Important note: Given that this article is largely about the final issue of a book released today, we highly recommend you go out and read “Green Wake” #10 before diving any further.
Today is the day: the “Green Wake” finale has hit stands, and thus ends the book lovingly crafted by Kurtis Wiebe and Riley Rossmo. What was once a five-issue mini worked its way up in popularity to an ongoing before unfortunately meeting its demise due to low sales. This was rather upsetting news, as we quite enjoyed the book from it’s earliest days and well after. While you can actually read the series online for free, it is never the less a bit sad that there will never be another story set in the dystopian and eerie town of Green Wake.
To that end, Wiebe took to his blog to clear up some of the mythology of the series. These are all spoilers, so if you haven’t read the final issue yet, please look away. If you have, however, and want further explanation, here are a few choice quotes from Wiebe’s blog on the subject:
On the above image and its explanation of what the town/its mythology literally is:
Ishum was a simple fisherman that lived in the area of Egypt around 8,000 BC. One day he is approached by a mysterious woman, a beautiful goddess of immense power. Smitten by her, Ishum leads her back to his village. In a display of her power she spews forth the Nile from her mouth and is immediately worshipped by the people who bore witness to the event. They called her Hecate, a goddess of fertility and resurrection. After a time, Ishum fell in love with Hecate and their bond grew. Hecate shared a vision with Ishum of a beautiful new world they could inhabit together, a world without death. They could live together forever, if only Ishum could convince his fellow people to join them. The villagers believed in Hecate and willingly entered into this new world where death could no longer claim them. But Hecate was not benevolent, she had tricked Ishum and his people. Despite her treachery, Hecate cared for Ishum, the man who made this world possible and filled it with life. She took his eyes so that he would never see the suffering of his people. Trapping the villagers inside her world, Hecate stepped outside and left the people to wallow in their misery, cut off from the goddess who had given them hope and immortality. With a whole world resting in her hands, Hecate devoured and siphoned the life from it, feeding on its energy to stay alive forever.
On the residency of Green Wake:
The villagers never entered Green Wake with their physical bodies. It was only a machination of their mind, created with the aid of the monster but mostly by their own willpower. Hecate planted the seed of what their world could be, the promise and hope they would find on the other side. They never walked from one world to the next, rather, Hecate pulled each of them in through their subconscious mind. It is that part of the person that lives in Green Wake.
On the entrance to Green Wake:
We introduced numerous characters, all from different timelines. This was tied into the concept of the collective subconscious but I chose to take that idea and spread it throughout history. Green Wake existed outside of time and reality as we knew it, it drew in the lost, broken and sorrowed from all over the world, from all over time.
On the mystery of the frogs:
Continued belowThe frogs are the result of what happens when people avoid facing their demons. In the world of Green Wake, the longer they stayed the more Hecate took from them and their change took an outwardly physical toll. That’s why some people looked more froglike than others, they were content to just fade away in the borders of the forgotten town rather than question how and why they got there.
On the title:
There were layers to the title of the series. First and foremost, it was the name of a town, a simple, vague and weird name that on an outward appearance means little. However, there were some themes present within. The colour green was a symbolic allusion to jealousy, which tied into Carl’s story, but also connected to what made Green Wake the town it was; loss, sadness and mourning. The second part of the title also had two meanings: a funeral, the death of happiness, the reason people ended up in the town. The other was straightforward; a place you would wake with no memory of how you got there.
On the metaphor of “Green Wake”:
I’ve been up front that Green Wake is a huge metaphor for how I view guilt and sadness. When I first started writing the idea of Green Wake, I was in the middle of a painful relationship with a partner that had a lot of hurt in their life. For a long time I took that wound on myself, as though it was my responsibility to help her get better or to carry that burden so she wouldn’t have to. I carried that for a long time and it was those feelings that eventually became the metaphor in Green Wake.
For the full explanations, please check Wiebe’s write-up. Additionally, we chatted with Wiebe briefly on some additional thoughts about the series finale, the importance of answering questions for fans, and where the series would have gone if the book had continued.
