Broken Frontier

Mark Twain said it best, “Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.” Such is the dilemma often facing CRYPTOZOO CREW author Allan Gross as he pens the stories of world famous Cryptozoologist Tork Darwyn and his wife and companion Tara.

“I realized that writing this comic book would entail learning about Cryptozoology,” Gross explained, “But I never thought I’d practically lose my sanity trying to solve every mystery! However, as I began researching the creatures I become so involved that I wanted to put forward new and exciting ideas on their actual origins.”

CRYPTOZOO CREW uses a fairly formulaic plot. Tork Darwyn travels the globe searching for unknown or hidden animals, technically defined as “cryptids”. Tork’s wife Tara accompanies him on these journeys, and in the course of the adventures the reader learns the prevailing theory or theories associated with the particular cryptid. Meanwhile, the story, the conflict, and the humor are based on the husband and wife interaction and their divergent approaches to life. If you’ve read, “Men are from Mars, Women are from  Venus”, you’ll understand.

“I got a little carried away on Curse of the Mothman,” Gross continued, “Mothman is one of the great mysteries of Cryptozoology. This flying manlike creature became a fixture in pseudo-science when it appeared in 1966 at a graveyard in West Virginia. Mothman sightings later became associated with frightening apparitions, animal mutilations and many deaths.  I put in a lot of late nights trying to associate nearly a hundred years of possible sightings with a variety of scientific phenomenon, assorted mythology, cyclical events in astronomy and the weather, as well as prehistoric creatures that might have been the basis of Mothman.”

In the end, Gross was convinced that he had solved the mystery once and for all and not only could he explain Mothman, he could predict the date of its return! Since then, his therapist and a well know Cryptozoologist have convinced him that his theory was flawed, and that the next sighting would not portend the cataclysmic fate he envisioned, when swarms of the creatures were to return in the summer of 2005. Hopefully they are right. However, it still made for a nice story and Gross admitted that solving these mysteries is “almost as hard as it is for Tork to figure out his wife!”

The Mothman story is offered by NBM in the March Previews for May publication and the comic will also be offered as part of a special promotion at this summer’s Mothman Convention. Cryptozoo Crew #2, in stores in March, also offers a radical, albeit less terrifying explanation of the Florida Skunk Ape.