Arrow In The Head is responsible for me fruitlessly using the “Sharpen” filter in Photoshop a whole lot this afternoon. They’ve got an exclusive first look at one of the werewolf designs being used in “The Howling Reborn” via a blurry photo from the set. I’m not sure who sent them the photo, but it came with this description:

The werewolf you see below is one of the henchmen werewolves. Flat snout. The head werewolves have the classic HOWLING sticking out snouts. I know you’re all better people for knowing this.

Conspicuously missing from that description is an explanation of the giant ears, the smaller-than-a-human’s nose and the Henry Rollins neck. Partial credit for originality and using practical effects instead of CG, but c’mon. Whoever approved the maquette for this design obviously look at it from the side.

Update: okay, it’s not as bad as that. I got carried away. There are definitely things I’d change about the design, but overall it’s pretty cool.

Hat-tip: @Karwood_Pub via @_Mjollnir_

Mattel’s new “Monster High” dolls are your typical Bratz-style teen divas, but as the name indicates, they’re also monsters. All the usual suspects are represented, including a werewolf girl named Clawdeen Wolf. So we’ve got another toy franchise that seems geared towards training 10-year-old girls to be rail-thin airhead fashionistas… but by making these dolls monsters, is Mattel is also saying “it’s okay to be different”? Perhaps! In a recent LA Times article, Mattel Brands general manager Tim Kilpin said “They’re fun characters to build a world around. Who doesn’t feel like a freak in high school? It started with that universal truth.” Okay, so there’s some positive empathy, which seems promising… but now read Clawdeen’s bio. Am I crazy, or does it only mention her monstrous aspect in neutral or negative terms? This line is particularly worrisome: “Plucking and shaving is definitely a full time job but that’s a small price to pay for being scarily fabulous.” In other words, “I am different and unique, but through constant painful effort I can change myself to fit in.” Great. Picture Clawdeen locked in the bathroom, shaving her legs and crying, “Ginger Snaps” style. Hurry, Clawdeen! If you do a good job and get all that icky hair off, your friends will still like you, and then you can get back to your favourite activities– “shopping and flirting with the boys!” Nice work, Mattel.

There’s a great post about Clawdeen and Monster High at the She-Wolf blog that’s well worth reading, especially if you love to get annoyed about children’s toys like I do!

“Winter, 1864. William Singer and his young brother Henry, along with four other Confederate POWs, escape from a Union prison camp just outside of Chicago. The ragged band soon find refuge aboard a moving locomotive, only to wake the next morning, the train stopped and the passengers brutally butchered by what appears to have been a wild animal. Trekking through the frozen wasteland, the rebels discover that ‘wild animal’ is no animal at all, but a pack of Native American shapeshifting werewolves with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Relentlessly tracked by the Union Army, hunted by werewolves, trapped within the bitter cold with no food, no water and nowhere to go, they soon discover the hell they left is nothing compared to the horrors all around them.”

Chad, David, you’ve sold me. I want to see this movie. I will see this movie. What, pray tell, are you calling it?

“Dances With Werewolves”?

Oh.

Okay, well, I’m still excited, but I’m not going to lie: that is a terrible title, and I really hope you plan to change it. Surely you’ve got backers, executive producers and the like, who really believe in the integrity of your vision. They’ve got to be just as emotionally invested in the project as you are, and they’d want you to choose a title that’s as bad-ass as the premise, right? They care about the art of it. Say, here’s executive producer and Hannover House CEO Eric Parkinson, talking with Bloody-Disgusting. Let’s see what he has to say– I’m sure it’ll be inspirational.

“The legend of Native American warriors transforming themselves into enormously powerful wolves is centuries old, but it’s a concept that for many audiences was only recently re-introduced through the successful ‘Twilight’ series of books and films. We think that screenwriter David Chirchirillo has skillfully crafted a commercial thriller around this legend, and that Rohan, Chad and the entire production team will make a terrific movie from this property.”

Oh.

