The Malfunctioning Werewolf

A werewolf in a closet caught me masturbating once.

Spoiler, that’s probably going to be the opening line to issue 5 of Serious Creatures. But it’s also true and probably the reason I’m making this comic to begin with.

I was fifteen years old or so when the werewolf incident happened. It was Halloween night and I had gone out and raised minimal hell with my friends: scored some candy begrudgingly from adults who thought we were too old to still be trick or treating and drank some stolen booze (proving their point) so now I was winding down for the evening. Which -since I was fifteen – meant masturbating viciously. I shared a room with my little brother but luckily we had bunk beds and he was dead asleep or at the very least gracious enough to pretend to be so in order for his older brother in the bottom bunk to commit what I’m sure were weird sounding atrocities to himself in the silent darkness of our room.

I was just getting started (what would have been a marathon two minute session of self-discovery I’m sure) when I thought I heard a rustling sound coming from the closet directly across from the bed. I don’t think I stopped what I was doing under (thankfully under) the covers at first but then I heard the sound again and I stopped completely.

Was there someone in my closet?

I remember trying to rationalize with myself that it was Halloween and even though I was fifteen and too old to be such a wuss maybe I had gotten a little spooked over the course of the night and now I was hearing things. But I was fifteen now, way too old for this spooky nonsense. So I went back to whacking off.

And that’s when my closet doors flew open and a werewolf exploded out in a snarl. My brother above me startled awake and I think I might have yelped and then quickly moved my leg up to shield my fear resilient boner. The werewolf loomed over my bed for a moment, the streetlight from my window swallowing most of his shape in shadow, and then he dropped his claws to his side and said, “Stop pulling your pud, buddy.” And he laughed with the voice of my mom’s boyfriend.

I had never seen this werewolf mask of his, I think he bought it just to do this. I have no idea how long he was waiting in my closet. When he left, my brother, who was just coming to, asked me what the hell that was all about and I had no answers for him. I went to bed praying that my mom’s boyfriend at the very least wouldn’t tell my mom. When I woke up I waited until I heard his truck leave for work before I risked leaving my room to get a bowl of cereal but when my mom whipped around the corner and saw me she just burst into laughter at the sight of me.

The werewolf kept no secrets.

Year later or so I caught him beating off to porn on our couch at night when I woke up to use the bathroom. We just laughed. But I totally told my mom on him too.

What does that have to do with my comic about a teenage special fx artist making movies in the 70s and 80s? Before Serious Creatures was a comic it was a very long short story (I forget the word count but it was around 60 pages on typing paper) entitled The Malfunctioning Werewolf and the inciting incident in that story involved our teenage hero getting caught beating it on set by a dickhead actor wearing one of the werewolf masks that our hero had designed. The story has changed a lot since then but even in that early state I was combining my real life with movie lore and complete fiction to make something which shifts between all three constantly.

The short story involves Bobby (I don’t even remember if he was still named Bobby in that old story) working on the set of a werewolf filmed entitled The Snarling (now shortened to Snarl in the comic) and him trying to juggle working in an adult world as a talented but naïve kid as well as navigating talking to girls for the first time. There was a tough guy Australian stuntman who Bobby was applying werewolf makeup to that takes Bobby under his wing and teaches him how to talk to chicks and be a badass and of course none of it works and Bobby grows up a little and learns to be his own man.

I wrote the story a long time ago, more than ten years ago, after one of the first drafts of my debut novel Nefarious Twit. So I was probably 27 or 28 years old when I wrote it. I always liked it, knew it needed some polishing but I liked it nonetheless. But I didn’t really think of expanding it into a full length story (let alone comic) until a few years ago.

See, I often think about the types of stories I like and what I would like to do within that type. Like, what would my people boarded up somewhere and monsters are trying to get them story be? My novel An Augmented Fourth was the answer. What would my epic fantasy sci-fi sprawling saga be? My upcoming Bleeding Tree Trilogy will be my response. But one story type I always wanted to do was a story about someone with a very singular, almost innate talent and how that helps and hinders them personally. Weird examples being Tommy by The Who and Boogie Nights by P.T. Anderson.

I also am a sucker for a good rise and fall of something type of story. Especially if it reflects a lost period in history. Eventually I remembered my special fx kid story, which was already loosely inspired by the career of Rob Bottin and I started seeing the potential for it. I also at this point had written five novels, had two published and also made a comic book series and carved a very small but loyal audience…but also had no real success finically or critically. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not losing money and the reviews I get tend to be positive but at the same time I am nowhere close to being able to quit my day job and create stories full time. So in that very real sense I’m a failure. Not that I’m going to quit, I’m obsessed. I love it.

Which got me thinking about what it might have been like if I had some success, some huge success, especially when I was younger.  Would I still be as obsessed? Or more so? And what if it didn’t make much of a difference? What if I would still be a failure only in a different way?

I started looking at the life of someone like Rob Bottin, hitting the big time at age 14! What could that be like? Your dream becoming real so early. But then you’re twenty one, you’ve finished what will become your most celebrated work (The Thing) and everyone hates it. Worse they ignore it. So what do you do?

You keep working.

Maybe people catch up with your work later, recognize it as genius.

But maybe that’s just as the entire art you practice becomes obsolete.

Maybe that just cements your legend.

Maybe that’s why you quit and no one can find you.

Or maybe you just grew up finally.

Or does growing up mean you still do what you love, even if no one else ever sees it?

Maybe.

I don’t know yet. I’ll tell you when I finish my book.

I hope I have an answer, hope the werewolf was wrong and I’m not still just pulling my pud.