One-Eyed-Wolf Wrap-up

This comic is short enough I thought I’d break down my thought process in a few places and share a few panels without text bubbles in the way. (Hey, I drew a lot of grass by hand and someone is going to see it, alright?)

I am constantly in my own head justifying the choices I make to an imaginary (and unsatisfied) reader. It’s a part of impostor syndrome and one that can hit me pretty hard at times— but the reality I tell myself is ‘I made a thing’ and--like all well-intentioned art in my opinion--it works out to a net positive in the universe. It helps me to think about it that way— if you’re ever struggling with your own creative projects and worry about if you’re ‘good enough,’ remember that whatever you make is unique and ‘enough’ just by virtue of existing at all.

I didn’t want the focus of the comic to be the ‘how’ of how Gristle (the One-Eyed Wolf) lost an eye. No matter how much time or panel space I devoted to an epic chase or fight scene, it’s going to be boring for a reader familiar with the main story. You already know Oren lives and Gristle makes it out, sans an eye. There’s no real stakes, no surprises there. Instead, I wanted to get into the why of it and how the ordeal effected both of them afterward.

Going into the story I knew two things: How it ends and that I wanted to play around with double narrators. 

First, the end.

I thought the dichotomy of their individual take-away ‘lesson’ would be interesting— Gristle came closer to his family unit, where as Oren was repelled, driven nearly to breaking. Oren became an empty vessel, ready to be filled with the teachings of the Conclave. 

Gristle’s cup, on the other hand, runneth over. He became a staunch believer in the strength of the pack and passed those ideals along to younger pups through the generations, including his daughter, Swift--and Seral, Scree and Ramble, etc. This thinking plays a role in the next part of the main storyline and it was fun to explore where the seed might have come from.

In the process of making this comic--especially writing the final two pages--really opened up Oren’s character for me. I knew when I wrote the original reference to the one-eyed wolf on page 119 in Oren’s Forge, that Oren’s mom was dead and he was sad. But the anger really helped flesh him out for me. During his time in the Conclave, he wasn’t just at a hippie-dippie retreat learning how to make metal jewelry in the American Southwest— he was working through complex emotions and finding ways to forgive his fellow hares and to forgive himself.

Gristle came to life for me, too— I hadn’t written many scenes with him prior to the One-Eyed Wolf, just the short epilogue at the end of Volume One. Before, in my mind he’d been a chill, stoic father-figure--pretty vague. I knew his character would show up when I needed him. As it happens, I ended up spending a lot of time with my grandfather over the summer and the whole ‘well this was BEFORE ravens,’ you can read as ‘well, this was BEFORE cell phones.’ 

I love my grandpa and there isn’t much I enjoy more than fishing with him, or shooting the shit over a beer and a game of cards, hearing about the world he grew up in. It’s an America I half recognize, but alien, too, with the lake down the road once full of fish (now dry and drained), dirt tracks to nowhere (now paved to somewhere), and tobacco stained bars (now best-forgotten rubble). I realized Gristle needed more of just that: gristle. The grit left behind from decades of capable, solid thinking, knowing you’re right because you’re the last man standing. He was young once, and vital, and I imagine he, too, might hear the whistle of a train that hasn’t run in fifty years (if Oren’s Forge had trains.) 

You’ll see more of Gristle in the next volume of Oren’s Forge and he’s as tough as his namesake, now.

The double narrator was an excuse for me to play with some panel layouts and get away with more ‘telling’ than ‘showing’. Ultimately, that saved panel/page space, which meant I could get the story done in fewer pages— I really didn’t want to set myself up for a big project just on the eve of returning to the main storyline.

I had originally been aiming for 12 pages based on the script but it ended up at a lucky 13 anyhow. (looking at the last three pages, you see how tough that'd be to cram into two!)

As narrators, Gristle and Oren didn’t have wildly different interpretations of the events because there’s nothing either would obfuscate there (except that Gristle downplays where that broken stick came from, taking some of Oren’s agency, I guess.) Instead, it served as a fun way to highlight differences in how they think (both as characters and animals.)

If you have any questions about the comic (or anything in Oren’s Forge, for that matter), feel free to ask!

I can’t wait to tell you guys about Oren and the Bear someday!