And the Autumn Moon is Bright: Werewolves in Comics

Recently, I read a column where someone asked the writer a question about werewolves in superhero comics, and the writer identified himself as a vampire fan more than a werewolf fan. Well, I like vampires fine, and I know zombies are the monster du jour in the public zeitgeist right now, but for me? It's all about the werewolf. I feel like werewolves are about the internal struggle of humanity between its better nature and its baser instincts, and since the person is not always he monster, it allows an incite into the person who is the monster, whether they fight the monster or embrace it. Also, you get to turn into a giant wolf or wolfman. How cool is that?

So, I spent the past couple weeks digging through my collection to pull out some of the best werewolf comics I could find. I'm avoiding a couple of the more obvious ones that are either not full on werewolf stories but more superhero stories (the infamous "Capwolf" story where Captain America becomes a werewolf, for instance, or the excellent Batman #255, "Moon of the Wolf," which was also adapted into a great episode of Batman: The Animated Series), although I am going to hit a couple of those, but mostly I'm sticking to horror and comedy versions, because there are a couple of really good werewolf comedy stories. So, if you want to check out some interesting werewolf stories, read on.

The Astounding Wolf-Man

So, not everything Robert Kirkman writes is Walking Dead or Invincible, these massively long running series, but that's not to say they aren't great comics. The Astounding Wolf-Man, which ran for twenty-five issues, was co-created by Kirkman and Jason Howard, who went on to work with Kirkman on Super Dinosaur and is now the artist on Warren Ellis's Trees,  is the story of Gary Hampton, a wealthy family fan who, while on vacation, is attacked by a werewolf and decides that he wants to use his powers to become a superhero. I know I said above I was avoiding superhero stories, and while Kirkman's story has a lot of superhero in it,there is a hart of horror to it, both because Gary's archfoe is a vampire, Zechariah (this won't be the last werewolf vs. vampire story on this list), but because much of Gary's struggle is with the beast within. Because while he can transform pretty much at will any night, when the full moon rises he becomes an out of control monster, and much of the series has to do with the ramifications of what Gary has done in werewolf form. There's a whole series of events involving another elder werewolf, plus a lot of action and superheroics. Kikman wrapped up most of the plot threads of the series, which is collected and available in four trade paperbacks, and Wolf-Man does occasionally pop up as a supporting or background hero in various books in the Invincible family.

Curse

A four issue mini-series from Boom Studios from a couple years back, Curse asks the question of how far someone will go to save someone they love. Michael Moreci and Tim Daniel write the story of Laney Griffin, a former football star who has fallen on hard times, not just financially but also in that his son is dying of an illness he can barely afford to pay the hospital to treat. But when a series of savage killings occur, and a price is placed on the head of man or animal that is committing them, Laney goes on the hunt. And he finds the killer is a bit of both, a werewolf who has lived for centuries. And so Laney captures the werewolf and spends time considering if the curse could be the salvation of his son, while others hunt the monster and Laney is caught up in other peoples plans. It's a solid story, but the art is what really gabs you. Colin Lorimer draws the lion's share, but Riley Rossmo, whose work on many other great horror comics makes him a  modern master, creates a rangy, long limbed terror in his werewolf design that is unique to the series and makes it a standout.

Riven

Bo Hampton and Robert Tinnel craft a story of one young woman's horror in Riven. Opening in Romania, readers see an American couple desperate to find a baby to adopt, and they are given Katya, a seemingly normal young girl, but the orphanage is... off. Flash forward ten years to a teen Katya, now Katy, who after an accident enters a coma where once a month, tied to the full moon, she has strange spike in brain activity. Waking from the coma after five years, Katy recovers from years of inactivity faster than anyone expected, yet still, once a month, has fits where she now can tell people she sees horrors. Katy watches a werewolf killing, and she soon realizes that the killings are getting closer. Katy is another example of someone who seems to be fighting with her own urges, although within Katy they seem less violent and more about her own awakening sexuality, which is another aspect often linked to werewolfism, especially in women (the film Ginger Snaps is a great example of this). But after she is attacked by a stalker, Katy is aided by someone who has come from Romania to help her. From here the story becomes an international chase as Katy returns to Romania to find the truth about her family, the werewolf, and what it all means to her. Followed by her adoptive family and her friends, the stage is set for a bloody confrontation with her biological family. Hampton draws the story as well as co-writing it, and his painted art is beautiful and terrifying. His werewolf is traditional, a monstrous, huge wolfman who dwarfs all around him or her. An original graphic novel, the book is still available from Dark Horse Comics.

