Wolves

A fictional village amidst the woods, maybe somewhere in America, with a lot of past glory: that is Hazenberg, the setting for ‘Wolves’. The book kicks off with a gallery of portraits and scenes that immerse the reader in the right atmosphere, as if they were the opening credits of a TV series. Houses seem neglected and untidy; young people look as if they do not feel completely at home in their own skin. And that turns out to be true.

By occasionally colouring outside the lines, Ward Zwart and Enzo Smits evoke the atmosphere of endless boredom in which teenagers sometimes find themselves.

One hot summer, a group of teenagers go into the forest in search of a strange creature, but they find something else, something unexpected. A loner is persuaded by a friend to go to a party, but he really should have stayed away. A young skater has a head injury that makes him lose his grip on reality. In an unconscious state, he has visions of himself with film legend James Dean.

Ward Zwart creates fabulous things with a pencil. His dreamy and accurate drawings of joyless details and gloomy faces create a slightly nostalgic universe. The design of the book, printed on very thin paper and with a lot of extras, fits perfectly with the subject and with the artist’s fascination with pulp and counterculture.