FROM THE VAULT BONUS EDITION: SNOW ANGELS

Like Black Hammer and Gideon Falls, Snow Angels has a long origin story. And since the collected print edition of the series by Jock and myself is out now from Dark Horse, I thought I would do a bonus edition of From The Vault to reveal that origin story…

I usually don’t remember exactly where most ideas come from or start, but I do know where Snow Angels started. I used to put myself to sleep by visualizing skating on an endless river. I know this sounds cheesy, maybe just a little too Canadian, but it’s true. It was a weird, calming visualization thing I did for a while that helped me calm down and stop thinking. And it was from this idea of an endless iced-over river, where Snow Angels was born back in 2008 or 2009. Initially, it was called “TRENCH SKATER,” and it was about a man skating this endless river, being hunted or hunting, a dark figure called The Snowman. It was very inspired by The Gunslinger by Stephen King.

I spent a while playing with this idea in my sketchbook in 2010 before putting it aside to work on other projects like Underwater Welder and Sweet Tooth.

The initial version never really got past these initial sketchbook drawings. Still, I would later resurrect the idea and pitch it to Karen Berger at Vertigo in 2014 as my follow-up to Sweet Tooth, with the two girls, the man’s daughters, now as the focus.

The Vertigo pitch didn’t go anywhere, and I ended up pitching and doing Trillium after Sweet Tooth instead. But, of course, the idea kept sticking around, and I approached Jock about drawing it in 2013 or so. We were set up to do it as a team at Vertigo right before DC, and Warner Brothers shut down the imprint. And obviously, we ended up taking it to Comixology and doing it there as a 10-issue series last year.

I loved working with Jock and our editor Will Dennis on Snow Angels. Some ideas just don’t let you give up on them. In the case of Snow Angels, it would take ten years and a great collaborator like Jock to see it through, but I’m glad we did it.

Snow Angels Volume 1 is now available from Dark Horse Comics.

-Jeff