Beasts of Burden: Occupied Territory Set For April

The press release stuff is gearing up on the new  upcoming Beasts of Burden series, which is going to kick off this April. Comic Book Resources got the exclusive whatever-the-heck announcement, which is basically two covers and a quote by me about where the series' idea came from. That's all anything gets from most "comics sites" if it ain't Batman or some casting news. But, I'll take it. The CBR announcement might remind three people who forgot about the series that they should forget to buy the new comic. Ha ha ha, I'm so cynical. I'm allowed, I've seen the sales charts for the last two collections. Ha ha..

I'll tell you where the idea for the series originated so you don't need to look at that site and get distracted with all the new important facts about Wolverine's claws and what compound curse words Deadpool could potentially use in the new Deadpool movie starring Deadpool. Okay, so, basically, our editor Daniel Chabon has an awesome shiba named Zell, which he would send Sarah and I photos of. I would ask Daniel to please send me Zell so I could have her. For some reason Daniel said "no", which was not nice and very unreasonable. 

It became a running joke, although I wasn't joking when I asked him for his dog that he loved. I want a shiba and Zell has proven herself to be a good one with nice features and a sparkling personality. Anyway, Daniel's keeping Zell. Anyway, I don't want to talk about that part of the story anymore, because it fills me with forty ounces of heartbreak, and not a single ounce of actual dog ownership.

To sidestep the dog ownership thing, Daniel would cleverly obfuscate the issue by suggesting we have a shiba in Beasts of Burden. Like a fool, I fell for this ploy. Rather than solidify my plans to travel to Portland by rail and kidnap Zell through nefarious means, or simply suggest a quid pro quo trade, fictional shiba appearance for actual shiba appearing here in our house (permanently).

I started thinking about how we could fit a shiba into the comic. I didn't want to just have a shiba pop up in a panel or two saying "hello" to our characters  from behind a fence, and have them say something like, "Oh, yeah, that's Zell!". Because that's some sad Roy Thomas shit like when he blatantly stuck himself and his first wife and his friends into an issue of The Avengers or whatever. Ugh. I also didn't want to force a character in just to be nice to my cruel, indifferent and very ungenerous editor. Burden Hill has too many goddamned characters already and I'm having enough trouble fitting everyone into these stories. That's one reason I started doing stories about the Wise Dogs. Except now we have too many goddamned characters in those, as well. Ugh.

It made more sense to come up with a story that took place somewhere other than Burden Hill, which led to "why not just place the story in Japan?", which would mean not using any of the Burden Hill cast, which meant, logically, it would have to be built around the Wise Dogs. Since some of them have been around for a long time, it was feasible to use some of the existing dogs. Which whittled things down to Emrys, the sheepdog, who I've wanted to write some flashback stories for, as we've mentioned his running around with a human companion solving supernatural hijinx back in the day. Things tumbled, I came up with the basis for a one-shot, I ripped off an old idea of mine from an old comic I wrote and used that as a thing to kick off everything, and added a lot of other things, and Sarah started doing some research and adding things, and we ended up with a four-issue series that takes place in Japan in 1946. Or 1947, we wrote this thing last year. 

Now we have shibas, an abandoned U.S. soldier's mascot dog, an occult plague, dead soldiers, ghosts, crawling severed heads and a lot of yokai. I'm really happy with this one. But considering I was trying to do a story with a small cast, I kind of failed. Still, there's fewer main characters than in the other arcs.

One of these days I'll write a story about a couple of characters, and not a couple of characters and an ensemble. This is what happens when you grow up watching old movies directed by Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges. And It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Anyway (I'm getting a royalty every time I use the word, "anyway", anyway anyway anyway, by the way) here's a look at the main cover by series artist Benjamin Dewey, and the variant by my old Deadline roster-mate John McCrea. Our letterer, once again, is Nate Piekos. Zack Davisson generously helped out with some feedback and yokai-related stuff. Upcoming variant covers are by Beasts of Burden co-creator Jill Thompson, there's one by me and Sarah, and one by a very good friend of ours whose work we love. You probably love their work, too. Huzzah.

Postscript: Whoops! I forgot to post this earlier, because I started looking over the  revised lettering for #3. Which is all fine und dandy. Anyway, New Beasts of Burden!