An Interview With ‘The Dog Knight’ Writer Jeremy Whitley

For some, learning there’s a team of superhero talks out there called the Pawtheon won’t come as a surprise but it’s news to Frankie in writer Jeremy Whitley and artist Bre Indigo‘s graphic novel, The Dog Knight. With colors by Melissa Capriglione and letters by Indigo, The Dog Knight is the story of a brave teenager who, in the midst of trying to understand how they feel about their gender identity, must also come to terms with being chosen to become the Dog Knight, the one human who helps the Pawtheon save the world. How a book like that could ever make someone think it should be banned from being available in schools is a question that will never be satisfyingly answered, but it seemed like an important time to check in with Whitley about this series:

Rachel Bellwoar: I have no excuse and should’ve known better, but a big reason I think it’s taken me so long to read The Dog Knight is because I’m not a dog person. This isn’t dog-specific — I’m not really an any animal person — but, having read The Dog Knight now, I can’t believe I almost missed out on this amazing book for such a dumb reason. In case I’m not the only person out there making this huge mistake, is there anything you’d like to say to non-dog fans who might not think The Dog Knight is for them?

Jeremy Whitley: Well, first, I fully admit to being someone who was not a pet person. I get allergic around a lot of animals, dogs included, and at least that bit of Frankie’s mom is based on me.

The thing about these dogs is, in a lot of ways, they’re as much a superhero team as they are a pack of dogs. They all have unique abilities and personalities. They all serve as the avatars for one of the values dogs care about most. Maybe a story with a dog doesn’t appeal to you, but does a story with a two foot tall Yorkshire Terrier who thinks he’s Batman appeal to you? Well, that’s our good boy The Yorkshire Terror and he is as devoted to justice as any superhero in a comic you’ll pick up this month.

Also, of course, this is a book about finding your place in the world and how dogs accept you for who you are even when humans aren’t quite as dependable.

Bellwoar: I’m always curious to learn how an idea started. With The Dog Knight, did it start as an idea for a team of super-dogs or did the character of Frankie come first and you built the story around them?

Whitley: I think, in a way, this book started as wish fulfilment. Years back, my family adopted a dog whom we named Ace. He was a good boy who had been brought to the rescue after being seized from a junk yard where some guy in South Carolina had over fifty dogs. Ace had clearly been through abuse and neglect and had all these old scars. When we first adopted him, he was skittish and confused and felt like I had no idea what he needed and I just wished I could talk to him and find out what he needed. Then I found myself wishing there was someone who could provide the sort of care and protection to dogs like Ace that they provide to us. Thus, The Dog Knight was born. While dogs are man’s best friend, The Dog Knight would be dog’s best friend.

The rest of it was surprisingly easy to develop from there. The Dog Knight needed to be someone who valued the same things dogs do, so I came up with a list of what seems to matter to dogs. Then, with a little bit of influence from My Little Pony, I started reverse engineering what a dog hero who represented each of those things would be like.

Bellwoar: As someone who’s already admitted to knowing nothing about dogs, I really appreciated the care that clearly went into choosing each dog breed for the Pawtheon, as well as the awareness in knowing the reaction a vacuum would get from a dog. Did you come into this project already possessing a lot of canine knowledge or was that born of research?

Whitley: Oh, the vacuum reaction is entirely based on our dog, Ace. He also fell down trying to get down the stairs away from the vacuum. He didn’t fall until almost the bottom, at which point he went spinning across our hardwood floors.

I had a bit of canine knowledge but not a ton. A lot of them seemed obvious to me. Having had a bulldog years ago who would just decide halfway through a walk that he was done and dive face first into the grass to rest, it was obvious to me that a bulldog should be the champion of stubbornness. My mother in law has always owned a tiny loud dog that thinks they own the place and what they say goes, so I knew the champion of justice should be a small breed of yappy dog. They all think they’re superheroes. It seemed obvious to me that the dog who could find anything with his sense of smell should be a goofy and super friendly golden retriever.

Bellwoar: Of all the antagonists you could’ve chosen to interfere with Frankie’s efforts, what made you go with gremlins?

Whitley: Okay, this is the most “I had a dog so I thought it was obvious” element of the book. If you’ve ever had a dog or cat…or for that matter a baby in your house for an extended period of time, you will catch them looking at things that aren’t there, barking at or talking to things that aren’t there, or even attacking or playing with things that aren’t there.

