History of Wulf and Batsy
Part 5: My Secret Formula: THE HOWLING + SPIDERBABY = Wulf and Batsy
In 1981, when I was 9 years old, a movie came out called THE HOWLING, and my parents let me see it. By that point I’d already seen Universal Monster movies on TV and The Wolfman was my favorite monster. But THE HOWLING introduced me to a style of werewolf that was new and ferociously different.
THE HOWLING really stuck with me and became as important to my imagination as Star Wars or Jaws or Raiders of the Lost Ark or Creepshow, or any of the other movies I was obsessed with as a kid.
As I grew up I started drawing my own comics about various characters. But in the back of my mind, I always thought, someday, I’d really like a make an ongoing comic book series about a Werewolf!
But how? Marvel Comics had already beaten me to it with Werewolf By Night, which seemed to have used up all the best ideas you could do, in an ongoing werewolf comic.
I needed an angle that would make my werewolf comic different.
In my teenage years and twenties, I would turn this idea over in my mind often. Especially while working at any of my various minimum wage jobs, just to kill boredom.
And then, in 1998, I saw the movie SPIDERBABY.
Made in 1964, lost for decades, and rediscovered and rereleased (on VHS) in the late 90’s. It was one of those obscure Horror films I’d seen photos of, and read about in books and magazines, but had never actually seen until then.
SPIDERBABY is NOT a movie about Vampires. But it struck me for two reasons:
First – the TONE of the film, with its constantly-changing mood shifts… from cartoonishly funny, to scary, to sweet and endearing, to sick and demented, to spicy and sexy, to sincerely tragic and sad. It was exactly the same kind of atmosphere, or mood, or tone that I was always striving to create in my comics. In other words, SPIDERBABY was a movie that “felt like” my comics.
Second – SPIDERBABY features an actress named Jill Banner, who plays a psychotic girl named Virginia. In some scenes she is innocent and naïve, almost childlike. In other scenes she is terrifying, bloodthirsty, murderous. And just when you think she’s a monster, she turns genuinely cute and seductive, or even vulnerable and sympathetic.
Jill Banner’s performance captured my imagination and made me think, “I want to draw a comic book about a female character just like her...”
To Be Continued in:
THE HISTORY of WULF and BATSY
Part 6: The Very First Sketch of Batsy!