Scary Godmother: Wild About Harry

Looking for a werewolf story that's a little more friendly to the young ones? Well, try Scary Godmother: Wild about Harry. Scary Godmother was created by Jill Thompson, an artist best known for these books and her work with Neil Gaiman on The Sandman, and is about Hannah Marie, a little girl who discovers that monsters aren't as scary as she thinks when she meets the Scary Godmother, a witch, and her monster friends. Harry is the resident werewolf, whose both a geek who lives in his gypsy mother's basement and a glutton. But when Harry's mom gets sick of him mooching, she throws him out, and the mini-series follows Harry's (failed) attempts to survive in the world. This isn't a scary story, but a very funny one, as all he Scary Godmother stories are, and is good all ages fare. It is collected in the Scary Godmother Comics Stories volume. Also, as we talk about Jill Thompson books, you should check out Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites, the first collection of Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson's stories of a group of animals who defend their town against evil spirits and monsters. It features a story of a dog and his werewolf-boy that is touching and sad, and everything else in it is just as good.

Werewolf By Night

Comicdoms most famous werewolf is Jack Russell, the seventies horror hero known as Werewolf By Night. Yes you could probably argue Wolfsbane of the X-titles has larger fan base, but she's a mutant, not a supernatural werewolf, so for a Halloween post she doesn't really count. While admittedly not as strong a title as Marvel's horror masterpiece Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf by Night is still a great series. It follows jack Russell as he searches for a cure for his lycanthropy, while doing his best to control his feral form on the three nights a month he changes; picture the Incredible Hulk TV series if Banner was a werewolf and fought a lot of monsters. He is supported by Topaz, an empath and mystic who was a love interest as well as ally. Russell would meet and crossover with Dracula, finding ties between his history and that of the count. After first appearing in issues two through four of Marvel Spotlight, Russell's own series ran a respectable forty-three issues. One of the series most lasting legacies is that issue thirty-two introduced Moon Knight, while Marvel Spotlight #4 introduced the concept of the Darkhold, the Mavel Universe's answer to the Necronomicon, a book that has popped up in nearly all of Marvel's horror and supernatural series at one point or another. Werewolf by Night continues to appear semi-regularly throughout the Marvel line, most recently in Mark Waid's Daredevil run, proving you can't keep a good werewolf down.

Werewolves On the Moon Versus Vampires

Again, welcome to a more comedic take on the werewolf. This is a very funny story about three werewolf buddies, Ted, Jeff, and Stan, who figure that if they only change when the moon is full, if they're ON the moon, they'll be in wolf form all the time. And while they're right, there are a few things they didn't count on: one is Maggie Pilgrim, a Moon Patrol captain. The other is a nest of vampires. A fun three issue mini-series, the werewolves are likable, if a bit dim, and the stakes are high despite the comic being a comedy. Alas it is out of print in trade, and the promised sequel Werewolves on the Moon: Moon Mummy Madness has never materialized either, but I would sure read that.