In all seriousness, this movie sounds really good, but I hope that 1) they change the title to something that doesn’t evoke images of Kevin Costner in a wolf mascot costume, and 2) people who use terms like “commercial”, “property” and “the successful ‘Twilight’ series” stick to signing cheques and stay the hell away from the creative process.

This book contains a story that you already know if you’re even remotely familiar with horror comics and movies. There’s a young couple, an isolated cabin and a werewolf whose human appearance identifies him as the antagonist the instant he appears. If this were a song we’d all know the words after hearing the opening four notes. But what makes “Texas” special is the masterful way Joshua plays it– this is no cover. This isn’t even a tribute. He simply owns the story in a way that’s so confident, vicious and downright fun that it feels new and fresh, and as a result it’s impossible not to pay attention. And just when you’re having a good time, confident that you know what’s coming next, Joshua steps right over the werewolf horror tropes and punches you in the stomach. More than one panel had me pulling wide-eyed double-takes.

The effectiveness of these storytelling maneuvers is due in part to pacing and composition. William Strunk told writers to omit needless words; here, Joshua omits needless panels. He has a cinematographer’s eye for angles and blocking, and combined with his knack for illustrating just the right beats of the action, the story progresses in a way that’s relentless without ever feeling rushed. The reader learns just enough about each character to believe in them, and to form opinions about them. That most of those opinions will probably be negative matters not a bit; once the werewolf arrives and the blood starts splattering the walls, it’s impossible not to root for these people, even the asshole redneck brother. I wanted everyone to survive because I was genuinely scared for them, which made the shock of the grisly deaths (and there are a lot of them, believe me) all the more effective.

The book’s carefully tailored economy isn’t confined to the storytelling. The artwork is spare but packed with details and flourishes in all the right places. Joshua’s faces, for instance, tend to contain fewer lines than one usually sees in comic-style art, but the lines he does draw tell you everything you need to know about the character’s emotions. The plentiful gore is rendered in busy clumps and blobs that imply visceral nastiness without ever getting too detailed– you know when you’re looking at a gouged-out eye or spilled intestines, but Joshua smartly avoids going for the cheap thrills of gore porn.

Where Joshua’s art truly excels is exterior environments. When introducing an exterior he often takes a quarter panel or even half the page and fills it with lush, organic fields of colour and stark pools of black shadow. His use of gradients and transparency do wonders for setting up an atmosphere, whether it’s the torrential rain and wind of the eponymous night or the cruel sunlight of the morning after. Even the black and white still life compositions that bracket the story vibrate with the suggestion that they are real places.

“A horror story that stays true to the genre”, reads the epigraph on the back cover, and while “Texas” isn’t the first piece of horror media to assert its value by claiming to be authentic horror, it’s the first thing I’ve experienced in a long time that genuinely horrified me. It also thrilled me with its energy, charmed me with its lovingly-crafted aesthetic and, above all, satisfied that primal part of my brain that just wants to see a vicious, monstrous werewolf tearing shit up.

Buy, borrow or skip?

Buy. Joshua Boulet has captured and unapologetically celebrated everything that makes the werewolf wild, dangerous and fun.

Available from Joshua’s web site for $10 US + $5 shipping,

The conference is entitled She-Wolf: Female Werewolves, Shapeshifters and Other Horrors in Art, Literature and Culture (but She-Wolf for short). It’s on Thursday 9th – Friday 10th September 2010, at the University of Manchester, UK.

This is a smart conference put on by smart people who want to talk about werewolves, women, and werewolf women. They’ve got 40-ish spots left, so if you’re in the area, I encourage you to go. Check out the conference site or the official blog for more info.

As if you werewolf-loving World of Warcraft players weren’t already in a complete lather over the Worgen, here comes “Curse of the Worgen“, a 5-issue comic miniseries being released by DC’s WildStorm imprint. From WildStorm’s site:

Written by MICKY NEILSON & JAMES WAUGH;
Art by LUDO LULLABI & TONY WASHINGTON;
Cover by JOHN POLIDORA

The best-selling WORLD OF WARCRAFT comic series returns in time for a worldwide CATACLYSM! A series of grisly, animalistic murders have rocked the walled town of Gilneas. A famous detective sets out to discover the perpetrators and finds far more than he bargained for. To find the truth, he must delve through years of twisted history – both the history of his family and Gilneas itself. This pivotal 5-issue miniseries explores the in-depth lore of the Worgen!

