INTERVIEW: Jake Smith’s ‘RoboWolf’ is here, in all its ’80s glory
Image courtesy of Dark Horse / Provided with permission.
Dark Horse recently published the first issue in a planned four-part series called RoboWolf, from writer and artist Jake Smith. This adventurous tale follows the title character — yes, he’s a robotic wolf — as he strives to drop off some stolen money to the aptly named Colonel Massacre. One doesn’t want to be late with a character name like that. The reason for the frenzied race against the clock is that the colonel is holding RoboWolf’s daughter ransom.
Along the way, RoboWolf encounters many different types of characters — beings that one would find in a 1980s action flick. Think ninjas, cannibals and robots — oh my!
Smith recently exchanged emails with Hollywood Soapbox to talk all things RoboWolf. He’s perhaps best known for his work on Godzilla: War for Humanity and Blood Force Trauma. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.
When did you first get the idea for RoboWolf?
RoboWolf started out as a fictional video game within the world of my last comic book, Blood Force Trauma, as a fake beat-em-up game that the main character loved! After doing some artwork for it and writing the game synopsis, the wheels started turning, and I started to conceptualize the story as a comic series. I got various ideas for characters and locations from different old-school arcade games like Streets of Rage and Final Fight!
The comic book looks very retro. What were some of your cultural influences?
Definitely those games I mentioned but also ’80s action movies like Predator, Robocop, Terminator and the Rambo films. There’s a lot I emulated from ’90s comics like Youngblood and Supreme and comics like that!
Are the characters populating their own world or is it our world?
The city of Sunset Hills is like a stylized arcade version of our world, populated with hyper-violent gangs, mutants and all sorts of other things. I wanted it to feel familiar, but in a comic book it’s great to have a world where anything could happen. So I didn’t want to limit myself to a realistic depiction of our world.
Is it difficult to draw an animal character like a wolf versus a human?
Actually, drawing a hybridized wolf-human is a fun balance as human heads are difficult to draw, and animal bodies are challenging. So I’ve got the easiest parts of both creatures on one character. RoboWolf is pure fun to draw.
Do you feel that you’re testing the waters with these four issues and hoping for another miniseries in the future?
Oh, most definitely! I’ve got a few RoboWolf storylines floating around in my brain. It really depends on Dark Horse’s willingness to do it!
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
RoboWolf #1, from Jake Smith, is out now in comic book stores, courtesy of Dark Horse. Click here for more information.
