Preview “Only the End of the World Again” (or, Werewolves Vs the Cthulhu Mythos)

Here’s a strange new graphic novel from Dark Horse Books to get your claws or tentacles on: a deluxe re-lease of Neil Gaiman’s “Only the End of the World Again”. Originally published in the late 1990s as a serialized story, Gaiman’s homage to Lovecraft and Roger Zelazny was adapted into a comic by P. Craig Russell, with art by Troy Nixey and colours by Matthew Hollingsworth. This 154-page hardcover edition contains the original comic and a ton of supplemental material.

From the Hugo, Bram Stoker, Locus, World Fantasy, and Nebula award-winning, and New York Times bestselling writer Neil Gaiman (American Gods), this fantasy story blends the worlds of H.P. Lovecraft and Roger Zelazny. This new edition of Only the End of the World Again features a brand new cover, in a new deluxe hardcover format; with bonus material including high res scans of the inks and layouts.

The story features an adjustor, Lawrence Talbot who recently sets up shop in Innsmouth only to discover that the world may be ending and that the instrument of destruction is a werewolf.

100 pages of bonus content for a 54-page comic seems like a fair bit of padding to me, but I can’t deny the appeal of a werewolf + Innsmouth mashup. This review from Adventures in Poor Taste makes it sound like a worthy investment for fans of lycanthropes or the Deep Ones alike. You can pre-order it on Amazon for an early February delivery, or find it in your local comics shop right now!

Here’s the cover again, plus the first five pages:

Jan. 26th 2018

Weekly Werewolf Art: Untitled by Devon Bragg

This week’s featured artwork is by “freelance Illustrator, Avid dog petter, French Fry muncher and Dr. Pepper addict” Devon Bragg.

This stark depiction of a pierced, struggling, half-transformed werewolf lacks a title through which one might understand Bragg’s exact intent, freeing you, the viewer, to have it represent anything you like: your struggle against a cruel world, the strength to change yourself against all odds, the blood you’ve shed for others, or your modest collection of arrows and spears.

You can find more of Bragg’s phenomenal work on Tumblr, Instagram and Behance.

http://devside-art.tumblr.com/post/166307462441/going-through-a-bit-of-a-rough-patch-but-hey

Jan. 22nd 2018

Make some “Evil Friends” with Tatum Howlett’s nasty new werewolf comic

This self-published comic by Tatum Howlett contains gratuitous murders, two counts of reckless driving (drunk; werewolf transformation) and some very cool werewolf designs. You can download a PDF for any price you want, including free, but I recommend that you pay at least a dollar for it because c’mon. C’mon.

a full, black & white, 31-page comic about werewolves and subtle nihilism!

you can download the .pdf for $0 or as many as u think it deserves, i’m not worried about it. just read it bro!!!!

Nice work, Tatum. You definitely captured my experience as an aspiring novelist – I too constantly check the fridge instead of working on the manuscript.

Jan. 22nd 2018

Werewolf woman versus zombie Templars in “Ascension of the Blind Dead!” comic

David Zuzelo is a writer who did some comics work in the 2000s and early 2010s and then virtually disappeared, leaving behind a constellation of un-updated horror, pulp and exploitation media blogs. I was worried that perhaps something bad had happened, but nope, he’s still around and still clearly getting energized by pulp comics and cinema. He doesn’t seem to be writing or doing much in the way of public work these days, so I’m not going to link to his current haunt out of respect for his privacy. Instead, I’m going to share some pages from Ascension of the Blind Dead!, a gory, seven-page comic which he and artist Billy George published in the 2010 zombie anthology Zombie Terrors.

As near as I can figure, Ascension is a fan tribute and continuation of the 1970s Spanish-Portuguese horror film tetralogy. There are certainly a lot of eyeless zombie Templars here, but the focus is on a manipulative werewolf in search of an evil artifact. I won’t spoil the ending – you’ll need to head over to Zuzelo’s 2011 blog post to read the last three pages – but if he ever gets back into writing comics, I hope he continues with this story.

 

Jan. 21st 2018

Is low budget found footage film “Wolf House” better than the sum of its parts?

I came across this 2016 found footage film from directors Matt D. Lord and Ken Cosentino while looking for recent werewolf films to add to the big list. I haven’t seen it yet and I wasn’t expecting to be interested, but after a little research, I’m intrigued.

