Silvermane
patreon
Cycles of the Moon History
🕑 Added 2023-06-18 21:20:09 +0000 UTCIt does seems rather strange to put in a history of a comic that hasn't technically been made yet, but according to the last stream you guys want to hear about it so here goes.
I've been toying with a werewolf comic even before the aborted Unchained Elements some, my God 12 years ago. Unchained Elements proved I could do a comic at the very least and that I shouldn't be afraid to explored fetish elements in a storyline. Sadly the same fetish that kind of inspired the starting story of Unchained Elements also lead to that comic not being finished. Too many people just wanted the characters to dive right into the quicksand right again and that wasn't the story I wanted to tell, which sadly squashed a lot of my desire to do a comic at all for a while.
The first few ideas I had for a werewolf comic were more horror based. Werewolves awakening from killing people or in the process and more or less the ideas were very nicely image based but the story just wasn't there. At least in an original idea. Sure I could do a rehash of many a werewolf tale from all sorts of media but I ultimately wanted to do something that was mine and a bit original in the least. The first few fleshed out werewolf comics were Werewolf Tales and Instincts both covers featured on my FA page. The ideas were harkened back to those old horror movies of Hammer House of Horror and Universal and set in the late 19th and 20th centuries. It sounded good but I felt like I was just retreaded the same ideas and I wanted to do something more adult with ideas that modern supernatural writers had started exploring this was about the early 2000's when Laurel K Hamilton, Carrie Vaughn, and Patricia Briggs were all writing the sort of supernatural relationship novels that series like Supernatural and True Blood would later adapt.
The first character of what would become Unchained Elements was Eddie. Originally named Erik he was unironically a werewolf bouncer inspired by the works of Son of Ea. Mostly wanting to draw a big beefy werewolf made me realize well why would someone have a werewolf bouncer. The characters would expand a bit adding in Michael and the bouncer idea would briefly alter to a motorcycle gang that had arrived at a generic American town/city to start recruiting. This idea was more or less a werewolf take on Salem's Lot a novel and movie that has haunted me since my childhood. Seriously go see the Toby Hopper mini series it's truly creepy. Again I was more focused on the horror aspects of the comic than anything else. The more I thought on this concept the more I just didn't want to do anything with it as it seemed I was merely treading old ground. The title Cycles of the Moon stuck as i was creating at the time, a motorcycle werewolf gang. The title itself a reference to the motorcycles as well as the lunar cycle itself. One thing I did want to do though was the idea that any bodily fluid could infect someone, but it would depend on that bodily fluid how the werewolf infection took. After all werewolf biting someone is simply our fear of rabies and other diseases that wild animals have as well as that thing in the back of our brain that realizes under the right circumstances there are a lot of things in nature that can and do eat us. So the idea that werewolfism as an STI kind of started to grow in my head.
This lead to one stream where Wright, Westhoff, Red and I arrived at what would begin to be the seeds of Cycles of the Moon. If being a werewolf could be transmitted by sex how would werewolves go about doing so? Would they just pick people off? Go on Grindr? How would werewolves fit in modern times? Could it even work? Then Wright hit us with the idea of a club that catered to werewolves just having sex with humans. A werewolf whore house, sure it sounds good but it needed more meat if you'll pardon the expression. I noodled on it and decided that the club, which would become Club Cerberus would be an entertainment club similar if you would to Medieval Times. A place where people would go to see werewolves in a sort of safe environment. Now the werewolves at the club have other agendas, they are looking, hunting if you will for possible candidates, keeping an eye on anyone that might be a problem, etc. The idea was simple if werewolves existed in reality would they just let it all hang out or would they hide? The later has been done to death so we went with hanging all out. Such Club Cerberus was born and Eddie has redone to become the head of security with Michael under him, recycling characters from previous ideas that went no where. Adding to the mix an OC of mine named Claude whose animalistic instincts would briefly make him a candidate to be the one to introduce the main character into the world of werewolves.
Then came Trey.
I am not exactly sure when Trevor "Trey" Fisher was born but he was a love child of Westhoff and mine's. A werewolf that physically deviated from the super muscled behemoth that was Eddie and more muscle gutted. A mohawk, a few piercings and an admittedly more realistic nature was given to Trey, a character that has taken on a life of his own and become of one the main characters of the comic. He's the entertainer that the main character one Sean Davidson witnesses performing one fateful night visit and will get to know over time. In that time Trey will seduce Sean into becoming a werewolf but not everything will be a rosey romance. There are people that will want werewolves dead, rabid fanbois/girls/people, the local groups of Kevin/Karen's concerned about their way of life being ruined by baying werewolves, not to mention a few groups just interested in werewolves and how they would with more than sinister intentions on their minds. Eddie and Claude were revamped to fit the comic with Eddie ironically returning to his original bouncer concept becoming head of security for the club and Claude being head of "entertainment".
So what started out long ago and what seems far away is gaining speed. Will it all be debauchery? No. There are questions I want to explore and commentary I want to make. Will it all be serious no again but Cycles of the Moon will be more than just a smut comic or so I hope. I hope you'll enjoy it as it goes on and no doubt given it's history things will change but I got a good feeling about this version and it has stuck more so than any of it's predecessors.
