Category: Books & Comics

Werewolves set in type and inked in panels.

Live-Tweeted Quasi-Review of “Anathema”, the Lesbian Werewolf Horror Darling of Kickstarter

In July 2011 I posted about one of the first Kickstarter projects I ever contributed to: Anathema. The goal was to fund the illustration, colouring and printing of issue #1 of a werewolf comic that writer Rachel Deering called “a return to classic horror in comics”. Now, seven months after that post, and five months after the project surpassed its Kickstarter goal, the first issue of Anathema is circulating among Kickstarter contributors. I got my claws on a PDF and sat down to read it yesterday, during a break at work.

I’m going to leave the formal analysis of Anathema to people who actually know how to review comics – I’m just a werewolf fan with a blog. Instead, because I’m a silly git, I decided to live-tweet my reading, making (spoiler-free) comments on every page of the book. I’ve reproduced those tweets in chronological orders, and I’m going to let this stand as my formal review of the book.

Time to read @racheldeering‘s Anathema! Even the intro on the inside of the front cover gave me chills.

I’m gonna live-tweet this reading, page by page, omitting spoilers. Page one: okay, dad’s a dick. Lovely colours, though.

Page 2: Authentic emotional response to characters I just met. Great panel layout. Dad’s going to need some Bactine!

Page 3: First overtly supernatural incident. Intense but not too dramatic. Love the time-shifted narration. That’s flame-resistant hair!

Page 4: Third segment of this page expresses her isolation perfectly. Well done Chris Mooneyham.

Page 5: I want to live in Henrich’s house and visit his manicurist.

Page 6: Jeez, what a drama queen.

Page 7: UGH that TONGUE. Put it away, dude!

Page 8: Great colours and lines. Any of these panels could be posters. Nice work explaining the crows, too.

Page 9: Any of these could be levels in a Zelda game that I would play the fuck out of.

Page 10: Great character design. Brilliant work to tie the plague doctor’s mask concept into the design. The glow around the moon!

Page 11: Come on, Henrich, give up the goods. Also, you look like Christopher Lloyd. This is not a bad thing.

Page 12: Where can I get me some of those?

Page 13: Come on, at least freshen the linen. Nice transition out of the scene.

Page 14: I probably shouldn’t be reading this at work.

Page 15: When Anathema gets made into a movie (as it inevitably must), this’ll make a great little nasty sequence.

Page 16: Part of me is disappointed that there’s no “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this.” moment.

Page 16 cont’d: I’m impressed with how solid these characters are. Henrich could’ve been a 2-D quest-giver, but he’s richer than that.

Page 17: Holy fuck, lady, where’s your climbing gear!?

PP 18-19: BAD. ASS. A lot of werewolf fanboys (and a few werewolf fangirls) are going to pin this spread over their beds.

Page 20: Immediate thoughts: this would be a great video game, either 1st-person slasher or 2D side-scroller. I like that she mentions pain.

Page 21: PRIMAL. “As I, myself, become the object of fear.” This is exactly what I love about horror and werewolves.

Page 22 / last page: Great setup for the next issue. This isn’t a cliffhanger, this is a gun, loaded and cocked.

So, yeah. Verdict on Anathema, issue 1? Basically, you need to buy this thing as soon as you can, and then we need to fund the other issues.

Go follow @racheldeering and pester her to sell you a copy – she’ll have some pretty soon, I think. DAMN, I’m all riled up!

So, while that wasn’t a proper review, over the course of 25 tweets, I exclaimed over the quality of the writing, the art, the colours, the characters and the layout (and, come to think of it, I meant to mention the lettering too). I also said that Anathema would make a great film or video game, and although I didn’t tweet about it, I pitched a little fit when I got to the last page because it’s over and I need more. The book was a terrific effort by writer/letterer Deering, artist Chris Mooneyham and colourist Fares Maese, and I think Kickstarter contributors (and fans of horror comics in general) are going to love it.