The concept of gremlins in the classical sense has always been something that appealed to me. World War One fighter pilots used to blame all of their engine errors on little gremlins that were sabotaging their planes in the night. Humans have always had a sense that there was something we couldn’t see that was trying to undo our work. We’ve come up with a lot of different explanations for them. What if those things that were destroying our work were the same things that dogs and cats were seeing and fighting with that we couldn’t? That made sense to me not just as a central conflict for the book, but as a mystical explanation for why humans welcomed dogs into our homes in the first place.

Bellwoar: Then there’s the knightly aspect of the book. Growing up, were you a fan of King Arthur stories and how did you land on a helm as your story’s version of Excalibur/the Sword in the Stone moment where, since the helm fits, Frankie must be the future Dog Knight?

Whitley: Oh, I was and am a huge fan of Arthurian myth. I always find it creeping its way into stuff I’m writing. It’s this beautiful sort of exquisite corpse of myth, where writers just keep adding things and adding things. Some of them stick and some don’t, but it makes for this whole sort of genre of storytelling.

I knew the helmet needed to be essential, because I needed something that allowed Frankie to understand what the dogs were saying and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to make it the helmet. Then, I came up with the idea for giving the helmet dog ears and I knew that needed to be the thing.

It also made sense to me on a fundamental level. As much as I love The Sword and the Stone, I’ve always loved that the symbol for Captain America was a shield and not a sword. Cap isn’t about attacking, he’s about defending. Frankie has to fight sometimes, but their most important job is communication. They’re the only one that can understand and explain to everyone.

Bellwoar: While the circumstances were different, I remember in middle school having a friendship fall apart and never understanding why. It made me really admire how you handled the friendship between Frankie and Dallas in this book. What was it like developing that relationship?

Whitley: As a kid who grew up poor and fat, there’s always a temptation to write every rich kid who treats others poorly as a one-dimensional villain and a lot of them eventually grow up to become just that. I mean, we have a lot of very prominent ones in public life worldwide right now.

However, my wife used to teach at a school with a lot of richer families whose kids were often jerks and whose parents were far worse. Just learning about and seeing what was going on with those kids and those parents I think opened my eyes to a lot of the way that their lives are hard and, if they don’t have someone counterbalancing things, their parents can twist them up into these rotten little monsters just out of their need to survive. Several of the kids I knew to be bullies in school have grown up to be something completely different though. Once they left home and were free to be who they wanted to be, they weren’t so far gone that they couldn’t recover that kind and hurt person inside.

Bellwoar: The Dog Knight recently found itself on some banned books lists in Texas, seemingly for the “crime” of showing a teenager figuring out their identity as a nonbinary person. How does it feel knowing your book is being targeted in this way and that it could mean young readers in need of that representation might have a harder time getting their hands on a copy?

Whitley: I think it’s rotten that any books are banned. I really want The Dog Knight to be able to get into the hands of kids that need it. That’s really important to me.

Although, I think it is important that Texas banned this book, because I think it puts the lie to everything they claim about why they’re doing this banning. The Dog Knight has no sex, no graphic violence, no depictions of anything objectionable. It’s not even a coming out story. It is a story about magical talking dogs. There’s no indecency or impropriety you can accuse this book of.

To me, this only leaves two possibilities: either these legislators are terrified of kids who feel alone and unloved discovering that there are people like them out there and that they can be a hero too

or

They hate dogs.

I’d welcome them to let us know which one it is.

Bellwoar: There’s also a sequel coming out in February, What’s next for Frankie and their friends?

Whitley: Well, now that we know the gang and Frankie has passed the trials to become The Dog Knight, in our sequel The Dog Knight: Chaos Bites Back, Frankie actually has to be The Dog Knight. Along with the help of The Pawtheon, it’s Frankie’s job to patrol the whole world and help everyday dogs keep the world safe from chaos. But a new power is rising and the gremlins seem bolder than they ever have under Frankie’s watch. There’s about to be a big change in the world of humans and dogs. Meanwhile, all of this is happening while Frankie still has to go to school. They have a new/old friend in Dallas who they can share their trials with, but is Frankie ready to be the friend Dallas needs as her life goes through some big changes of its own?

Bellwoar: Sounds like just what the world ordered right now. Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Jeremy!

The Dog Knight is available now from Feiwel and Friends. You can also pre-order the sequel, The Dog Knight: Chaos Bites Back, which goes on sale February 2nd.