The plot cooked up by writers Cosentino and Elizabeth Houlihan (synopsis below) sounds like a mashup of horror tropes way too ambitious for its purported $5,000 budget, and the trailer’s editing seems totally at odds with the vibe of the scenes it keeps interrupting, but the reviews tend to land in the “not bad” to “pretty good” range. The actors seem naturalistic and I’m pretty sure I can smell whatever’s in that blue tarp.

Wolf House is currently available on Amazon and Google Play. I’m not a fan of found footage movies (why are you filming your imminent death instead of RUNNING AWAY) but if this ever shows up on Netflix I might have to give it a shot.

Six friends on a camping trip think they have discovered, and killed, a sasquatch. But what they have actually unleashed is something more evil, more ancient and more deadly than they could ever imagine – an army of supernatural terrors that will hunt them until no one remains.

Jan. 20th 2018

Weekly Werewolf Art: “Werewolf Heads” by Popuche

Popuche is an art student from France whose work focusses on sci-fi, cryptid and horror concepts. I particularly like her character and environment designs, and the organic warmth of her colour choices.

Her recent piece “Werewolf Heads” features the detached and mounted domepieces of fourteen of cinema’s most famous werewolves. It’s fascinating to see so many different werewolf designs presented in the same image, side-by-side. Depending on your point of view, the variety of aesthetics and scale either

  1. highlights the diversity of werewolf concepts, or
  2. underscores the reality that no one can agree what the hell these beasts are supposed to look like.

Check it out for yourself. Can you name them all without zooming in to read the tags? I got eleven out of fourteen.

Editor’s note: Weekly Werewolf Art is an old feature of Werewolf News that I’m hoping to bring back. I’ll be spotlighting werewolf art that I find interesting, technically great or otherwise noteworthy. Out of respect for the artists, I will never repost the original – only a cropped thumbnail, and an image embed where the source permits.

Jan. 15th 2018

The Onion: “Townsfolk Strongly Prefer Man’s Werewolf Incarnation”

According to locals, blacksmith Hans Meyer sucks real bad, and everyone wishes he would just remain a terrifying human-wolf hybrid.

“We may lose a few sheep or cattle every month, but it’s worth it to get a break from that guy’s constant bitching,” said candlemaker Fritz Hermann, adding that at least when Meyer is a werewolf he doesn’t have that annoying laugh.

I love The Onion so much.

Jan. 12th 2018

Lycanthropy, motherhood collide in gothic Brazilian horror drama “Good Manners” (As Boas Maneiras)

When I asked folks on Twitter to let me know about any upcoming werewolf movies missing from my list, Full Moon Features writer Craig J. Clark sent in a link to Good Manners (“As Boas Maneiras” in its native Portuguese), a 2017 horror drama from writer / director team Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas.

The film tells the story of Clara, a nurse from a São Paulo favela, who finds herself the adoptive mother of a werewolf child after his mother dies giving birth to him under a full moon. And that’s just the first act!

Reviews so far are unanimously positive. The Hollywood Reporter described it as “a hybrid of art house and genre cinema [that combines] sharp social commentary with grand guignol fantasy”.

The synopses, the reviews and even the poster position this as the sort of story I want more of – lycanthropy is integral to the story, but not necessarily the subject of the story.

I don’t read Portuguese so it’s hard for me to be sure, but I think Good Manners is currently in what I like to call “international festival limbo”. It screened at a variety of South American festivals in 2017, but it doesn’t yet seem to be slated for any 2018 appearances, and there are no details regarding international distribution. Keep an eye out for purchase / rental links here when that latter bit changes.

Edit: Indiana University Cinema has screenings scheduled for January 25th and 26th, if you can make it to Bloomington.

Further edit: Writer / director Marco Dutra commented on this very post to confirm the film had two US festival appearances, and that more are on the way!

In the meantime, here are some promo photos and a trailer. This film looks gorgeous and I can’t wait for it to traumatize me!

Jan. 11th 2018

Birth.Movies.Death on The Amicus Vault Of Horror: “The Beast Must Die!”

Birth.Movies.Death has an interesting review of The Beast Must Die. