Writer/Illustrator: Mike Grell
Art Assistant: Brian Snoddy
Color Artist: Joe Chiodo
Color Seperator: Digital Chameleon
Lettering: Steve Haynie
Editor: Mike Gold

Today I read Shaman’s Tears. It’s kind of oddly about both a guy trying to figure out his half-breed status among his Lakota family as he’s both Irish and Lakota and the other part of the story deals with the government’s experimentation into DNA splicing which creates creatures that are neither human nor animal but rather a strange mix of the two.

So I guess what intrigues me is the whole idea that none of us are really “pure-bred” when you think about it. My make up consists of Cherokee Indian, Lithuanian, and who knows what else. My husband is Irish, Scottish and other Eastern European mixes. No one in this country (save the very few people who are full-blooded Native American) can really claim to be wholly one thing or another. Even if you’re from India, there are so many tribes and indigenous peoples that could possibly make up your genetic code that even then you can’t be sure you’re not a “mutt” of sorts.

However, I’m not sure I’d want to be mixed with an animal. In the comic, the humans mixed with animals like badgers, wolves, monkeys, and vampire bats are all strangely cool and weird at the same time. Sure it’d be sweet to be able to see in the dark like a bat or hang upside down from a prehensile tail…but the comic says that the half-human-half-animals are similar in age to the animals they’re derived from. For instance, the wolf dude is mature by age two (just like a normal wolf) and therefore only lives ten years or so before ultimately dying very young by human standards. But I guess there’s always gotta be a downside to awesomeness.

Besides, whenever humans play god, there’s going to be a downside…I feel like it’s inevitable.