Wolf's Head Issue 9 on Kindle

This issue stars a bounty killer! What?! Yes! And is, in some ways, the most action issue of WOLF’S HEAD yet! Action can be tricky to do well; while it’s such a staple of super hero comics, so much of it rings pretty false to me. Why? Well, the classic stereotype goes something like this: hero is minding their own business with ye olde villain decides to act. The hero, often just wandering by, decides to intervene. And lo! A fistfight is the result.

Can this be fun? Sure. Is it fun when it happens over and over again? For me? Nope. Now, the big question is why? I can only give you answer that works for me; as always with art, how one feels about this is pretty unique and can change with both experience and time. I think the problem with the stereotype is that it makes the villain active and not the hero. Often, the hero just wants to be left alone. This is not a recipe for an engaging story, especially if the villain is of the “one-and-done” variety (i.e.: the villain makes one appearance and then disappears, typically to jail or maybe to their seeming death, only to reappear a year or so down the road).

The big problem is that pesky notion of being “active.” We want — or rather, I want — an active hero. A hero that is trying to do something, something that is clear to the reader. When that’s lacking, when the hero just wants to be left alone, there’s a problem. So, in other words, an active hero combines with an active villain, each with clear goals. And one of the stronger resolutions, not always possible in fiction, is when resolving the problem the villain presents also resolves other issues the hero is facing.

This doesn’t mean that the goals have to be external. Often the best struggles are internal to the hero. Yeah, yeah, a hero could be scrounging up money to by a car and are actively trying to solve that problem. It’s often funner — at least to me — when the hero wants something intrinsic to their character; a simple example could be a fear or phobia.

Does this always have to be the case? Of course not. Sometimes the hero really is just minding their own business, perfectly happy, when the villain appears. If that’s always the situation, however, then I’d argue there’s a problem. One of the things I work very hard on with WOLF’S HEAD is to keep Lauren active. It’s a challenge, but man oh man is it ever rewarding when it works well. I think it did here, though you’ll have to let me know what you think!

The ol’ Elevator Pitch: “With the villains who have been pursuing Lauren Greene and the Artificial Intelligence she’s befriended in the hospital after an abortive attempt to steal it, Lauren feels like she has some breathing room to figure out her next steps… but she hasn’t counted on the anger and racism from one of the villains, Frank McRossiter, who has a personal vendetta against her. Unable to kill her himself, McRossiter hires a bounty killer (!) to do the job for him. And when that bounty killer lands in town and shows up at Lauren’s apartment armed with a gun and an electronic magnetic pulse weapon to deal with the AI, things start to go very badly very quickly. Also in this issue: Can Super Bob Sanchez repair ‘Old Bess’ (his truck!) and get back on the road before police find him?”

Here are the usual links:

• Wolf’s Head Official Site: https://wolfs-head.vonallan.com/
• United States of America: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08B38GV68
• Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08B38GV68
• United Kingdom: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08B38GV68
• France: https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B08B38GV68
• Germany: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B08B38GV68
• Spain: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B08B38GV68
• And so on!

And don’t forget that the series page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MTGCS49; and you can just change the “dot com” part of the url with your specific top-level domain. In Canada, change the “dot com” to “dot ca” means that the series can be found at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08MTGCS49. See? Easy!