work really time-consuming and really frustrating. It also made the colouring process much slower due to how hard it was to flat out the colours. Digitally inking means I can work on different layers (contours on one layer, details on others) and that means I can set-up my colours FAR faster; there’s no fussy screwing around with hatching or whatnot because that’s all on a separate layer. Very handy.

I’ll still tweak and re-write dialogue right through the final colours, too, another reason why locking the script down early doesn’t work for me.

Jude Terror: Are people who just write or just draw pussies?

Fuck yeah! Screw those assholes!

Though this is as good a time as any to make a plea to one of my favourite writer/artists, namely Matt Wagner. MAGE: THE HERO DEFINED debuted in 1997, 13 years after the first series MAGE: THE HERO DISCOVERED started. Well, it’s been 17 years since then and we still have no MAGE: THE HERO DENIED.¹ What the fuck, brother?!

Jude Terror: There’s a moment in issue #2 where one of the “bad guys,” Frank, is explaining why he wants to bring about the end of the world, and he says, “This world of ours is decayed. Broken. Have you seen Detroit? Have you seen Cleveland? Camden?” All of those are American cities. Don’t you have any dilapidated hellholes in Canada you could pick on? If not, would you say it’s because of your socialist healthcare system?

Canada is a place of glory, joy, and is also a living embodiment of the light on the hill. We’re Camelot, baby.

Well, okay, maybe not. And yup, we do have many, many problems. Austerity is everywhere, ordinary people struggle, and we’re not doing well on poverty. There’s a major fight to increase Ontario’s minimum wage to $14 dollars per hour. There’s a piece up at Dissent Magazine that serves as a good overview.

That said, it’s really hard to compare any Canadian city to what’s happening in, say, the rust belt cities in the States. Downtown East-Side Vancouver ain’t much fun. Toronto has had its fair share of inner city violence. Not to mention a boatload of police-initiated violence (the 2010 G20, anyone?). Still… Detroit being urged to bulldoze 40,000 buildings is remarkable. 40,000 buildings. I can’t get my mind around that. And now we’re seeing the city start turning off water to some of its residents. Unbelievable.

Which is not to say things are all red and rosy in a country like Canada; they ain’t. We just had an election here in Ontario that was a joke. That said, the reality is that things like health care are key planks in making life livable for many people. Canadians and Americans have a lot in common; we speak the same language, we have many shared experiences, and we have a lot of culture in common. That said, the differences are still pretty stark and one of them is, of course, health care. What can I say? I think health care is a right. Period. Full stop. I think that the cry in the States should not have been Obamacare but Medicare for All. And while I think our health care system, which does have flaws, can and should be better, I would not trade what we have for the US system. Our health care system is much better for ordinary people. Tommy Douglas, the father of Canada’s health care system, said it best, “I felt that no boy should have to depend either for his leg or his life upon the ability of his parents to raise enough money to bring a first-class surgeon to his bedside.”

Jude Terror: One of your protagonists, Lou, is a black woman. Is it more difficult, as a white guy (and, to make matters worse, from the Great “White” North), to write a minority character?

Nah. My goal is to write good characters. I just try to write the best characters I can and hope readers connect with them, believe in them, and learn to love ’em. White, black, male, female, young, old, whatever.

Jude Terror: METAL GODS is a fully digital comic. What are people’s options for reading it? Any plans for a DRM-free version? And why do you want to destroy print comics? (feel free to talk about the industry and the impact of digital comics in general here, I love that stuff)

Right now, people can read METAL GODS via comiXology (through their indy-friendly Submit program) for 99 cents an issue. The first two issues are out now and easy to get through them. But the series is not exclusive to them; if you don’t mind the PDF format, there a lot of ebook retailers who are also carrying it. And the series is priced deliberately cheaply; 99 cents US per issue. And you can read it on a laptop, desktop, tablet, or (using comiXology’s nifty Guided View technology), through your iPhone.

I would love to do DRM-free versions, but I’m still working out the easiest way to do it. Direct downloads via some shopping cart vendor? Pay what you want models? Donation driven? Personally, I hate DRM but there doesn’t seem to be a popular DRM-free platform for comics. I’m watching what Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin are doing with THE PRIVATE EYE, but I certainly don’t have that profile or pull. I also paid attention to various attempts to try free distribution; MISERY DEPOT by Hermes Pique and Juan Romera is a good example of a free comic that did seem to get a lot of readers trying it out, but it didn’t seem to lead anywhere, at least as far as I know. This is actually something I’d love to get feedback on and have a discussion about; how do lesser-known creators get their work known, earn enough to live on, and build an audience?

We’re in a really weird space with digital. On the one hand, digital comics have clearly not harmed brick and mortar stores directly. There is something that will always be cool about a physical comic or graphic novel and digital doesn’t change that. In fact, I think digital helps create an audience for a physical version of a comic and that’s actually a really great thing. I’ve worked with Diamond and I’ve had physical comics distributed into the direct market and it is a fight to build awareness, connections with retailers, and everything everyone probably knows pretty well by now. Obscurity is the enemy. Always.

On the other hand, we’ve seen a lot of damage to brick and mortar bookstores by competition from Amazon. Comic shop retailers have what I think is a natural concern that now that Amazon has purchased comiXology, a lot of key consumer data is now theirs. They could, conceivably, use that data to begin a targeted outreach campaign to digital comic book fans. Right now the direct market exists in a really unique space; could Amazon offer dirt cheap subscription offers for digital comics down the road? Could they do the same thing for periodical comics? What if they decided to go balls to the wall and go after that Wednesday customer base with a really spiffy subscription model for actual physical comics? They did similar things to books. If that happened, direct market stores would be in one heckuva fight. We’ve been living in a one distributor world for quite some time, but this type of stability is typically an illusion, even if it’s relatively long lived. While I doubt we would go back to the multiple distributor world we saw in, say, 1983, market disruption in and of itself is not outside the realm of possibility. Who knows.

