‘Alabama White Thang’ turns up in new graphic novel ‘Snag’

A new young adult graphic novel created by an Alabama-born artist features one of the state’s more legendary figures.

“The Alabama White Thang” figures prominently in “Snag,” a story scripted and drawn by Hannah Hill, a Brooklyn-based artist who grew up in Gadsden.

Its first chapter is available for free here. Further chapters will arrive in later weeks.

“Snag” tells the story of Sarah, a 12-year-old girl growing up in a society after its collapse, navigating familiar adolescent issues such as bullying and loneliness. Helping her through it all is the Alabama White Thang, the hairy forest giant of local lore.

The “White Thang” is an 8-foot-tall, furry white creature with glowing red eyes, which reportedly wanders the area between Morgan, Etowah and Jefferson counties. Witnesses say it has the ability to move extremely quickly and emits an eerie screech that has the sound of a woman’s scream. A 2019 survey of mythical creatures around the country gave the White Thang the top spot for Alabama.

While believers maintain it might be some kind of Sasquatch, various sticks in the mud say it’s probably just an albino bear.

It has been sighted in a triangle around communities such as Happy Hollow, Walnut Grove, Moody’s Chapel and Wheeler Wildlife Refuge. In Huntsville, the phrase “Alabama White Thing” is used to describe a humanoid, possibly alien figure spotted in caves or drainage ditches in Jones Valley, along Governor’s Drive and on Monte Sano Mountain.

A team of researchers of the cryptid started a Facebook page called Alabama White Thang.

“Snag” is a dark fairy tale named for the dead tree where Sarah is raised by the creature. Sarah must eventually decide which world she wants to be a part of – the gritty, terrifying world of the humans, or the magical Appalachian forest she shares with the creature.

Hill, 34, has been an artist in New York City for about 10 years. The idea for “Snag” first showed up in her imagination about eight years ago, when she read a story about the White Thang on AL.com. She also felt torn between two competing worlds – missing Alabama and trying to find a place in the art world.

“I created a little story to be able to occupy my mind on commutes, mostly,” she said. “So I spent a really long time knitting the story together, sitting on the 6 train.”

“Snag” stayed in her imagination, even as she saw it potentially as a short film. Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she started showing some of her visual ideas to her fellow residents at the Vermont Studio Center. The idea seemed right for a graphic novel.

“I spent quite a long time hand drawing the frames in sumi-ink because I felt the very dark, black ink and the gritty blooms it created really captured something I was going for,” she said. “Meanwhile, my core body of paintings were becoming extremely colorful and so then were my visions of Snag. So I took the opportunity to start the piece over, this time in color, and with the help of digital painting via the iPad, which revolutionized the way I worked digitally.”

Though the story would be categorized as young adult, Hill prefers the term “y’allternative.”

“I know we can challenge young adults,” she said. “We don’t have to pander to them and we do better when we don’t. We’ve all gone through things like bullying, and we will go through even more complicated situations in whatever lies ahead. I think it’s okay to talk about these things.”

Hill has been inspired by her Alabama background in various paintings, saying she had always been drawn to “any dark, wild, spooky narrative,” which made the White Thang a natural subject. But the human characters of “Snag” deal with very human issues, like bullying, substance abuse, loss and grief.

“I want my artwork to be freaky, a little trashy, and a complete mystery,” she said. “As long as I keep surprising myself, I’m happy.”