Tales from Beard Moss Wood

Tales From Beard Moss Wood (or simply Beard Moss Wood, if you want to make it less of a mouthful) is a longtime dream project of mine. Already in the late 1990’s, I started dreaming about my own animal comic in the classic Franco-Belgian style, the style I admired especially after reading a lot of classic BD in 1993-1999: Macherot, Peyo, Hergé, Franquin, Roba, Berck & Cauvin, Derib and many more masters.

TFBMW was originally supposed to be just a simple adventure comic with seven separate stories, which nonetheless form a coherent, continuing story arc. Each story was supposed to feature a different animal, each one having a special skill or character trait that was to be put to good use in the stories. Each story was also supposed to take place in a slightly different setting: in a human city, at nighttime, underwater, or mostly up in the air. I wasn’t going to put any social or ecological messages into the stories, I thought about making just seven lightweight, harmless stories. Well, as the years went by, my idea deepened and became more message-heavy and socially conscious.

TFBMW takes place in an alternate reality, where humans have abandoned and isolated themselves from nature after something dramatic that happened decades ago. There are no parks, no trees, no grass, and no animals in any city. Humans have abandoned their pets, which have escaped into the woods. Only some cats and dogs are still alive, most of the other pets or their offspring have died or fallen prey to other animals.

In the forests, there are spirits. The spirits of the forests are all owls, and they possess limitless magical powers, which they keep in absolute secrecy from other animals. These owls often spy on humans, to find out about anything that might be relevant when trying to understand what happened decades ago, when pets suddenly became berserk and attacked their owners. The owls have secret meetings, where they discuss about anything from human affairs to problems that plague or threaten the forests where they live. The owls wish that some day, humans would find nature again and allow parks and animals in their cities again.

Many more themes are explored or touched upon in the comic. Everything will be told and explained at some point during these seven stories that make up the whole epic.