Author: Jorge Perez
Death is a gritty topic that many people tend to avoid since it can bring about many different emotions. It would bring great sadness and potentially a lot of anger to family members. In the comic The Shepard, it challenges how death affects people. Meet Lawrence Miller, a theologian professor at a university who suffered the loss of his son (Van Miller) from a drug overdose. Stricken with grief, Lawrence spirals down the path of wanting revenge against those who provided the drugs that killed his son.
Believing that his son’s soul is still out there wandering between heaven and earth, Lawrence dies by suicide in hopes that he would be able to find his son and take revenge against those who harmed him. Lawrence finds himself in a place called ‘The Seam’ which lies in the boundaries of heaven and earth. Lawrence meets his deceased father, and his father offers him a place for his soul to rest, but Lawrence rejects his offer and decides to stay in the seam, hoping to find his son’s soul.
After being rejected, Lawrence’s father gives him a shepherd’s crook, called the staff of truth, which has the power to make people see the truth of their actions. With the staff of truth in hand, Lawrence begins his journey of finding his son’s soul while seeking retribution. I had the chance to speak with the creator of The Shepherd and ask him a couple of questions.
“What inspired The Shepherd? Andrea talked about how he had a nightmare where his son died from a drug overdose. “It was pretty traumatic. But what made the nightmare really stand out is that it wasn’t just that event that happened and then wake up, but it was that event and then all the follow-up that you would expect.” Andrea continues with how in the nightmare, he had to identify his son’s body, going through the funeral, and bury the body. Andrea explain how he was grieving and how it got worse until he was able to hear his son’s voice. Andrea’s son is fine and alive and he actually encouraged him to make a graphic novel based on the nightmare. Though it was not something he really aspired on doing, he decided to take a leap of faith and create the comic The Shepherd.
Though death is a challenging topic to face or talk about, The Shepherd allows people to learn about their own grief through this story. Andreas pointed out that, “The more I think about The Shepherd, the more I realized that the whole series is about trauma and recovery from trauma. The key thing that I really want to leave the listeners with is that the message, if I could boil it down to one word, the message is hope.”
The Shepherd does an amazing job of showing the different forms of grief. This comic explores what someone goes through when a loved one passes away and combines expert storytelling to explore the world of the afterlife and what one would imagine our souls go through.