While many people are concerned with the border towns that are between the United States and Mexico (especially in the Trump era), Coyotes spins the issue; what happens when there are a series of murders in a small border town? What if the killers were not exactly human? I had a chance to catch up with the creative team behind the book and this is what they had to say:
1) Please introduce yourselves.
Sean: My name is Sean Lewis. I am the writer and co-creator of COYOTES for Image Comics.
Caitlin: Hi I'm Caitlin Yarsky and I'm the artist for a new Image Comics series called Coyotes.
2) What projects have you worked on in the past?
Sean: Previously, I worked on SAINTS with Ben Mackey and THE FEW with Hayden Sherman. Both are published by Image. The Few is also published by Hi Comics in France. Before that, I wrote plays. More people read the comic books.
Caitlin: I've worked in a variety of projects spanning multiple industries, and only recently started working in comics. I've worked in the games industry designing mobile games for kids for about 10 years, and worked as a book illustrator, painter, concept artist and animator.
3) How did you two meet up and come up with the idea behind Coyotes?
Sean: I found her on Facebook. Literally. Saints had just come out and I had written up a short story of the COYOTES book. I had no idea how to meet artists, so, I went on Facebook and found a comic art submission page and that was it. I sent her an email and she responded, luckily, and we started talking about making this comic. I found Hayden from the FEW the same way. In both instances their work was so singular I knew we could make an amazing comic together.
Caitlin: A few years ago when I decided to concentrate on getting work in the comic world, I created my own 10 page short story comic and shared the art with various publishers. One publisher had a call for submissions on their facebook wall, where I uploaded a few pages. Sean was looking for illustrators for Coyotes and happened to see what I had submitted. He sent me an email from there and after reading his script I knew I wanted to work with him.
4) Tell us a bit what Coyotes is about for those of us who never heard of it before?
Sean: COYOTES is about a desert town where women are going missing. We soon discover they are being hunted by Werewolves- the Coyotes of our story- and these Werewolves are men who are wearing ancient pelts that turn them into these animalistic beasts. Our main here is RED, a teenage girl with a katana sword. It mashes up a ton of things I was obsessed with as a kid. Samurai stories, Tank Girl, Neil Gaiman, b movies... and delivers a pretty aggressive punch.
5) Why did you choose the City of Lost Girls as your location for this story?
Sean: Well, it let you know right away what the problem is. I used to do interview based projects and the ways people referred to their hometowns were really telling to the psyche of the people. If you call Philadelphia, "Killadelphia" what is you and the community's relationship to the place. City of Lost Girls sounded bad ass and it gave us a tone right away.
6) The first collection comes out in April, does this mean the end for Coyotes?
Sean: No, I'm desperately trying to write issue 5 right now.
Caitlin: Nope! We are currently working on the next story arc, which should come out this fall. We're really excited about how the story is unfolding!
7) What are your future plans for this series? What adventures are in store for Red?
Sean: Well, she's risen to great heights... if I know my dramatic literature she's probably going to have to fall back to Earth again. And Seff, our lead werewolf... remember wolves move in packs.
8) Any chance of adapting this book into other mediums (animation,film, tv series)? Who would you get to play the main characters?
Sean: Yes. I don't think we can say much about that yet but yes. There are things in the works.
9) What would be your dream project to work on if you both had the chance?
Sean: We both have talked about how cool it would be to do a book about Dream from the Sandman universe.
Caitlin: Sean and I both love the Sandman Universe, so that would be #1 for me, in terms of working on something that already exists. As far as other projects, I am working on my own comic, an original story that incorporates lots of dark Celtic folklore. I've also always dreamed of adapting some of my favorite YA books (examples would include The Giver, The Neverending Story, A Wrinkle in Time, or the Earthsea Trilogy).
10) Any final words?
Sean: Coyotes is fantastic. I know that's arrogant. But give it a try. I'm insanely proud of it and Caitlin's work is a revelation.
Caitlin: I'm so grateful to be working with Sean- he is a fantastic writer and creative partner, and gives me immense artistic freedom when it comes to the style, flow and design of the comic. I couldn't be more excited to continue developing this world and story together.
The first trade paperback of Coyotes should be available later this month which collects the first four issues. If you want more information on what is next for this series head over to https://imagecomics.com/comics/series/coyotes