Wolf Moon

Cullen Bunn and Jeremy Haun crafted this year's Vertigo mini-series Wolf Moon around the concept that the werewolf curse doesn't just reshape flesh, I reshapes lives. Not he curse in the way we're used to seeing it, the werewolf in Wolf Moon jumps to a new host every month, destroying everything around them and then leaving them to pick up the pieces. Dillon Chase is a former host of the wolf, who has allied himself with others o try to track it down and kill it. But he's not the only one hunting the wolf, and as he nears another hunter who may or may not be a serial killer murdering former hosts, Dillon has to make some choices about his life and how he can reshape it. Vertigo has been the home of so many great horror comics, it's nice that they were able to add a werewolf series to their catalog, and Wolf Moon is an interesting take on the classic werewolf myth.

The Wolves of Saint August

"The Wolves of Saint August," originally presented in Dark Horse Presents, then reprinted as a prestige format, and currently in Hellboy Vol. 3: The Chained Coffin, is Hellboy's biggest encounter with werewolves, as he goes to investigate a murdered priest and a haunted chapel, only to find a story of a long lasing curse. I'm calling this out for two reasons, despite it being a much shorter work then the longer works I've featured here. One is it's the first appearance of Kate Corrigan, my favorite of the B.P.R.D. cast members. And secondly, you've got Mike Mignola drawing werewolves! How cool is that?

This is just scratching the surface (bad pun not intended but absolutely embraced) of werewolves in comics. There are two series I skipped because I plan to feature them in the future: Joe Kelly's Bad Dog and Art and Franco's Patrick the Wolf Boy that are as different as night and day from each other but are two great comics with a werewolf in the lead.

And that's it for this year's Halloween posts. Enjoy the holiday tomorrow, and we'll see you again. If you survive... ooooOOOOoooo. Ok, you'll all survive, so just have a great time.

Reviews of Comics from Wednesday 12/3

Detective Comics #37
Story & Art: Brian Buccellato & Francis Manapul

Regular creative team Brian Buccellato and Francis Manapul return to Detective Comics after a two part fill-in story to introduce Anarky to the New 52. I like Anarky as a character, always have, despite some overuse in the late 90s, and I think in a world where government gridlock and income inequality are in the news every night, a character who is against the wealthy and the government seems to fit a certain zeitgeist. Hints were dropped to Anarky in issue 34, and Harvey Bullock and his not-partner-but-sort-of-partner Detective Margaret Yip are looking into the mysterious A symbols. We get a nice scene with Bullock and Yip talking about how they view Christmas and the New Year, how one sees it as a chance to start fresh, and the other sees it as a year where every open case goes down as unsolved, and how Bullock sees his cases and the GCPD as his life; Buccellato and Manpul are writing a great Harvey Bullock, and I'm glad to see him getting a spotlight. This is shown in comparison to Batman and Alfred, with Alfred taking Bruce on a walk on the grounds of Wayne Manor with Titus, Damian's dog, and Alfred insisting Batman have some, "Bruce time," something Bruce doesn't like the phrasing of, since he feels it makes him sound like he has multiple personalities. The primary action of the book involves Anarky killing a crooked Wayne Enterprises employee (one who was introduced in the previous arc, making it look like the creators are playing a long game with lots on interconnected plots, which I like), and then hacking Wayne Enterprises and setting everything networked to the system to blow. Batman, Bullock, and Yip, with a hand from Lucius Fox, attempt to evacuate the building, seemingly to no avail. I was pleased to see the creators using Anarky's established hacking skills, and not just changing him to be some murderous thug with a chip on his shoulder. I also want to throw credit to Manapul for drawing the CREEPIEST Mad Hatter ever in a scene at the beginning of the issue where Batman fights ol' Jervis Tetch. When he reappeared in  Batman: The Dark Knight, Ethan Van Sciver drew him in grotesque detail to the point he felt a little too realistic for a character who is so outside the norm. Manapul's style captures that madness and the creepiness of the Hatter perfectly, with some very clear influence from the original John Tenniel illustrations in Through the Looking Glass. There are a lot of questions left with the return of Anarky, and I'm looking forward to seeing the answers from Buccellato and Manapul.