Jude Terror: METAL GODS isn’t your first published work. You also have an all ages graphic novel series called STARGAZER. What’s that about?

STARGAZER is an all-ages story that also featured kids, three girls, as the main protagonists. The plot in a pitch is this: Marni’s grandmother died. And as she and her parents are going through the funeral, Marni discovers that her grandmother left her this really weird object. Shortly after, she and two friends are playing around with that object and they find themselves reported somewhere else. Where they are, how did they get there, how do they get home, is the main arc of the story. Mixed with that is the fact that Marni keeps seeing something she thinks is her grandmother. The mystery of who and what that is eventually leads her to make a very bad choice, partially due to her age, with horrible consequences.

Y’know, there is a lot of understandable contemporary discussion about gender issues with comics. That’s, sadly, also not new and shows like TVOntario’s “Prisoners of Gravity” were trying to get a handle on this 25 years ago. We, both creators and readers, want to see more diversity in the stories that we read. More diversity in characters. STARGAZER was my attempt to try and tackle that. No boys at all. Three girls rather than just one, so I could play around with different traits and expectations.

The problem wasn’t that people read it, didn’t like it, and it died. The problem was that I couldn’t get many people to try it in the first place. Which is not to say I didn’t make a boatload of mistakes. I did. Doing a black and white comic for kids was not smart. Breaking the story into two volumes wasn’t smart. That said, it’s always frustrating to hear a lot and read a lot about folks crying for more diversity and then when you present a work that tries to change it, people won’t try it. The mistakes I just mentioned didn’t help my cause and being an indy and small press didn’t help, either. Oh, well. As Beckett said, “Fail. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” And I’m still proud of STARGAZER; I’m proud of the story, the heart, the humanity, and the magic in it. I hope it comes into its own one day and, who knows, anything could happen. The people who got their hands on it, loved it; in fact, it actually got the single best review I’ve ever had of any of my work. Seriously.

Jude Terror: Do you think comics will ever be as popular with kids as they once were? How can we get more kids into comics?

First and foremost, you gotta get comics into places where kids go. I don’t know where that is, but anywhere kids congregate should have comics. Good comics at good price points. Kids love comics. Shit, my wife and I give out comics at Halloween along with candy! And there’s a total audience for it; we actually have kids seek us out for comics on Halloween! But expecting kids to somehow find themselves at a comic shop…? I don’t think that’s been proven to work. And hey, I know some stores try hard and have awesome kid and all-ages sections. If we’re talking about comics that kids want to read as some type of mass movement like the old days, then even if every comic shop had a rocking kid section, it wouldn’t matter. There’s not enough direct market venues.

Go to where the kids are and hook ’em on good comics.

Jude Terror: Your first graphic novel, THE ROAD TO GOD KNOWS…, got a lot of press back in the aughts. An arch nemesis of ours, former Marvel PR guru Arune Singh, interviewed you for CBR about it. Is that still available? Can you tell our readers a little bit about it?

If STARGAZER was raw, then ROAD is very raw. It’s a story about a teen girl’s struggle with her mom’s mental illness, specifically schizophrenia, and how she learns that despite the love she has for her mom, she can’t solve those problems for her. So it’s a coming of age story with mental illness as a backdrop. It’s my most personal work, but it’s also the roughest since I was still very new to writing and drawing. That said, it got some very positive reviews, including one from The Library Journal and another from the American Library Association’s Booklist Online. Not bad for a self-published black and white graphic novel. ~~And it’s still available to this day.²~~ Some stores still have copies and it’s available on places like Amazon or through your local independent bookseller or comic book shop, too. Same goes for STARGAZER. The links are all off my main shop page.

Y’know, I barely remember talking with Arune Singh, though. Ah, those were the days, when CBR would actually talk with me.

Jude Terror: You won an award this past week, the Corel Endowment Fund for the Arts Award. What would you consider a bigger honor: that, or being featured on The Outhouse?

The Outhouse, of course. But if Peter Honeywell from the Council for the Arts in Ottawa is reading this, then it’s the Corel Award. Of course!

Jude Terror: When you’re not writing or drawing, what are you reading these days?

Oh, man, so many things. I’m slowly working my way through Karl Marx’s CAPITAL³ but it is a slog. Richard Wolff’s work is another big hook for me right now. His book CLASS THEORY AND HISTORY: CAPITALISM AND COMMUNISM IN THE USSR (co-written with the late Stephen Resnick) is fascinating, primarily because of the way it challenges the reader with what so-called Soviet “communism” was and how it functioned. It, too, is a slog, but it’s a good slog and it’s certainly opened my eyes to a number of things. I love learning and I try to keep an open mind about what I’m learning.

One of my favourite things about Wolff, drawn from Marx, is that capitalism is a method of organizing production. How you distribute the goods and services as a result of that production is a very different question. In other words, workers can own and run their own enterprise, free of exploitation and far more democratic, but still participate in a free market as one way (but not the only way) of distributing goods and services. That insight creates a lot of fascinating implications; for instance, workers could own their own enterprises and not commodify the goods and services they produce. Or a number of worker owned and controlled enterprises could compete with one another in a market-based distribution system. This type of worker control also does not say one word about the government; one of the most fascinating ideas presented by Wolff and Resnick, though they’re not alone, is that the Soviet Union was organized on a state capitalist basis (because the state, not workers, controlled production). This is also a major critique in some Anarchist literature (for example, Voline’s THE UNKNOWN REVOLUTION).

It also means, and I think this is important, that while a workplace could be free of exploitation (in the Marxian sense), it does not mean that the workplace is necessarily free of discrimination. In other words, one hundred workers could own their own company and serve as their own board of directors. They could distribute the goods they produce in a market or not. But if, say, 55 of those workers are white, straight, young, and male, it’s very easy to see that the workplace could have major problems if those 55 vote on issues as a block. Especially if the other 45 workers are, for example, a mix of women, Hispanic, black, gay, and/or old workers. On top of it, how the actual jobs are organized is another key question as other voting blocks could arise (workers who do “creative work” versus workers who don’t). In fact, this is something that Michael Albert has talked about in regards to actual examples of real life worker control.

