This weekend, I’m at Las Cruces Comic Con. If you’re in town, I hope you’ll drop by the convention center, say “hi,” and browse our fine selection of books. Back in June at Duke City Comic Con, I had the opportunity to meet Tom Hutchison, owner of Big Dog Ink and writer/creator of most of the company’s titles, which include Legend of Oz: The Wicked West and the superhero comic, Critter. Another title he publishes is Ursa Minor, which imagines an alternate world where, in 2012, a pair of werewolves emerged and killed the president of the United States. Soon after that, vampires made themselves known and offered to out the werewolves, tag, and control them for humanity. However, these vampires aren’t the altruists they appear to be on the surface. They’re actually seeking a position of power among humankind and a way to utilize humans as easy food stock.
As an astronomer, I know the constellation Ursa Minor well. Its name is Latin for “Little Bear” and it’s also known as the Little Dipper, which is the constellation containing Polaris, the pole star. In Tom’s comic, the title character is Naomi, a young woman who also happens to be a werebear. In this world, werebears are among the most dangerous creatures to vampires. They are one of the few creatures strong enough to do physical harm to a vampire and they have silver in their claws, which make them an especially potent force when fighting vampires. Unfortunately for humans, werebears are quite rare and it looks like Naomi may be the only one currently alive.
As the story opens, Naomi works at Papa Gamboli’s Carnival, a carnival-themed nightclub in Los Angeles. Late at night, Naomi and her best friend, Angela, stalk the streets of LA hunting vampires. It soon becomes apparent this is a losing battle. The vampires can make more of their own kind faster than Naomi can kill them. They seek advice from their friend Onyx, a rock golem who tends bar at the Carnival. Onyx takes Naomi and Angela to Japan in search of a witch named April who he believes can help them be more effective vampire hunters. April tells them all vampires are descended from one of four “Legends.” These Legends are ultra-powerful vampires: Countess Bathory, Dracula, Vlad, and Orlock. Our team sets out to take on Dracula, but when they realize the vampires can easily deduce their plans, they change tack and confront Elizabeth Bathory instead.
One of the things that was fun about meeting Tom in person was the opportunity to get his thoughts on creating a vampire/horror comic. We also talked about how I had created a short comic based on my novel Dragon’s Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order Vampires and he told me he had actually novelized the original Ursa Minor miniseries. The novelized version of Ursa Minor is available for just 99 cents at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Ursa-Minor-Fear-April-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B01EHK50FS/
It was interesting to compare the comic book and prose novel versions of Ursa Minor. Tom’s prose novel is mostly a blow-by-blow retelling of the comic, but there are a few expanded scenes and the novel extends a little beyond the end of the first comic book mini-series. Interestingly, in the comic book, I felt like some of the fight scenes were over and done very quickly. In the novel, he took some time and built more suspense, making me worry more for the fate of our heroes. Overall, I felt like I got to know Naomi, Angela, April, and Onyx just a little better in the prose novel than I did in the comic series alone. As with many small press works, the prose novel would benefit from another round of copyediting, but it was enjoyable and it would be interesting to see Tom try his hand at novelized versions of some of his other universes.
You can learn more about the Ursa Minor comic series at: https://bigdogink.com
You can find my vampire comic at: https://hadrosaur.com/GuinevereStranger.php
My Scarlet Order vampire novels are at: http://davidleesummers.com/books.html#scarlet_order
David Lee Summers' Web Journal 