The Ballad of Red Dog (The Unforgiven)

Pennsylvania is one of the six states where the sentence for murder is life without parole. Metropolis website, working with City Paper and the Pennsylvania Prison Society, published a graphic-illustration story with text that examined the journey of one of the 2,488 Philadelphia lifers, many of whom were locked up as teens. His nickname is Red Dog.

“I was interested in the narrative arc of the story of what happens to a lifer when … they realize they’re never going to get out of here”

– Tom Ferrick, founder of Metropolis

The Prison Society suggested possible inmates to be subjects of the story. Metropolis’s Tom Ferrick did all of the reporting and contracted with the graphic artist. The City Paper published the story on its May 5, 2011, cover.

“The Ballad of Red Dog” captures the story and delivers an emotional tug on the journey of Haywood Fennell, now 60, a model prisoner who’s been in Graterford Prison since 1968 for a murder committed when he was 17.

The story is all told in seven panels of illustration by Jacob Lambert, whose work occasionally appears in Mad Magazine. It was also featured on the Philadelphia Cartoonist Society’s website.

“I was interested in the narrative arc of the story of what happens to a lifer when … they realize they’re never going to get out of here,” Ferrick said, referring to Fennell’s current abode.

“Telling the story in graphic novel form generated a lot of informal buzz.”

– Tom Ferrick, founder of Metropolis

Ferrick distilled Fennell’s story to its essence after doing hours of interviewing, tracking down the prosecutors, and searching for documents.

“For years, I have been reading or writing stories about young men – sometimes in their late teens or early 20’s – who end up being sentenced to life in prison for murder, usually over some trivial matter – a fight over a girlfriend, an insult to their manhood, or in Red Dog’s case, a petty robbery, that went awry,” Ferrick wrote in his blog post ‘Life means Life.’ Telling the story in graphic novel form generated “a lot of informal buzz,” Ferrick said.