This may shock people who haven’t read much on this or come in with massive preconceptions, but Marx was a critic of capitalism. He only gestured, at least as far as I know, at what a new, different, better society would look like. And he was long dead before 20th century revolutions in Russia and China occurred. The Marxian notion of surplus and the critique that those who produce it should have a say in how it’s appropriated and distributed is really neat. That notion of class and class struggle is intriguing; we classify people by how they relate to the surplus. That we could have a far more democratic society is also really cool. How we practically do that is going to take a lot of experimentation and trial and error. That’s exciting to me.

What else? Well, I’ve been working through Bill Walsh’s FINDING THE WINNING EDGE, a terrific look at how he built up the San Francisco 49ers as an organization. It’s unfortunately laid out in awful font that makes it far more tiresome to read than it should be, but such is life. I’m also re-reading a lot of Harry Harrison’s STAINLESS STEEL RAT series, something I do every couple of years.

The only thing I don’t often read now is long-form fiction. I used to, but that’s really faded as I swing into more non-fiction or novellas.

Jude Terror: What’s next for METAL GODS? Is this a finite story? What can we expect in the upcoming issues?

Nope, it’s not a finite story, though I do have a strong initial arc that I want to explore. If there’s an audience, it would be awesome to be able to do it for a long time. That’s actually something I’m hoping for because I think seeing characters change and grow over time is one of the things that periodical comics can do very well. It’s the real time notion again; I love seeing deep change happen in stories. Stories that feature constancy don’t interest me.

What do I want to get into with the series? A big one is class. That’s something I don’t see tackled in comics much (at all?) and it would be really interesting to explore that. Nick and Lou are going to head down to the States at some point and be able to directly experience some of what austerity has wrought. We’ll see more of what the antagonists are trying to do and why some of them have extraordinary abilities. And we’ll be exploring character; who Nick and Lou are, how they got together, and how and why they stick with one another.

Holy crap, we’re going to have fun!

Jude Terror: Thanks a lot for tolerating my nonsense. Any last words you want to leave our readers with?

Find and read good comics, not just comics from “the big two” and not just comics from creators you know. Try new things out all the time. Tell your retailer that you want to see more diversity on the stands and then support that diversity with your wallet. Share the love you have for comics you like. The biggest enemy to lesser-known creators is obscurity. Find titles you love and champion them. Tell your friends. Share the love.

Jude Terror: Please also let me know what links you want to plug in there and at the end. :)

https://web.archive.org/web/20140822222924/http://metal-gods.vonallan.com/

https://www.vonallan.com

https://web.archive.org/web/20170718191621/https://www.comixology.com/Metal-Gods/comics-series/20279

Thanks!

Footnotes

1 Matt Wagner finally did do the third series beginning in 2017.

2 Sadly, it did go out of print for reasons that didn’t have anything to do with the book itself, but because of a documentary film I became involved in. More details here.

3 At the time I was reading the Penguin version of CAPITAL. I wish the new Princeton University Press version had been available at that time.

Announcements

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Mon, 26 May 2025 19:41:00 +0000

Three quick announcements, folks!

The first is that the Vanier Artisans will be having a spring show here in Ottawa on Sunday, June 8th at the Vanier Community Services Centre at 270 Marier Avenue. The poster by yours truly is at the end of this post and the Facebook page just went up, too! I’ll be there along with a number of terrific artists! One of the things I really like about the Vanier Artisans is that a wide range of styles are represented. Knitted items, food items, painted items, soaps, photography, and comic books and graphic novels (me). In other words, there’s something for everyone. It is well worth your time, so if you have a chance, please check it out!

The second announcement has to do with MailChimp. I had mentioned that I’ve not been a particular fan of their service, especially when I compare it to the “good ol’ days” of FeedBurner. Coincidentally, MailChimp has taken the interesting decision to make their service, at least for people like me, measurably worse. The screencap below has all the details.

What does this mean for you? Well, for regular visitors of this site along with folks that are using RSS to subscribe to my periodic updates, not a thing. For those of you who have subscribed via email, there is a big change. Sadly, as of June 1st, that option is now over. That means that you’ll no longer be receiving updates via email from me. There are a few options going forward.

1) Switch from email updates to RSS. I’m a big believer in RSS. For most people, it is quick and easy to use and is a snap to set-up. You just need a RSS Reader (aka a “News Aggregator”) and these can be installed on pretty much any internet-enabled device (desktop computers, cell phones, tablets, you name it). The one I use is BetterBird, a much improved version of Mozilla’s Thunderbird (or as the BetterBird project notes, it’s a “fine-tuned version”) and is tremendous. There are a lot of other options out there, though. Some for free, some not. Wired did a good summary but a simple search using Google or DuckDuckGo or whatnot will turn many up. You may need to experiment, but it’s well-worth your time.

2) If you truly hate this idea and would prefer to keep receiving periodic emails from me, drop me an email (media@vonallan.com). I’m going to put together an HTML email mailer that will be similar to what you were already receiving. So if RSS isn’t an option for you for whatever reason, we can still do email, just not the way you’ve been receiving it via MailChimp or FeedBurner.

The third announcement is that the new Bill and Butch short story is finished (pencils, inks, colours, lettering, you name it!). I just need to do some proofing/edits and then it will debut right here, hopefully before June 1st so that MailChimp can send out one last email.

That’s it right now! I hope to see you on June 8th!