Shuffle impatiently in front of your favourite comic shop on the morning of November 17th and when they let you in, you can buy the first issue. That’s what I’ll be doing.

I showed my wife Tandye the cover image for issue #1 last night, and within 10 minutes (and with no further prompting from me) she had repealed her 6-year abstention from all things Warcraft. It has been decided: we will both be playing Cataclysm. Now I need to think of a name for my worgen!

One could assume this book is about one of two things: training werewolf soldiers to be snipers, or training human soldiers to snipe werewolves. Having flipped around a few pages, I regret to inform you that the latter case prevails:

This illustrated field manual, prepared by the Department of the Army, provides information needed to train and equip werewolf snipers and to aid them in their werewolf extermination missions and operations.

Written “by order of the Secretary of the Army”, this book appears to be an odd combination of actual U.S. Army sniper training (or at least basic rifle + mountain survival / hunting tactics) and deadpan humour. I’m probably going to pick this up to satisfy my curiosity. Plus the interior artwork is pretty great:

Hat tip: ArcLight

Fans of the original Italian comic book might have mixed feelings about some of the liberties taken with the characters and story, but I thoroughly enjoyed this trailer for the film adaptation of Dylan Dog. The first scene depicts a werewolf getting punched out with a silver knuckle-duster, and I’m okay with this, because the movie looks like a lot of goofy 80′s style monster fun (despite the tiresome “vampires taking over the world” trope). Also influencing me is the fact that Dylan is played by Brandon Routh, who I am currently unable to see as anyone other than Todd Ingram.

I know a lot of people on ~thepackplz, at the Google werewolf group page, here on dA, in personal emails, and many other places around the net have claimed to be werewolves. Thing is, they never have any proof; all they achieve is to tauntingly raise false hopes right out in front of me like a juicy steak, and then yank it away mockingly as I try to take a bite. I’d need solid, concrete evidence such as original-sized photos of yourself in werewolf form, a video of yourself transforming, etc. (Mental shifting or anything like that doesn’t count; has to be an actual physical transformation!).

So what are you waiting for? Give up your most precious secret and put your freedom (or life) in danger for less than two month’s salary some quick cash today!

Today’s Penny Arcade is about World of Warcraft, Gabe’s Worgen character and the artificial nature of game quests. It’s also about the opposite of a glass of warm milk.

There are two more, both showing some of the body, so go check them out if you’re curious.

13 Hrs premieres Saturday, August 28th at the London FrightFest in Leicester Square, London. I can’t go, being on a totally different continent, but if you’re lucky enough to see it… I hate you. Tell me what it was like.

Won’t someone please bring werewolves to North American prime time TV in a way that celebrates and enjoys the horror roots of the monster? The closest thing to a horror werewolf we’ve got on TV right now is a show about a serial killer / lab geek in the Miami Metro Police Department. I love you, Dex, but I’d love you even more if you were all about fur and claws instead of rubber aprons and bone saws.

I’m cranky. I’m going to have some tea and listen to some old Mighty Boosh radio shows.

Fuzzy Camera / fuzzycamera.tumblr.com

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As reported first in the LA Times (and then quickly picked up by a dozen other movie news sites), the Weinstein Co. division of Dimension Films is moving ahead with a remake of “An American Werewolf in London”. The script will be written by Fernley Phillips, whose only other writing credit seems to be “The Number 23” (yes, the movie where a “dark” Jim Carrey plays a saxophone). When AWIL’s original writer and director John Landis sold the rights to the remake last year, I was cautiously neutral. 13 months can change a lot in a man, and my current feelings on the matter are much more focused:

Dimension? Fernley Phillips? Do not fuck this up. Give Rick Baker a blank cheque and convince Edgar Wright to direct and you might have a shot. Otherwise, put the whole thing back on the shelf and back away slowly.

Image credit: Alex Proimos