I want to take a second to expand on my comment about page 21: This is exactly what I love about horror and werewolves. The “this” I’m referring to is the vicarious indulgence of a particular blend of righteous fury and macabre glee that I think horror fans (and most people in general) are familiar with, even if they don’t want to admit it. Articulated as a thought, it might go something like “I want to do terrible things to people who deserve it, and suffer no repercussions.” Act so in real life and at best you’d be a sociopathic asshole, but channel that desire into a fictional vessel like Anathema’s grieving anitheroine (or the miserable little brother from The Wrong Night In Texas) and you’ve got werewolf therapy – a wonderful outlet for a very dark but very human urge. This is one of the things I’ve always loved about werewolves, and although not every werewolf story manages it, Anathema delivers.

So. Er. If that sort of thing sounds good to you, or if you just want to read an awesome werewolf comic where a lady fights werewolf-style for the soul of her murdered lover, watch Rachel Deering’s Twitter profile for Anathema issue #1!

Mar. 22nd 2012

Simon Beaufoy still adapting “very mad, really fabulous” epic werewolf poem Sharp Teeth

io9 has a few tidbits from screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) regarding his in-the-works film adaptation of Sharp Teeth. As reported in February, Beaufoy is preparing a screenplay version of Toby Barlow’s novel-length poem for his perennial collaborator, director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Sunshine, Slumd– oh here).

From the interview:

io9: Are you able to enjoy a book, when you’re reading a book? Or do you see a screenplay straightaway?

Simon Beaufoy: It’s quite difficult to read a book now, I took to reading poetry (because I thought that will be alright. And it’s not. I just started adapting an epic poem. So that didn’t work, called Sharp Teeth it’s a really fantastic novel length poem. It’s gangland LA. Except the gangs happen to also shapeshift into dogs. It’s all about the pack dynamics — it’s very mad, but really fabulous. So poetry wasn’t even safe from the adaptation process.

Will it be animated?

Yeah probably not, that would be too easy. We have to make life much more difficult for ourselves and use real dogs. That would be the best, because that would be truly terrifying. I think animation would allow too much distance from it.

Beaufoy doesn’t bring up much of anything new, but it’s interesting to know they’re not considering doing something animated. That’s kind of a shame – an R-rated (traditionally!) animated feature would die at the box office, but damn, wouldn’t it look good? Especially if they used the book’s cover art as a design cue!

Mar. 14th 2012

Dark Horse to Publish Hampton / Tinnell Werewolf Book “Riven” in August

From a Dark Horse press release comes news of a 196-page title from artist Bo Hampton and writer Robert Tinnell: Riven.

Riven is a stone killer of a werewolf story with a fragile young woman as a protagonist. It was irresistible for us to create and we’re betting the readers will agree it was well worth the wait,” said Bo Hampton. “She’s adopted from a Romanian orphanage at the age of three and brought to America. At the age of thirteen an accident puts her in a coma—but doctors are completely baffled because her brain waves spike every thirty days—in direct correlation with the full moon.”

Katya has been in a coma for five years, and when she awakes, everything has changed. Now she is a gorgeous teenager with a mysterious, gruesome past, becoming aware of a growing, terrifying power inside her body, triggered by the touch of the full moon, eager to break free . . . Can Katya solve the mystery of her blood-drenched nightmares before they become reality?

Katya, the solution to the mystery is: you’re a werewolf. Now go and enjoy yourself!

Riven goes on sale August 22, 2012 – nine days before the second full moon of the month (a blue moon). Probably not intentional, but a nice coincidence!

Mar. 11th 2012

Get issue 1 of the charming “Monster Dudes” comic by Scheidt & Fagan for 99¢

As of today, you can get issue 1 of “Monster Dudes” from Graphicly.com for $0.99, which in my opinion is great value for money, considering how often I chuckled while reading it. Writer Dave Scheidt was kind enough to share a copy with me, and between his lovingly screwball MAD Magazine – style comedy and Matt Fagan’s artwork, I had an Officially Good Time. Check it out, and if you like it, go to the Facebook page and pester them to include more werewolf stuff!