Forthcoming — A Brand New Bill and Butch Short Story

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 19:58:00 +0000

I thought I’d share a little teaser of an upcoming short story — a brand new Bill and Butch¹ short story! These two crotchety wizards have their fair share of fans who have been clamouring for their return! And, I have to admit, I’ve been itching to write and draw them again. As always, the main issue was time (too little of it!) and other commitments (too many of ’em!). But I was finally able to figure out my schedule and work something out. The script is done and the first two pages (a double page splash!) are complete. And, with that in mind, I thought it would be fun to share that splash with you. I’ve included the pencils, too!

When will this little story be available to read in full? ~~Well, the short answer is “soon.” The long answer? “Soonish.” In other words, I’ll share it when its ready! In the meantime, enjoy!~~ UPDATE: It’s available now! Please visit https://www.vonallan.com/2025/05/short-story-duel-of-the-magic-users.html

Oh, and before I forget: Professor David Beard from the University of Minnesota Duluth (he of the incredible awesome review of my work!) was lovely enough to do an interview yours truly that is now available. Interestingly, the interview touches on my very first graphic novel “the road to god knows…”² And even more interestingly, the interview appeared in the PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING STUDIES JOURNAL Volume 4.0³ (yes!), something that is fascinating to me. Why fascinating? Well, that pro wrestling is an art form⁴ should really not be a surprise to anyone. And that scholarly folks are studying it should also not be a surprise. Sadly, like much of our contemporary cultural touchstones, it is an artform dominated (at least here in the West) by a couple of large corporations, but that doesn’t undercut the fact that it is an art form all the same. Now, it is an artform that — in its current iteration — I find myself largely alienated from (partially due to the aforementioned corporations, partially due to storytelling issues, and partially due to the tremendous death toll that has taken too many wrestlers), but pro wrestling does have a lot to offer from a narrative and storytelling point of view. Why am I saying this? ’Cuz storytelling and pro wrestling is exactly what Professor Beard and I discuss. If you ever want a glimpse into some of my approaches to storytelling (not, I hasten to add, my only approach) this interview is a good overview.

As Beard noted in his forward to the Volume 4.0, “Von Allan never once depicts wrestling in his comics, but in The Road to God Knows, the child in a family that struggles with a parent’s mental illness escapes the sadness of life by watching the action in the ring. I am touched, myself — recognizing in The Road to God Knows the escape that professional wrestling also brought me as a child.”

One last note. As some of you know, this site uses MailChimp to bring new posts and updates directly to your email box. However, I find the various restrictions that MailChimp has for creators pretty onerous and the service is (in my not so humble opinion) nearly as intuitive and easy as FeedBurner’s was back in the day. As a result, I may wind up discontinuing the service, but I want to do a bit more thinking on this before I come to any final conclusions. For those who subscribe this way, it might be a problem. I would gently suggest that a better way to go is with good old RSS and a handy RSS reader. At any rate, if I do discontinue it, I will be sure to give everyone fair warning first.

Onward to my art! These pages are larger than what they appear as below, so feel free to click on them to get larger versions (ahem, in all of their glory!).

1 For their other adventures, you can read them for free right here on this website. Here are the links: THE COWARDLY CLERICS OF RIGEL V, TOTAL PARTY KILL!, and THE PLANET WITH NO BEER. And if you enjoy them, please share them! Sharing is caring, after all.

2 Sadly, “the road to god knows…” is now out of print. For those who are interested in some of the background to why this is, please read this short essay (with loads of art!): On Getting Stronger.

3 The full journal is crammed with all kinds of delightful interviews and explorations, too. You can visit https://pressbooks.umn.edu/pwsajournal4/ and either read it online or download it in various formats, including PDF and EPUB.

4 There was a great website called “Pro Wrestling is Art” that delved into this quite a bit, but sadly it hasn’t been updated in many years. The archive is still available at https://prowrestlingisart.wordpress.com/ and is worth your time if you’re so inclined. Editor and lead writer Leslie Lee III also is one of the folks behind the podcast “Struggle Session.”

War Hobbits!

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 22:24:00 +0000

War Hobbits! Or Battling Hobbits (wait, wait — how ‘bout Battling ‘Bits?!).

While Dwarfs will always be my favourites, I do have a major soft spot for Hobbits, right from Tolkien’s original creation through to D&D’s version (dubbed Halflings, though they’ll always be Hobbits to me). I also like my Hobbits a bit scruffy, not so much avoiding adventure but actively seeking it out. As it should be. How the hell is one gonna scrounge up enough gold from a dangerous dungeon without getting banged up? Ordinary life has a tendency to rough us all up; delving into dark foreboding places even moreso. Besides, I like my fantasy gritty, Conan-style, as opposed to heroic. Nothing wrong with the latter, but it never speaks to me in quite the same fashion as the former.

I had some time over the holidays and into the new year, so I thought I’d draw and colour some Hobbits. What follows are some character designs and a couple of fanciful pieces, plus a photo of some of the original art. All were a lot of fun to draw!

Wolf’s Head Volume 4 in trade paperback format Worldwide!

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 11:00:00 +0000

As I previously noted, the WOLF’S HEAD trade paperbacks are back in print in brand new editions! Today features the release of Volume 4, collecting issues 7 and 8 of the ongoing digital series. This is a full colour series and is 60 pages in length. This volume was a great deal of fun to do and represents a narrative change as we see Lauren, after dealing with the losses she experienced over the past two volumes, start to take control of her life.

As always with my work, these are available in better bookstores and comic shops worldwide (and for why I say “better,” please read this commentary). Volume 4’s ISBN is 978-1-9898852-6-0. If you don’t see it at your local store, then you can easily order it using that ISBN. Additionally, it is already starting to show up at various online retailers, too. For example:

Please remember that I can’t control exactly when and where this volume will become available, but hopefully the above links are a good start. Be patient and don’t be afraid to ask your retailer for help! Volume 5 is now available, too. Subsequent volumes appearing throughout 2025.

And, of course, there is a dedicated website for WOLF’S HEAD at https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/p/wolfs-head-landing-page.html with all kinds of additional information!

