It’s a Zoo! The Making of a New Dorthea Book

March 22, 2023

Above: The cover of the Danish edition of ‘Zoo’.

‘Creating a comic story can often be frustrating, a lot of work, long hours, zero free time, but always, always entertaining; basically, it’s a zoo,’ says Danish writer/artist Henriette Westh.

And “ZOO” is precisely the title of her new comic book, the 7th installment in her series ‘Dorthea’s Survivals‘ in which the Interpol agent Dorthea Bourgogne goes undercover at a fictional Toronto zoo.

‘So many things can go wrong!’

‘Placing the storyline in a zoo immediately made my brain pop up with plenty of humorous situations and dangerous scenes; so many things can go wrong when dealing with unpredictable animals, not to mention lethal bad guys,’ Henriette tells.

‘Thirty pages in, and my protagonist has been subjected to a birthing giraffe, feces-throwing chimps, a horny silverback and a very, very hungry Siberian tiger. Of course, the main predator at this zoo, as it is in the rest of the world, is Man!’

Will she survive?

As always, her protagonist Dorthea will face plenty of human bad guys throughout the story. Will she survive? Time will show.

The Silverback and the Blonde

‘This story came about from real life experiences. I once visited Givskud Zoo together with a friend who now holds a Ph.D. in primatology; she was conducting a study in comparative psychology between humans and great apes – an entirely fascinating study, and it was she, who told me about the silverback’s attraction towards blondes as well as other intriguing primate details that I have included in the story. The book is, therefore, dedicated to her.’

The Story of ‘Zoo’

The story in ‘Zoo’ is as follows: The remains of an Interpol agent is found in a truck full of feces together with his subdermal tracker. The agent had been following important leads in a major meth investigation in Toronto.

Dorthea and her team are consequently sent to Canada to take over the investigation and find out what happened to their late colleague, and all evidence inevitably leads to a zoo whose great pride is a huge and rare Siberian tiger by the telltale name of ‘Vlad the Impaler’.

‘I am working digitally on an iPad, but the story will be printed and published as a comic book like the rest of the series. The story is an immense joy to create, and I am honored to announce that I have received The Danish Guild of Professional Comics Artists work grant to complete this work.’

Publication is expected in February-March 2023.

Follow Henriette’s work on facebook or on her website.