Fight Like a Girl #1
Story: David Pinckney
Art: Soo Lee

Action Lab Entertainment publishes one of the best all ages comics on the racks, Princeless, a book that tosses fairy tale tropes on their ear and has a heroine who is tougher than any Disney princess, and I accept the blasphemy of  saying anyone is better than a character from Frozen gladly. This week, Action Lab released a number one of  a new series, Fight Like a Girl, which looks to capture the same magic. And while Princeless is still in a league of its own, the first issue of Fight Like a Girl is a solid introduction to its protagonist and its world. Amarosa has a brother who is dying, and since no doctor can save him, she goes before a council of gods from a mixture of pantheons, and asks to take a series of nine trials, which if she succeeds, the gods will cure her brother. It's a classic conceit, and it's presented well. We see a little on Amarosa's life outside the mystical realm, but mostly this issue is letting us understand the stakes. We get to see the fairy that is Amarosa's gods' provided sidekick, and we do get to see the first trial, where Amarosa confronts a shapeshifter who attacks her in the form of a T-Rex. So girl with a bat versus T-Rex doesn't seem too fair, but when the bat turns into a chainsaw, I feel like we're entering Scott Pilgrim territory, with that blend of realism and fantasy, which is a sweet spot I'd be happy to live in. But what grabbed me, and elevated this to something I'd like to talk about is that fact that the shapeshifter isn't s ravening monster. When we first see her, she's a in the form of a young woman. And while she's clearly a monster (she has to absorb other living things to enable her shapeshifting), she doesn't just attack Amarosa; she gives her a chance to walk away, and only takes action when Amarosa makes it clear she isn't going anywhere. And in the end, the shapeshifter points out to Amarosa how proud her family must be of her for killing someone who was willing to just let things go. I hope that thread, that idea of how far you're willing to go to do what you feel you need to, and at what point do you become something worse than what you're trying to kill/stop, is explored further. It's heady stuff for an all ages comic, but I feel we don't give kids enough credit for deep thought. So if, like me, you're feeling some Princeless withdrawal, I'd snag Fight Like a Girl.

Nailbiter #8
Story: Joshua Williamson
Art: Mike Henderson

OK, I feel guilty. Nailbiter is one of the best horror comics on the racks, and I've only reviewed it once. Last month's issue featured a guest appearance by Brian Michael Bendis, and it was a great issue, but I skipped reviews that week, but I'm reviewing this week, and so I have to hit Nailbiter. This issue begins the second major arc in earnest (after two stellar one off issues), and we get to spend some time with each member of the cast. Disgraced NSA agent Nicholas Finch continues to follow the trail left by his friend, FBI Agent Carroll, to try to find out not only who kidnapped and beat Carroll into a coma, but the secret of Buckaroo, the town that spawns more serial killers than any other. And his investigation leads him to a small farm that keeps bees. I am not really phobic when it comes to bugs of any kind (rats, on the other hand...), but Mike Henderson has made this book atmospheric from page one, and watching what is going on with the bees, and the sing song of the man in the basement, might make me reconsider that, because even if the bees aren't creeping me out, everything around them is. Meanwhile, the town preacher is ranting against the sins of the town that have brought this curse upon them, and cost him the life of his son, the bully who was killed at the serial killer super store in the first arc. He confronts Sheriff Crane, who was the childhood sweetheart of Buckaroo's celebrity serial killer, Edward Warren aka The Nailbiter, and talks about how prayer is going to stop these horrors. While Finch is usually the center of the action, I think Crane, as well as high school outcast Alice (who also stands up to the preacher), are my favorite characters in the book, and I think the introduction of a local rival with the preacher is going to give Crane more time to shine. And of course, Warren, the titular Nailbiter, gets his moment to shine, in a scene with a reporter that would make The Joker nod in approval. Nailbiter is a study in character and atmosphere, with each issue pulling you deeper into the terrifying town of Buckaroo, and this second arc looks to give us some answers. Or maybe not; with horror, who knows if what you'll get is what you want. Oh, and as an aside, the third issue of Williamson's fantasy series, Birthright was released this week, another book that continues to twist genre and move at breakneck speed, so I'd check that out too, if you aren't.