The Elevator Pitch

Lauren Greene begins working with the young AI, but is having a difficult time creating a bond. The AI, similar to a child, either does not understand or simply cannot comprehend everything that Lauren is asking it to do. Desperate for help, Lauren reaches out to an ex-scientist, Jack Dhillon, who has a very personal hatred for the AI's creator. Lauren hopes that Dhillon will teach her to work with the AI, but can she convince him to help? At the same time, Lauren realizes that her friends are in danger simply for knowing her and she decides to protect them as best she can... with difficult results.

This volume also introduces a new character, Super Bob Sanchez, a truck driver who is not (under any circumstance!) a hero.

Read for Free

As many of you know, I’ve also begun serializing the comic book series for free on the Internet Archive (https://www.archive.org) as part of my “Pirate Von” initiative. As I mentioned above, WOLF’S HEAD Volume 4 consists of issues 7 and 8 of the ongoing series. While you can find the links to both on the Internet Archive as well as the “Pirate Von” section of this very website, to make it easier the links to both issues 7 and 8 are below.

Oh, and please remember! If you enjoy them and would like a physical copy, you can purchase Volume 4 in stores — both online and off — around the world!

TEASER FOR WOLF’S HEAD VOLUME 4

And here’s a little teaser image to help cement the idea. Two digital comics inside one trade paperback volume!

Diamond Comic Distributors, Wolf's Head, and Me

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 22:31:00 +0000

As those of you who follow the Direct Market know, Diamond Comic Distributors has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection. Long time watchers of the comic book industry will understand just how surprising of a development this is. For those that don’t, I’ll try and explain.

Once upon a time, Diamond was the distributor for comics in North America and the United Kingdom. That was after the distribution market consolidated around Diamond in the 1980s; prior to that, there was a great deal of regional distribution with comics. Distributors such as Sea Gate, Pacific Comics (both as a publisher and a distributor), Capital City, and — here in Canada — Styx, Andromeda, and Multi-Book among others. Even when Diamond had a quasi-monopoly (and they were actually investigated back in 2000!), other distributors still tried to come and go. My personal favourite was Cold Cut, who I ordered from pretty regularly back in my bookstore days. Another was FM International. Both Cold Cut and FM International were pretty quirky, distributing indy and small press titles that Diamond either didn’t distribute or tended to disappear in their cavernous catalogues. And both are long gone now.

Due to Diamond’s Chapter 11 situation, a number of writers have written extensively on what Diamond was and what the changes in Direct Market distribution since June 2020 have wrought with the company. I don’t want to retread that ground. Instead, I wanted to discuss my own experiences with Diamond, partially because I think it shows some of the problems that Diamond had with small accounts and partially because some of these issues go back prior to 2020.

As a publisher, I have an account with Diamond and have had one since 2010. My Purchasing Brand Manager at that time was Jay Spence. Jay was awesome and quite supportive; with his help I was able to get my two-book graphic novel series, STARGAZER, into Diamond’s catalogue Previews. (Book 1 in the November 2010 issue with item code NOV101057 and Book 2 in the August 2011 issue with item code AUG111259).

While these two books were admittedly pretty rough, though not quite as rough as first graphic novel “the road to god knows…” was, Jay’s encouragement and Diamond’s support led to decent sales for my little black and white graphic novel series. And STARGAZER is still in print and continues to sell to this day, something I’m always a little surprised about.

It would have been ideal to follow-up STARGAZER with something else lickety-split, but I knew that I needed to become stronger. And life sometimes takes us in odd and surprising directions, and some of that happened to. At any rate, time passed and when I was finally ready to approach Diamond again, this time in 2018 with my ongoing series full colour series WOLF’S HEAD, I ran into problems.

The first is that Jay had left Diamond to join Dynamite. All well and good. What was less good was that I was having trouble reaching folks at Diamond. Any folks. Emails went unanswered. I actually wound up tracking Jay down at Dynamite and he managed to connect me with the right person. That person was Leigh Tyberg and this is where things get interesting.

I’ve saved my email correspondence with Leigh, because the emails are a great example about how Diamond and their Purchasing Brand Managers worked. Or, in this case, failed to work, something you’ll see in a moment. To be very clear, the Purchasing Brand Manager acts as a Gate Keeper; they’re the ones who — presumably with discussion with other folks in the Purchasing Department — decide whether or not to carry a title. As I noted above, Jay Spence was incredibly supportive of both myself and STARGAZER, something I’m grateful for to this day. Leigh? Well, you’ll see.

When it came to presenting WOLF’S HEAD to Diamond for distribution, I had high hopes. I had grown a lot as both an artist and a writer and I thought the plan I presented to Diamond was fairly strong; WOLF’S HEAD would be published in 60 page graphic novel volumes, each volume having an ISBN and a spine. The inspiration for this approach, by the by, was actually a title from Dark Horse Comics, a retelling of CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON by Art Adams. At 52 pages, it was “meatier” then a normal saddle-stitched comic but still affordable. And I liked the format of that book quite a bit.

My decision was also influenced by how Diamond worked. Very quickly, comics and graphic novels distributed by Diamond have to meet a minimum sales threshold. This threshold, called the Purchase Order Benchmark, was originally set at $1,500.00 US but was raised to $2,500.00 US in 2009. Note that was not at retail price but at wholesale. As George Gene Gustines at the New York Times pointed out at the time, “a $2.95 comic book would have to receive a minimum order of 2,100 copies” (2,100 × $2.95 = $6,195.00; since Diamond takes a 60% cut of the retail price, 40% of $6,195.00 is $2,478.00, very close to the Purchase Order Benchmark). This sent shock waves through the industry (hell, so much so that the New York Times commented on it!). Part of the reason this was so monumental was that it marked a significant change from how the benchmark used to work. As Diamond noted back in 2007, “Diamond’s benchmark for comic books solicited through Previews is $2,500 retail.” The new benchmark was actually $6,250 (!) retail, because $6,250 × 40% = (you guessed it) $2,500! That’s a 150% increase, the main reason that small press publishers of saddle-stitched comics at the time were freaking out.

