Some of the most entertaining, moving and award-winning comic book tales involve animals as stand-ins for human beings. Maus, Pride of Baghdad, We3 and Grandville immediately come to mind and there are many, many others.
Of course, there are also cute, anthropomorphic animals-turned-heroes that can hold their own titles and fan-base. The famously entertaining Rocket Racoon, Howard the Duck, Peter Porker, Detective Chimp, Ace and Krypto have all caught the attention of young and old fans over decades of publication.
Animals, as stand-ins for humans, allows readers to more closely sympathize with real-world plights that would otherwise prove more difficult for them understand and be affected by. It’s one thing, for example, to learn about the horrors of the holocaust from history books, then to experience those same terrors when reading about them through the eyes of a mouse.
Today sees a new and wholly entertaining horror series featuring animals that takes readers through medieval times and a world enveloped by the supernatural.
Written and illustrated by the Eisner Award-winning Michael Avon Oeming (Powers, the Mice Templar, Thor) and published by Dark Horse Comics, William of Newbury is a horror-filled four-issue miniseries that reminisces comic book titles like Hellboy and novels like The Name of the Rose. What else would you delightfully expect from 12th century England…or the creator of William of Newbury and his storytelling interests?
William of Newbury is a neurotic monk. He’s out to fight true, often unliving, evil – in a world that frightens him to no end. His church-going brother is out to save him, fearing for his very soul. In a medieval time of supernatural beliefs, demons, civil war and the plague, William must bring about peace to the land in the only way he knows how: using his deadly skills to dispatch the undead.
All the while evading both his brother and the church!
Make the run to your local comic book shop today and pick up the first issue of the new terror-tinged – and wholly engrossing adventures of William of Newbury #1.
You can catch the trailer for William of Newbury directly below.
