Writer & Editor
I’ve been waiting forever to do a post like this, but I wanted to wait until I had a good variety of truly weird search terms. I can’t hold a candle to the sublime absurdity at other blogs, such as Amy’s, but I feel I finally have some gems.
If you think the modern werewolf tale is a thinly-veiled metaphor for raging hormones, Catherine Lundoff would say you’re right. Just maybe not be the ones you’re thinking of.
Lycanthropy in pop culture has become so attached to the adolescent (I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Teen Wolf were early examples) that we ignore other times of change in the human body — such as the transition from middle age to one’s golden years.
But in Silver Moon, Lundoff eschews that obsession with youth by focusing on women “of a certain age.”
“I got the original idea for menopausal werewolves from watching the werewolf film Ginger Snaps, which features teenaged protagonists,” she says. “It’s also funny and political and very grim, and I wanted to do something a bit like that, except with a protagonist who was definitely not a teenager.”
Well, many of us predicted it: Rachel Deering managed to get to $20,000 in pledges for her Kickstarter campaign to fund the remaining five issues of her “lesbian werewolf epic,” Anathema. A huge and hearty congratulations to her.
Now comes the hard part. I don’t mean the writing, lettering and publishing, which Rachel will undertake (though the publishing duties have now been picked up by Comix Tribe — a huge coup for Rachel). No, the challenge now is to ensure the total stays above that mark until the campaign closes on April 30. If any pledges are reduced, bringing the total below $20,000, none of the money is collected.
That’s already happened once — for a very understandable reason. One prospective donor who had pledged $1,000 reduced it to $45 upon learning he would soon have a baby to support. Great news for the donor, on which Rachel and other pledgers offered congratulations; but a snag in the fundraising all the same.
Creating your own comic book series can be an all-or-nothing endeavour. Just ask Rachel Deering, the woman behind Anathema.
Telling the story of Mercy Barlowe, a woman whose lover, Sarah, is burnt at the stake for being a lesbian, the first issue shows us how Mercy seeks out supernatural help to rescue Sarah’s soul from a sinister cult. (You can read the As You Were interview with Rachel on her career and her own experience with homophobia here.)
Welcome to a new feature here at As You Were: Werewolf Wednesday. In which we reserve a day for that greatest of monsters, often overlooked thanks to shambling zombies and flawless vampires. Our first feature in the series is with independent comic book writer and letterer Rachel Deering.
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If you’re tired of garden-variety werewolves, comic creator Rachel Deering has a new one for you: a lesbian shapeshifter out for revenge against religious zealots and fighting members of a sinister cult for her lover’s soul.
Rachel, 29, was born and raised in a small town in northeastern Kentucky. Her passion for comics took root at age seven, when one of her uncles gave her his old collection, and horror was front and centre. It was love at first sight.
“It wasn’t a very large collection, maybe ten or twelve magazines,” she says, “but they were all quality.” Among the titles were genre staples such as Heavy Metal, Creepy, and Tales from the Crypt.
“Not exactly light reading, especially for one so young as me. I read every single issue until the pages were falling apart.”
