What, Were You Raised By Wolves? is a 34-page webcomic by Vera Brosgol posted in 2012.
A young boy walks into a forest and becomes friends with a wild girl who was Raised by Wolves. Tragedy strikes when the wolf pack eats him, but the girl is taken in by his family, and now has to acclimate to living in a world of humans.
It can be read here
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This webcomic provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Downplayed—while the wild girl's adoptive human family isn't necessarily abusive, it is implied that they didn't give her the love and emotional care she needed, as she looks continuously unhappy during the montage of her growing up. They also didn't get her any therapy to help her adjust to living as a human, and seem to have expected her to figure things out on her own.
- All Men Are Perverts: During her second job as a waitress, the wild girl gets her butt pinched by a male customer, who gets a high-five from his friend. She promptly punches him in the face, which gets her fired.
- The Aloner: In the end, the wild girl gives up trying to fit into human society, and returns to the forest she grew up in as a child. The wolf pack that raised her is long gone, and she didn't feel like a part of her human family, leaving her all alone.
- Ambiguous Time Period: There isn't really any tech that firmly sets the comic in a specific time period, although a couple of background characters are holding flip phones which could put it in the late 90s/early 2000s.
- Bratty Half-Pint: While working her first job at a grocery store, one of the things the wild girl has to deal with is a little kid throwing a can on the floor.
- The Bully: On the wild girl's first day of school, two other children immediately look gleeful at the prospect of getting to beat her up. One panel later, they are running to the teacher while sobbing and with their arms covered in bite marks.
- Death Glare: The wild girl frequently gets those when she bites or attacks other people, including one from a teacher when she bites her bullies.
- Death of a Child: The boy is torn apart and devoured by wolves, with only his ribcage, severed leg, and skull remaining. Even though these are the same wolves who raised her, the wild girl is horrified and devastated by his fate.
- Despair Event Horizon: The wild girl eventually loses all hope of ever being able to fit in with other humans, after being fired from her third job as a mail carrier for assaulting a woman's abusive husband.
- Domestic Abuse: During her third job as a mail carrier, the wild girl witnesses a woman getting slapped across the face by her husband. She lunges through the front door of their house and attacks him, but both the husband and wife think she is a violent lunatic and it gets her fired yet again.
- Downer Ending: Despite her efforts, the wild girl is unable to overcome her wolf instincts and cannot fit into human society. She decides to return to the wild, and discovers the bones of the young boy that was eaten when she was a child, before disappearing into the forest. The website states that it's "not a very happy story."
- Failure Montage: When the wild girl grows up, she leaves her adoptive family's home and tries to find work as a grocery store worker, a waitress, and a mail carrier, all of which she gets fired from after assaulting or scaring various people. With every new job, she looks more and more downcast. She decides she doesn't belong in human society and decides to return to the wild.
- Forced Bath: After taking her in, the wild girl's adoptive mother gives her a bath, which she clearly doesn't enjoy. Her adoptive brother, who she bit earlier, is standing off to the side and giving a little smirk.
- Hope Spot: The wild girl grows up, leaves home and finds a job as a grocery store worker. She is smiling and seems to be feeling hopeful about her new life...then she gets fired for making a scary face at a boy who pooped on the floor and smirked at her. It's all downhill from there, as she then gets fired from a waitressing job for punching a perverted customer and a mail delivery job for beating up a husband who was abusing his wife. She gives up and decides to return to living in the forest.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: After getting fired from yet another job, the wild girl sees various awful things happening as she walks down the street, including a man wolf-whistling at a woman, a homeless man not caring that his dog is starving, a woman being raped in an alleyway, and a man being beaten up by several other men as someone else records the incident on his phone. Her disgusted expression neatly sums up how she feels about them.
- Jabba Table Manners: The wild girl doesn't know how to use eating utensils and devours her dinner with her teeth, which her adoptive parents are not pleased with.
- Man Bites Man: Since the wild girl was raised by a pack of wolves, her default response to anyone who bothers her is to sink her teeth into their arm, which is obviously unacceptable in civilized society. She grows out of it.
- Nameless Narrative: None of the characters have names, owing to the lack of dialogue.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: The girl passes by three men beating the crap out of another man who is on the ground, while a fourth man gleefully films them on his phone.
- No Social Skills: After spending her childhood being raised by a pack of wolves, the wild girl acts more like a wolf than a person and is prone to biting people who annoy her. Even as an adult, she cannot hold down a job because her first reaction to someone doing something bad is to assault or nonverbally threaten them. She eventually gives up on trying to fit in with other humans and returns to the forest.
- Nothing but Skin and Bones: The wild girl passes by a homeless man and his dog, who is so thin that its ribs are showing.
- Oh, Crap!: The wild girl has a horrified look on her face when she sees her wolf family has eaten the boy she was becoming friends with.
- Silence Is Golden: The comic has no dialogue, although written text can be seen in the background on shop advertisements and such.
- There Are No Therapists: The wild girl's adoptive family doesn't get her any form of therapy or counseling to help her acclimate to living as a human.
- Trauma Conga Line: The wild girl sees her playmate get eaten by her wolf family, gets taken in by a human family and has to struggle with learning civilized behavior, is implied to have an unhappy childhood, grows up and gets fired from multiple jobs for lashing out at customers, gives up hope of ever fitting into human society, and decides to go back to the wild.
