In the vast, unwritten rubric of sci-fi webcomics, there stand two universal truths: Time traveling is always perilous if the narrative harbors any substance, and Pythagoras would have loved Doritos. Howling @ the Gates, written by Rob Vollmar and illustrated by Shayna Pond, seeks to discern the queries most difficult to answer, such as “To what extent can love endure?” and “How timeless are the lectures of Carl Sagan?” Surfacing upon the digital frontier a few years ago, what began as a seemingly silly, lighthearted tale has snowballed into something far more contemplative. Fortunately, the humor is intact.
H@tG follows the life of a Hypatia and Grant, a young couple living their lives in an undisclosed Midwestern suburb. The former figure, named after the ancient Alexandrian thinker, is a blossoming scientista on the verge of a massive scientific discovery. The latter, in contrast, is a lethargic gamer striving for survival in the electronic era. A time machine of Hypatia’s creation serves as the catalyst for the story thus far, as the duo ruffles the space-time continuum haphazardly, gradually assessing and coping with the consequences of manipulation of this kind.
Vollmar and Pond shared the process of creating the comic, including insight into its origins, meaning and creative process. Additionally, the couple’s nine-week-old daughter, Eleanor, was gracious enough to chime with a few critical quips periodically, mostly in the form of gurgles and whines.
Vollmar, no newcomer to the graphical realm, published his first bit of writing in 2000 before pairing with artist Pablo Callejo to create The Castaways and the Bluesman saga under NBM Publishing.
Vollmar conjured the dredge of publication.
“It’s exhausting how long you have to wait to see a pay off,” he said, “and not just monetary.”
He cited the ease of releasing work online as an enticing factor of webcomics, as it “removes the biggest obstacle: the cost of production.” In essence, Vollmar found the release from bureaucratic restraints liberating, finding a distinct joy in the unique and quick gratification exclusive to the work’s medium.
In contrast, Pond, who met Vollmar at their shared workplace (the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma), had never illustrated for a comic. However, she felt particularly compelled to this project.
“I read his script, but didn’t really do a lot of character sketching or development,” she said.
Rather, Pond was “trying to feel out the early panel layout,” a process that got better as the duo continued to work.
After a brief frame, Vollmar explained the meaning (or lack thereof) behind the comic’s title, as well as a few key sources of inspiration for the series. H@tG’s first entry, which features Grant attempting to farm money via ad links in an online forum before Hypatia casually mentions her development of a time machine, embodies “the juxtaposition between two things,” Vollmar said, “or the collision between low and high culture.” An obvious distinction emerges between “Grant’s very casual, gamer attitude [and] his very serious, kind of chaotic girlfriend’s attempt to control the space-time continuum.”
The webcomic’s title, to a certain extent, embodies this thematic thread, taking from “‘the barbarians howled at the gates’” from Shirley Abbott’s memoir Bookmaker’s Daughter: A Memory Unbound.
“Howling is also funny,” Vollmar said, “maybe like the inmates howling at the gates of the asylum.”
The versatility of the title is what makes it interesting to Rob, since, after all, “there’s a lot of cheesy shit people end up liking” anyway.