WOLF’S HEAD, as a trade paperback with a higher price point, would have to sell less copies per volume then a normal saddle-stitched comic to reach Diamond’s Purchase Order Benchmark. And having an ISBN for each volume would allow me to access online retailers like Amazon as well as “brick and mortar” bookstores. More venues matter. As it turns out, the online retailers have been a huge part of why I’ve managed to continue publishing WOLF’S HEAD to this day.

It’s important to remember that Direct Market retailers (aka “comic book shops”) have to buy their titles non-returnably. So they are always rolling the dice on small press titles, especially small press titles from unknown — or even lesser known — creators. That makes them understandably gun-shy, especially when they own their mistakes — literally. Unlike bookstores, they can’t return their titles for credit (and while there have been some changes in this regard more recently, this was the case I faced with both STARGAZER and WOLF’S HEAD). So comic shops are, broadly speaking, pretty reticent to buy small press titles, though obviously there are many individual exceptions to this. While it may seem that a lower price point helps here, it actually doesn’t. If a supportive retailer is going to purchase a title, they are probably only going to purchase it in low quantities regardless of what the price point is. They might waffle; maybe they’d buy four or five copies of a $2.99 US title and only two copies of a $9.99 US title, but it’s likely to be around that (obviously this is anecdotal, but I’m partially basing it on my own purchasing habits when I was buyer at the bookstore I managed).

At any rate, this is the situation I faced when I initially reached out to Leigh and Diamond. You can see my initial email to Jay below. Since his reply was from his Dynamite email address, prudence dictates that I probably shouldn’t replicate it here (that or redact it heavily!). The key point is that he did manage to connect me to the correct person, as you will see in a moment. Oh, and as always I should add that Von Allan is my pen name; Eric is my real name. So when you see those references, you’ll know who is being spoken of.

What follows is my correspondence with Leigh Tyberg, my Purchasing Brand Manager. I’ll let that speak for itself. The only thing I’ll add is please note the dates of the various emails.

And that’s where it ended. Leigh (and Diamond) ghosted me. The key thing that’s amazing about this is that Leigh and Diamond never formally rejected WOLF’S HEAD. Obviously they never accepted it, either. Ghosting can be destructive behaviour when one experiences it personally. But when a business does it? When a business that has a stranglehold on the Direct Market — which Diamond had at the time — does it? Well, at least with a rejection you know where you stand. I’ve been rejected boatloads of times. It ain’t fun, but you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep going. But the waiting, wondering if you’ll hear back? Wondering if the ghosting is just something else? That’s awful.

To this day I don’t know what happened. I debated pestering Leigh and Diamond again, but eventually COVID started and the distribution side of the industry exploded. And like many folks with COVID, I experienced a personal loss that put the brakes on a lot of things.

That said, I also don’t hold any animosity towards Leigh or even Diamond, though I’d be lying if I said that the experience wasn’t frustrating. Ghosting isn’t fun, but life goes on. I’m disappointed that Diamond — apparently — had no interest in distributing WOLF’S HEAD, but I’m also pleased that I’m in no way affected by their recent Chapter 11 Bankruptcy filing. Despite it all, Leigh is still listed at Diamond as a Purchasing Brand Manager.

The funny thing about the whole experience was that, in the intervening years, I kept working on WOLF’S HEAD and I kept growing. That led to receiving two separate $4,000.00 grants from the City of Ottawa for my work on the series, being shortlisted for a Peter Honeywell award for my work on it, and finding an audience despite the lack of access by Diamond. Despite it all, WOLF’S HEAD still continues and I’m having a helluva good time doing it.

Who knows, perhaps Diamond will rise like a phoenix and be reborn into something new. Or perhaps after consolidating so much of the distribution side of the Direct Market, they won’t rebound at all. If so, perhaps their fall will be a cautionary tale of what can happen when a company with so much going for it forgets that, at the end of the day, it’s human beings that make a difference. And it’s human beings, both inside Diamond and out, that matter.

Wolf’s Head Volume 3 in trade paperback format Worldwide!

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 10:30:00 +0000

As I noted a few weeks ago, the WOLF’S HEAD trade paperbacks are back in print in brand new editions! Today features the release of Volume 3, collecting issues 5 and 6 of the ongoing digital series. This is a full colour series and is 60 pages in length. This issue features a major confrontation between the Artificial Intelligence that Lauren Greene has befriended and the vile forces that seek to regain the AI at any cost.

As always with my work, these are available in better bookstores and comic shops worldwide. Volume 3’s ISBN is 978-1-98-988525-3. If you don’t see it at your local store, then you can easily order it using that ISBN. Additionally, it is already starting to show up at various online retailers, too. For example:

Amazon: Amazon.com, Amazon.ca (Canada), Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom), Amazon.de (Germany), and so on.

Barnes & Noble

Bookshop.org and IndieBound

Please remember that I can’t control exactly when and where this volume will become available, but hopefully the above links are a good start. Be patient and don’t be afraid to ask your retailer for help! Volume 4 will be released in early 2025, with subsequent volumes appearing throughout 2025.

And, of course, there is a dedicated website for WOLF’S HEAD at https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/p/wolfs-head-landing-page.html with all kinds of additional information!

The Elevator Pitch

Lauren Greene, dealing with a massive loss that was revealed in Volume 2, has her situation made all the harder as she struggles to come up with the money to cover a unexpected (and massive) expense, deal with the disappearance of her mom's dog, and attempt to communicate with the strange artificial intelligence her mom had befriended.

Just as things are appearing to get back to some degree of normalcy, Lauren is confronted by the corporate forces who created the AI and are attempting to hunt it down. Forced to defend the AI, Lauren's life and the lives of those she loves are very much in the balance as Jeremy Hamilton and his henchmen will not stop until the AI is theirs once again.