Jan. 5th 2012

Book Review: “Werewolves – An Illustrated Journal of Transformation” by Paul Jessup

Werewolves – An Illustrated Journal of Transformation is the tale of Alice, a young woman who gets attacked by a pack of wolf-like creatures and then documents her changes (and those of her brother Mark, who was attacked too) over three weeks with journal entries and evocative illustrations. Writer Paul Jessup and artist Allyson Haller have created a teenaged femme werewolf tale that stands shoulder to shaggy shoulder with Ginger Snaps.

It seems like there a lot of ways a journal-style project like this could go wrong: clumsy narrative info-dumps, poor pacing, inauthentic voice, incidental or uninteresting illustrations. Werewolves suffers from none of these problems. The events we expect to read about – the attack, the mysterious symptoms, the strange people following her and wooing her brother – are detailed but not belaboured. Alice is clearly frightened but there’s no overwrought hand-wringing or dire pronouncements. The entries do a wonderful job of conveying Alice’s emotions and the increasing tension and danger of the story – but there’s also a melancholy sort of sweetness, too, and a real sense of sisterly concern when she writes about Mark. The writing is intimate without feeling voyeuristic, which is quite a feat considering we’re reading a teenager’s private thoughts.

The text in Werewolves is balanced out with an abundance of beautiful illustrations, rendered in what looks like graphite and watercolours. The palette is predominantly a range of warm greys, with one or two bright colours picked out as highlights. In the first half of the book, these bright colours are lively, but as the story progresses, the highlights become increasingly sanguine. Given the subject matter of the book, much care and attention is given to drawing werewolves in various stages of transformation, in styles ranging from portraits of Alice’s new “friends” (and an amazing double self-portrait) to anatomical studies of werewolf hands, feet, jaws and the like. Although Haller (or should I say Alice?) has drawn some of the most ferally gorgeous werewolves I’ve seen, her portraits of humans are stunning. As with the writing, so much of Werewolves‘ art is about conveying a mood rather than action, and there are some real successes – the drawings of those kids snarling and grinning in their hoodies, for instance, or an achingly sweet image of Alice and Mark’s mother.

I have just one complaint about Werewolves, and I’m laying the issue at the feet of the book’s designers, Kasey Free and Katie Stahnke (if you don’t know what the word “kerning” means, you can skip this paragraph). The journal entries are set in a clumsy handwriting font with perfectly regular leading. The writing style and illustrations are organic, but the machinelike regularity of the lettering goes a long way towards trashing the verisimilitude so carefully crafted by the words and images. I appreciate that books have to be produced on a timeline and under budgetary constraints, but seriously, Chronicle Books, you should have allocated the funds to get this thing hand-lettered. Design nerd rant: over.

Werewolves came out over a year ago, and I’ve been in love with it for nearly as long. It’s a nearly-perfect blend of emotionally authentic teenage anxieties and chaotic scenes of lycanthropic carnage. I highly recommend you pick up a copy – Amazon has it for stupid cheap at the moment. Read it a dozen times and you’ll still find yourself leafing through it to admire a passage or drawing. I certainly did – that’s why it took me a year to finally write this review!

Dec. 28th 2011

Teens Vs. Werewolves “Monster-Take-Down” Comic “Extinct” Gets 80’s Nostalgia Right

80’s pop culture has been resurrected over the last five years, mostly in zombified incarnations designed to sell tchotchkes and t-shirts to those of us who were kids then (full disclosure: I am wearing a Ghostbusters t-shirt as I write this). It’s not hard to make new things look like they’re from the era of denim, neon pink and new releases on VHS. However, it’s extraordinarily difficult to make something feel authentically 80’s, especially when it comes to replicating something with the kids-on-a-dangerous-adventure vibe that was the core of so many awesome creative endeavours of the time. Only two things I’ve seen in the last few years have captured that Goonies-style zeitgeist: The movie Monster House and now, the high school kids versus werewolves comic Extinct.

