Animal man: At Newsarama, Grant Morrison discusses some of the influences for We3:

"... But yeah, things like [The Incredible Journey] and The Plague Dogs, Watership Down, The Rats of NIMH, Chicken Run or whatever. Anything to do with innocent, misunderstood animals on the run from vicious human bastards. Animals getting their own back. The events played out in We3 are very different and far more shockingly violent than the adventures of Thomas O'Malley and the Duchess in The Aristocats, for example, but the basic idea of the animal odyssey across country in search of some seemingly hopeless safe haven is a very resonant and appealing theme which no-one has really played much with recently...certainly not in comics. I've always wanted to do one of those classic animal stories that make people cry, so this is like that...Disney with fangs. We3 is probably one of the first of these kind of stories to treat the animal heroes as animals and not as anthropomorphized representations with human emotions and speech patterns.

"So basically, we gave the popular old 'animal quest' idea a sci-fi coat of paint, spliced it with Miike Takashi uber-violence, and created a vehicle to demonstrate the 'Western Manga' storytelling style Frank and I are trying to develop."