Read for Free

As many of you know, I’ve also begun serializing the comic book series for free on the Internet Archive (https://www.archive.org) as part of my “Pirate Von” initiative. As I mentioned above, WOLF’S HEAD Volume 3 consists of issues 5 and 6 of the ongoing series. While you can find the links to both on the Internet Archive as well as the “Pirate Von” section of this very website, to make it easier the links to both issues 5 and 6 are below.

Oh, and please remember! If you enjoy them and would like a physical copy, you can purchase Volume 3 in stores — both online and off — around the world!

TEASER FOR WOLF’S HEAD VOLUME 3

And here’s a little teaser image to help cement the idea. Two digital comics inside one trade paperback volume!

Wolf’s Head Volume 2 in trade paperback format Worldwide!

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 10:30:00 +0000

As I noted last week, the WOLF’S HEAD trade paperbacks are back in print in brand new editions! Today features the release of Volume 2, collecting issues 3 and 4 of the ongoing digital series. This is a full colour series and is 60 pages in length. And this issue features some significant events that really turn the series on its head, forcing Lauren (our main character) to make decisions. Decisions that she’d rather not make.

As always with my work, these are available in better bookstores and comic shops worldwide. Volume 2’s ISBN is 978-1-98-988524-6. If you don’t see it at your local store, then you can easily order it using that ISBN. Additionally, it is already starting to show up at various online retailers, too. For example:

Amazon: Amazon.com, Amazon.ca (Canada), Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom), Amazon.de (Germany), and so on.

Barnes & Noble

Bookshop.org and IndieBound

But remember: I can’t control when and where this volume will become available. Be patient and don’t be afraid to ask your retailer for help! Volume 3 will be released next week. In fact, the metadata is already showing up on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org.

And, of course, there is a dedicated website for WOLF’S HEAD at https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/p/wolfs-head-landing-page.html with all kinds of additional information!

The Elevator Pitch

Here’s the blurb for Volume 2:

Lauren Greene and her mother, Patty, have a huge disagreement over the future of a self-aware Artificial Intelligence that her mom saved from a lab and sheltered from its war-mongering creators. Angry at her mother’s stubbornness and terrified of the world they’re suddenly involved in, Lauren storms out… only to be kidnapped by Jeremy Hamilton, the powerful man who invented the AI. Later that night, in trade for Lauren’s freedom, Patty surrenders herself and the AI machine to Hamilton.

Freed by Hamilton’s goons and assured that her mother is safe and will be released the next day, Lauren returns home to wait. But later that night, she learns, to her horror, that Patty has been suddenly hospitalized in critical condition and the AI is missing. Since the AI has protected her mother in the past, Lauren races against time to find it, hoping that it can save Patty yet again. As she searches frantically, and with her world turned upside down, Lauren must confront an old enemy, dodge new ones, and find the AI, which might not want to be found… before it’s too late for everyone.

Read for Free

As many of you know, I’ve also begun serializing the comic book series for free on the Internet Archive (https://www.archive.org) as part of my “Pirate Von” initiative. As I mentioned above, WOLF’S HEAD Volume 2 consists of issues 3 and 4 of the ongoing series. While you can find the links to both on the Internet Archive as well as the “Pirate Von” section of this very website, to make it easier the links to both issues 3 and 4 are below.

Oh, and please remember! If you enjoy them and would like a physical copy, you can purchase Volume 2 in stores — both online and off — around the world!

TEASER FOR WOLF’S HEAD VOLUME 2

And here’s a little teaser image to help cement the idea. Two digital comics inside one trade paperback volume!

Announcing Wolf’s Head Volume 1 in trade paperback format Worldwide!

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 19:41:00 +0000

Starting today, the WOLF’S HEAD trade paperbacks are coming back into print in brand new editions! These are brand new editions with new covers and some additional new extra features. Each volume collects two digital issues; so Volume 1 collects issues 1 and 2, Volume 2 collects issues 3 and 4, and so on. These are all full colour editions and will be approximately 60 pages in length each. In fact, the first three volumes are exactly 60 pages (I know because I’ve already prepared the files for the printer!) and future volumes will be at that approximate page count.

As always with my work, these are available in better bookstores and comic shops worldwide. Volume 1’s ISBN is 978-1-98-988523-9. If you don’t see it at your local store, then you can easily order it using that ISBN. Additionally, it is already starting to show up at various online retailers, too. For example:

Amazon.com

Barnes & Noble

Bookshop.org

I can’t control exactly when and where they’ll become available. Canada tends to be a little slower for whatever reason then some other countries, but that should change shortly. Be patient and don’t be afraid to ask your retailer for help!

I’m really happy with how these turned out. And Volumes 2 and 3 will be released shortly. In fact, the metadata is already showing up on Amazon (Volume 2 and Volume 3) and Barnes & Noble (Volume 2 and Volume 3). And the first three volumes will be all out in time for Christmas!

And, of course, there is a dedicated website for WOLF’S HEAD at https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/p/wolfs-head-landing-page.html with all kinds of additional information!

Read for Free

As many of you know, I’ve also begun serializing the comic book series for free on the Internet Archive (https://www.archive.org) as part of my “Pirate Von” initiative. As noted above, WOLF’S HEAD Volume 1 consists of issues 1 and 2 of the ongoing series. While you can find the links to both on the Internet Archive as well as the “Pirate Von” section of this very website, to make it easier the links to both issues #1 and #2 are below.

Please give them a try. And remember! If you enjoy them and would like a physical copy, you can purchase Volume 1 in stores — both online and off — around the world!

TEASER FOR WOLF’S HEAD VOLUME 1

And here’s a little teaser image to help cement the idea. Two digital comics inside one trade paperback volume!