Check after the cut for a short interview with Wiebe, and look for more on the “Green Wake” finale tomorrow as well.
Given that with long-form mysteries, a final explanation can often make or break a fan’s appreciation of a story (such as the controversial “LOST” finale), was it important to you to provide the full explanation to fans as opposed to simply leaving things somewhat open-ended?
KW: When Riley and I decided to bring the series to an end (a choice made on the financial aspect), we had a few options. One of them was to take a break and see what happened with the fan base, but we both knew the reality is that time wouldn’t increase our sales. After a lengthy discussion, we decided to wrap things up as best we could so that the fans would have closure. It was what we’d promised in all the interviews from day 1, so we could hardly go back on that. I asked Jim for an additional 6 pages, which he graciously gave me, and wrote what I think is one of the best and most difficult scripts from my roster to date.
If the series hadn’t come to a premature end, would you have been as blunt about the explanations within the actual book and/or provided online explanations as well? Or is the online explanation only due to the book coming to an early end?
KW: No, I would’ve probably had the time to allow for the full explanation within the pages of the series. I know there was resolution in the final issue, but there were still a few things left unexplained, especially when it came to the mythology. Keep in mind, Issue #9 was already at the printer when we made the decision to end it, so I didn’t have a lot of room to work with. I filled in all the holes I could, but there were still things I wanted to put out there for the readership, at least the ones who wanted to know everything.
Looking at stories like “LOST” or further back to “The Prisoner”, perhaps even with something like “Y: The Last Man”, direct answers to the big questions of an ongoing mystery aren’t often given. How important is it, to you, that fans be given these clear cut answers?
Continued below
KW: I don’t personally think it matters much, but I wanted it to be available for those who found that part of the story the most interesting. That’s one of the things I’m very proud of with this series: everyone loved it for very different reasons. Some loved the characters or the story, some loved the town itself or the monsters. I remember back at NYCC filling in a friend of mine what Green Wake was and how it worked and his mind was blown, he’d interpreted the story entirely in a way that made sense to him but wasn’t close to how it worked. I enjoyed hearing that, because his interpretation of the story made Green Wake entirely his own.
Where did the idea to use Hecate, a popular figure in Greco-Roman mythology (and persistent Hellboy villain, at that), come to you for the use of Green Wake?
KW: Well, the Egyptian version (her name is spelled slightly different) was actually a woman with the head of a toad. Her powers were connected to rebirth and resurrection and I think that tied very closely into the idea of Green Wake: a rebirth in the town itself as a changed person, a bringing to life of a new self that didn’t exist before the traumatic event that brought them there.
Given the constrictions of the final issue, what else would you have liked to flesh out in the book aside from Hecate’s involvement and her surrounding mythology?
KW: There was lots, truthfully. I would’ve explained in more detail the Boatman (the man who puts people in the boats that wash up on Green Wake’s shores), the mutant monsters (which gets a mention in my blog post) and a lot of the reason behind the visions Morley and Micah had. There are some hints in the early visions from the first volume that never played out because of the early end. We were thinking WAY far in advance for the series.
If Green Wake had run for the length you wanted, what other arcs would we have seen?
KW: Well, the third arc was going to be about Krieger. He would’ve been the narrator, we would’ve seen his past and his role in the upcoming gap left by the departure of Micah. The third arc was going to be about a full scale civil war between Micah’s followers and those that had had enough of his meddling. We only hinted at it in this arc. There also would’ve been way more focus on the children, we were going to use them as a sort of Green Wake Boogeyman, lurking in the dark corners. That also would’ve tied into Esther and we’d long planned to make her a bit of a dark horse, her motivations and allegiances a bit questionable.
And, of course, Morley. I was planning a very long romance between Esther and Morley, she would’ve been his path to forgiving himself of Anna’s death and learning to love again. I’m really sad about that one, because it was going to take 3 arcs to unfold.