From the Extinct web site:

Texas,1985. On the first full moon of the year a small town named Spring Valley gets taken over by werewolves. Teenagers Jimmy Reynolds, (the town outsider), Nick Evans (his best and only friend), and the girl next door, Lauren Finch, have to make the werewolves EXTINCT. Can they live long enough to figure out why Jimmy is the only one who can save the town?

Writer / creator Fabian Rangel Jr. populates Extinct‘s world with classic 80’s archetypes who look, say and act as though they’re from a werewolf-centric version of Monster Squad. All of your favourites are here: snobby prep girl, unaccountably ostracized everykid, his wise-crackin’ rebel sidekick, the jock villain with the amazing mullet. Somehow, Fabian takes these stock characters and combines them in a way that effortlessly invokes the “holy shit, anything could happen!” energy that made Exctinct‘s 1980’s ancestors so amazing. As Fabian writes in his blog:

This comic is my love letter to all of those awesome 80s movies where kids had to take down monsters. It’s influenced by The Monster Squad, The Lost Boys, and also The Goonies, Teen Wolf, and even The Breakfast Club. It’s pretty much just 80s as fuck.

The werewolves in Extinct (and there are a lot of them) are of a design that will appeal to most Werewolf News readers. They’re tall, rangy (if a bit top-heavy) and artist Jethro Morales has given them lupine faces with just enough humanity to make them unnerving. There are some awesome transformation scenes, too, if that’s your thing (of course it’s your thing). Letterer Ed Brisson‘s work is crispy – crispy. The guy could put on a clinic about leading.

Individual issues of Extinct were meant to be distributed by Diamond, but that didn’t happen because of Reasons. Instead, you can order the graphic novel (which contains all six issues) from your local comic shop – it’s on page 304 of this month’s Previews. If you’re a werewolf fan craving a hit of some authentic 80’s action/horror sweetness, I recommend you go get your car keys now, because you’re going to want to read Extinct.

Update 2015-10-09: Extinct is not available to buy anywhere anymore, seemingly on purpose, which is a real shame.

Nov. 19th 2011

David Lapham’s Upcoming Comic “Ferals” Promises Fur, Claws & a Killer Story

The magic of Google Alerts has brought to my attention an upcoming comic series written by David Lapham (Stray Bullets, Crossed: Family Values) and illustrated by Gabriel Andrade Jr. (Lady Death). If this interview at Bleeding Cool (and the issue 1 “gore” cover) is any indication, “Ferals” is going to be a delightfully fucked-up gore-fest – and with Eisner-winner Lapham at the wheel, you know the story’s going to be great.

“If you were longing for an HBO series about werewolves, forget that and buy FERALS,” Lapham says. “It’s everything that TV show would be if it existed — which it doesn’t — and more, because we have no rules. This is a solid series full of true horror and violence, and built on strong characters that has no limits in terms of where we take it.  No limits.”

Despite appearances, the creatures in Ferals aren’t strictly werewolves.

…this isn’t a take on the mystical werewolf, full moon and all that. This is about a different kind of person. There are different forms to them but they don’t change back and forth like the Hulk… There are several other tricks up a Feral’s sleeve, and we’ll see that and some other more altered forms of the Feral condition, but we’ll save that for the comics.

The title will be published by Avatar, and issue 1 should be out in January 2012. For more, read the full article at Bleeding Cool. Below are two more issue 1 cover treatments – a wrapper version, and the (NSFW) “gore” cover the wrapper is ostensibly covering. Werewolves or not, Andrade Jr. can draw some mean monsters.

Oct. 23rd 2011

She-Wolf Wants to Know: Who’s Your Favourite Female Werewolf?

