Last post, I shared some sketches for Blythe vs. the Werewolf, the short standalone comic I’ll be working on between now and October. I’ll definitely have more sketches of werewolf and character designs in upcoming posts. This week, though, I want to go a bit more into the project itself.
The titular character, Blythe Bonfils, is a wizard who takes on odd jobs of the magical variety. The comic takes place ten to fifteen years before the events of Strange Company, when he’s begun to gain notoriety.
The Synopsis
One of Blythe’s contacts calls him to the remote village of Oulonde with a job offer. Something from the forest is terrorizing a farmer and picking off her livestock night after night. She’s convinced the mysterious creature is the legendary werewolf, but no one in the village believes her. But she knows what she saw, and she wants Blythe to take care of it since the local game warden has other priorities.
Blythe isn’t entirely convinced it’s a werewolf either, thinking the culprit is more likely to be a misidentified animal or an exceptionally ferocious elemental. Whatever the creature is, it grows more brazen with every passing night. It’s up to Blythe to figure out what’s really going on before the beast begins targeting the villagers.
The Cast
Blythe receives some help (and some hindrance) from a few members of the supporting cast:
- Anatole “Sunny” Marchand, his contact and an old friend of his late grandfather
- Genevieve Gauthier, the harried farmer
- Suse LeBruin, the local game warden who is in the midst of her own poaching investigation
- Melanie Garoux, the heiress of the nearby Garoux estate
- Caleb Garoux, one of the other Garoux heirs and barfly
The Medium
As far as the look and vibe that I’m going for with the comic, I’m weighing whether I’ll go with black and white or grayscale. The Beast of Gevaudan is probably the biggest inspiration for this story, and since it has mystery elements, I want to lean into a horror noir feel with the art.
It’s a short story with a “monster of the week” kind of vibe, and I’m aiming for somewhere between 30 and 50 pages in length. We’ll see where that ends up after scripting and thumbnailing!
I’ve devoted much of March to hammering out the outline, and I’ll spend April drafting the script. (I’ll be using the April event over at 4thewords to keep me motivated.) I haven’t gotten as much prep done this month as I would like, but I’ll continue my design work while I’m scripting and revising. Eventually I want to do some world building posts, at least one of which will go into more detail about the magic of the world these stories take place in.
There’s a lot coming down the pipeline involving this project, and I’m stoked as hell about it. This could very well be the first thing I complete from start to finish this year, as I’ve given myself a hard deadline. The plan is to post the first half of the comic on October 1st, just in time for Spooky Season!
I’ll make regular posts on my progress and process here while I work on the comic. I’m also playing around with the idea of streaming work on concept work and pages. We’ll see how that shakes out!