Secret Six #1
Story: Gail Simone
Art: Ken Lashley

It's baaaaAAAAck! Yes, Gail Simone's team of supervillains make their triumphant New 52 debut in an issue that is different from the old series, but still has enough of the familiar that it's clear we're in for the same insane ride. Gail Simone's trademark mix of humor and violence is well on display in this issue, as we're introduced to the new members of the team that will become the Secret Six: two old members (Catman and Black Alice), two characters from Simone's run on Batgirl (Strix and the Ventriloquist), and two new characters (Porcelain and Big Shot). The point of view character for this issue is Catman, which shouldn't surprise anyone, as Simone clearly loved that character. Catman is a slightly different character in his new incarnation. He seems, if not quicker to anger, far less strategic; when fake law enforcement come to pick him up, he simply starts attacking them with not much of a plan. Still, he tough and a complete badass, which keeps the original Catman formula in place. It's also interesting to see him with some more cat-like behaviors; if you've ever seen a cat shut in a room, you can see that reflected when he's trapped. And that's where he meets the rest of the team, trapped in a room with a big monitor and a voice telling them one will be killed if they don't discover the secret. The dynamic between each member of the team is already starting to build, and each character is distinct: Strix is quiet and haunted, Black Alice is distant and damaged. Big Shot seems to be the one trying to make things work, Ventriloquist is completely insane, and Porcelain seems the most together, which means, if I know Gail Simone, she's the most screwed up of the bunch. Ken Lashley's art is good for the book, dark and violent. His fight scenes are great to watch, as the action is clear, and his Catman has a cocky look to him, although when he realizes he's trapped, the terror bleeds off the page. While I'm going to miss Bane and Scandal, and the bromance between Catman and Deadshot, Gail Simone has proven she can take a concept she has done before and breathe a very different life into it, so I'm excited to see where Secret Six goes.

Wolf Moon #1
Story: Cullen Bunn
Art: Jeremy Haun

I think I've said this before, but in case I haven't, I love werewolves. Whether it's the classic movie versions like Larry Talbot from The Wolfman, Joe Kelly's haunted one from Bad Dog, the terrifying one from An American Werewolf in London, or the cute ones like Patrick the Wolf Boy. So, I was interested to see what Cullen Bunn, a writer whose horror and weird tales have always appealed to me, would do with the werewolf myth for Vertigo. And Wolf Moon is a very interesting take. Dillon Chase is a man who is haunted by the wolf, and now he hunts it. His girlfriend is similarly damaged, and she doesn't want him to go, but he must find it and stop it. But what Bunn does that is different is that this is not a werewolf that is transmitted by bite, as is usually the way. No, this wolf possesses someone for the three nights of the full moon and then leaves them, and their life, in shambles. What this does is making hunting the beast all the harder, as Dillon realizes when he has the werewolf in his sights; the person the wolf is riding ill be free soon, and has done nothing wrong. That doesn't mean they don't know what's going on. We do see some of the wolf's previous hosts, and the horror of knowing what they did. "The wolf," says Dillon, "doesn't just reshape flesh and bone... it reshapes lives." This issue is a number one, and so it spends much of its time introducing concept and character, but we still get a brutal attack from the werewolf in a fast food restaurant, drawn by Jeremy Haun. I've been a fan of Haun since Battle Hymn, and while I enjoyed his recent run on Batwoman, I'm glad to see him on Wolf Moon. His wolf is huge, menacing, and looks like it could swallow you whole. There is more going on here, a mysterious someone else hunting, and Bunn has built enough of a mystery to add another layer to his horror. With The Sixth Gun, Bunn's weird Western, wrapping up in a few months, it's good to see he has some more supernatural stories lined up to keep his fans coming back for more.