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

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

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.

The cover of Wolf's Head Volume 8 Graphic Novel written and illustrated by Von Allan

The full wraparound cover of Wolf's Head Volume 8 Graphic Novel written and illustrated by Von Allan

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!

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 9 will be released shortly, either at the tail-end of 2025 or early 2026.

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

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 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!

Wolf's Head Volume 8 teaser image featuring the cover of Volume 8 as well as the covers for issues 15 and 16 of the ongoing digital comic book series

Von Allan at the 2025 Ritchie Feed & Seed Christmas Bazaar

Ritchie Feed & Seed poster for the 2025 Christmas Bazaar in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada from November 15 2025 to November 16 2025

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).

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), Christmas cards, art prints, and so on!

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!

Ritchie Feed & Seed Christmas Bazar floor plan and map November 16, 2025

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.

Ritchie Feed & Seed photo of the Von Allan Studio set-up at the 2025 Christmas Bazaar in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on November 16 2025

Frank Plowright and his wonderful WOLF'S HEAD reviews

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.”

Slings & Arrows Facebook comment about Von Allan's Wolf's Head graphic novel series

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!

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!

The cover of Wolf's Head Volume 6 Graphic Novel written and illustrated by Von Allan

The full wraparound cover of Wolf's Head Volume 6 Graphic Novel written and illustrated by Von Allan

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:

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!