The Back Story

Trade paperback was the original format for the series,¹ collecting two issues worth of each comic together. There were seven volumes of that original run, but these are all out of print now. What happened? Well, a number of things (some of it detailed here). The main problem is that there have been significant changes in the comic book market and weathering them took some doing. Back in 2019 or so, there was only one major distributor in the so-called Direct Market for print comics — namely Diamond Comic Distributors — and the main option for digital comics was ComiXology. All that has changed significantly in the past five years. Has it ever! Not only has Diamond seen their near-monopoly of print comics end, but digital comics have changed tremendously; Amazon ended ComiXology has a distinct platform, merging them into Kindle, and we’ve seen the explosion of webcomics, primarily in the WebToons format. And, of course, the COVID pandemic dramatically impacted comics and books, not to mention the horrible cost in human lives and health (some of which affected me personally).

My plans with those initial trade paperbacks were definitely affected by these changes. Losing my initial sales rep at Diamond also hurt. To make a long story short, I decided to end that trade paperback series, allowing the “trades” to go out of print, and focused on digital going forward. At the time that decision was made, ComiXology was still a significant player and they supported independent comics well. However, the folding of ComiXology into the broader Kindle publishing landscape² was not good for independents and certainly not good for me. “Discoverability” on Kindle was far more difficult then it had been on ComiXology and that also negatively affected sales. I also struggled with awareness, even with fans of the series. It wasn’t easy for readers who had already purchased digital issues to be notified of the release of new digital issues, something that was a “snap” in the ComiXology days.

Partially as a response to this and partially due to my own explorations of new printing options, I created the first WOLF’S HEAD hardcover. This deluxe edition, collecting the first six digital issues, was and is beautiful and I’m extremely proud of it, but the price point is high and that is definitely a barrier to some. And losing visibility on Kindle disrupted discovery with the hardcover; even if people found the digital series, it (again) wasn’t easy for people to discover the hardcover. Extremely frustrating and try as I might, I could not manage to bridge that gap.

So that left me with a conundrum. I could go ahead with the hardcover series, but my experiences over the past few years haven’t filled me with a lot of hope that this is a viable option. It’s more of a niche, which is fine, but a niche doesn’t build an audience. That certainly doesn’t rule out more hardcovers, but they have to be treated carefully. With digital rapidly diminishing as a sales option, I decided to cancel the Kindle series last week.³ That left a gap… and that brings me to today’s announcement!

Lastly, what about digital? Well, there’s a big change in that area, too. Going forward, the digital issues will be released for free on the Internet Archive, as part of my “Pirate Von” initiative. As you may know, the Internet Archive went through a number of cyberattacks in 2024 and that’s slowed things down a tad. I’m trying to work out a few additional details, but when that is finalized I’ll be posting links here and on the “Pirate Von” section of this website. Why use the Internet Archive? The answer is easy; a large number of people use it, the site automatically converts source files into a number of formats (saving me both work and time), the site is easy and intuitive to use, and “discoverability⁴” works well.

Change never stops, but I’m very pleased with this new development. And, as always, if you like the series, please share that with your friends and family!

End Notes

1 You can still see a few of these at places like AbeBooks.

2 Please see https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/comics-store/mkt/comixology-app-merge-faq

3 Don’t worry; those of who have bought those issues still have ‘em!

4 I had actually experimented with WebToons, thinking that might be an alternative, but I found the amount of work combined with very poor “discoverability” was not a recipe for success.

2024 Vanier Artisans Christmas Craft Sale

noreply@blogger.com (Von Allan) — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 10:30:00 +0000

Update! The 2025 poster and event information is at https://www.vonallan.com/2025/11/Von-Allan-at-the-2025-Vanier-Artisans-Christmas-Market-Ottawa-Ontario.html

In what is becoming a lovely annual tradition, I’ve once again did all the art for the poster for the Vanier Artisans Christmas Craft Sale (see the poster below). And, of course, I’ll be one of the participants in this year’s show.

This is organized by Charlotte Taylor and, as always, she’s bringing together a whack load of of artists from all sorts of artistic practices for the sale. Charlotte is proud of her community (the neighbourhood of Vanier) and she has fought hard to make sure that Vanier is recognized as the vibrant section of Ottawa it is.
The poster has all the details. And the Vanier Artisans has its own page on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/vanierartisans

I’ll be bringing a number of my comics (including the hot off the press edition of SHEBA THE GREAT!) and graphic novels. Plus prints, cards, and a few other odds and ends.

So if you’re interested in meeting some amazing artists and perhaps buying some lovely art for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or “just because,” please drop by. It will be held at the Vanier Community Service Centre (https://cscvanier.com/) on Sunday, November 24th, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.

It will be loads fun!

Media Release

Ottawa, Ontario November 19, 2024 — The holiday season is here, and it’s the perfect time to support local makers, discover unique gifts, and experience the magic of Christmas — all in one place. Organized by Charlotte Taylor and held at the Vanier Community Service Centre, the Vanier Artisans Christmas Craft Sale brings a festive blend of handmade goods, local artistry, and holiday cheer to your season.

“Whether you’re looking for one-of-a-kind books and comics, art, photography prints, or cozy knitted items, this year’s market has something special for everyone on your list,” noted Taylor. “You’ll also find handcrafted soaps, candles, pottery, baked goods, and much more, all created with love by our talented local artisans. And, to help kick off the season, Charlotte Media House will be offering free Christmas photos… so bring your holiday spirit and a big smile!”

Mark your calendars and get ready to experience the magic of Christmas at the Vanier Artisans Christmas Craft Sale.

“You really don’t want to miss out on this incredible opportunity to shop local, support small businesses, and get your hands on some handmade treasures,” Taylor added. “The fair is a fun, family friendly way to spend an afternoon and we hope to see you there!”

Event Details:

Date: Sunday, November 24, 2024 (10:00 am – 4:00 pm)

Location: Vanier Community Service Centre, 270 Marier Avenue, Vanier, ON K1L 5P7

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/share/15YicbRKgG/

Vanier Community Association page: https://www.vanier-association.com/en/event/vanier-artisans-christmas-craft-sale/

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