Academic, writer, publisher, friend and fellow werewolf enthusiast Dr. Hannah Priest has a terrific post up on her blog, She-Wolf, in which a number of contributors (including your humble servant) make a case for our favourite female werewolves. Hannah’s the authority on lady lycanthropes, so the results of this poll will be canonical – we’ll be logging the results with the Library of Congress and Wolfram Alpha.

The nominees are:

  1. Kelsey ‘Boobs’ Bornstein (in ‘Boobs’ by Suzy McKee Charnas)
  2. Sergeant Angua (in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series)
  3. ‘Wolfgirl’ (in The Company of Wolves)
  4. Nina (in Being Human)
  5. Kitty Norville (in Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty Norville books)
  6. Brigitte Fitzgerald (in Ginger Snaps: Unleashed)
  7. White Fell (in Clemence Housman’s The Were-Wolf)
  8. Leah Clearwater (in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series)

I nominated Brigitte Fitzgerald, but she’s up against some pretty tough company. Read through each contributor’s analysis and post your vote (or write in your own) on the She-Wolf blog, then come back here and defend your choice (unless you picked Brigitte).

Oct. 22nd 2011

I Got Your Next Purchase Right Here: “Feeding Ground” Graphic Novel & Trailer

I’ve read a lot of werewolf comics in the years that I’ve been running Werewolf News, and some of them have been quite good, but Archaia’s Feeding Ground stands above them all as my absolute favourite. It’s that simple. It succeeds on every level: as a compelling story eerily grounded in reality, as a collection of astounding artwork that simmers with heat and tension, as a serious commentary on a life-and-death social issue and as a self-contained objet d’art crafted by three friends who wanted to make something great, and then did.

Now all six issues have been collected as a hardcover graphic novel, and as your official werewolf life-coach, I advise you to go check it out, either from Amazon or your local comic shop. (more…)

Oct. 20th 2011

“Welcome to Hoxford” Fan Film is 20 Minutes of Blood and Grime-Splattered Perfection

If you haven’t seen this already, scroll down and watch it. Go. Now. If you have seen it, holy shit, right?

Holy shit.

Director Julien Mokrani and an extraordinarily talented cast and crew have created what I think we all have to agree is the definitive motion-picture version of Ben Templesmith’s comic series Welcome to Hoxford – or the first part of it, anyway.

Hoxford isn’t Mokrani’s first fan film labour of love – he and writer / producer Samuel Bodin spent two years working on Batman: Ashes to Ashes, a $15,000 tribute to Batman’s quasi-vampiric nature. On the strength of that project, Mokrani and Bodin were able to entice actors Jason Flemyng (X-Men: First Class, Hanna, Snatch), Arben Bajraktaraj (Harry Potter – Order of the Phoenix and the Deathly Hallows) and Dexter Fletcher (Kick-Ass, Band of Brothers, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), plus director of photography Thierry Arbogast (The Fifth Element, Leon: The Professional, La Femme Nikita) and special effects makeup artist Jean-Christophe Spadaccini (The Bourne Identity, The City of Lost Children).

And why in the world would Mokrani and his colleagues invest their time, energy and money in a film that will never make a legal dime? “Welcome to Hoxford ran around in my head for over a year”, Mokrani says. “One day it was too much, I had to make it!”

Despite his passion and skill, he wasn’t able to get official sanction from Hoxford creator Ben Templesmith, who said he’d enjoyed Ashes to Ashes but was contractually obliged to avoid even thinking about talking about the idea of considering having anything to do with a fan-made Hoxford film – presumably because the rights are currently managed by Circle of Confusion, who Mokrani says are only interested in talking to major studios. Circle, come on. Quit fucking around and let Mokrani and company have a stab an official Welcome to Hoxford film – if this 20-minute production is any indication, they’ll treat it right.

You can see production stills and a whole lot more at welcometohoxford-thefanfilm.com. I’ll just stay here and watch Warden Baker eat that… “steak”… over and over. Somehow I can’t look away.

Oct. 17th 2011