Some unrealized movie projects never die; they’re just reborn in other media. That’s the case with Michael Mongillo’s recently released genre comic THE LOST GIRL, which he discussed with Fango.

THE LOST GIRL began life as a screenplay Mongillo hoped to direct, with Norman Reedus attached at one point to star. Now available in the four-color format from Arcana Comics, the story concerns a runaway orphan teen named Joy who hooks up with a mysterious stranger who turns out to be a Neurian—one of a race of lycanthropic shapeshifters. “THE LOST GIRL is a reaction to the classic WOLF MAN screenplay by Curt Siodmak and equally inspired by the writings of Herodotus, the Greek ‘father of history,’ ” Mongillo explains. “Siodmak was without the literary source material of his film’s predecessors, such as FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA, so he boldly created his own mythology, most notably the ‘curse of the werewolf’ afflicting those bitten to continue the cycle of transformation and mayhem when the moon is full. My research revealed that there are as many differences as there are similarities in the werewolf folklore predating THE WOLF MAN; yet nearly all werewolf fiction since has idly followed Siodmak’s innovations.

“Equally improbable is that one of the strangest sources of werewolf lore is from an ancient historical account. In the 5th century B.C., Herodotus cited a clan of ‘shapeshifters,’ a people from southern Russia called Neurians, or the Neuri, who annually transformed into beasts. What fascinated me was that this brief account is historical, not mythological; thus, using the simple premise of ‘Where would the Neuri be now, in the present day?’ as my springboard, I was inspired by Siodmak’s trailblazing cue to do nothing short of reinvent the legend of the werewolf.”

Mongillo is thrilled to see this story coming alive on the page, with artwork by Rob Ten Pas that he deems “just perfect. I’m honored that the story now lives as our collaborative vision. My hope is that Arcana’s movie production arm, Arcana Studios, will decide to resurrect the movie version, but if not, this is certainly a great life for Joy and the whole Neurian gang. It was a blast adapting it for the singular medium of sequential-art storytelling, and a lot of improvements were made from the source material in that adaptation process. So for me, it was almost like getting to direct the film I never got to make.” You can find out more about LOST GIRL at Arcana’s official website.  

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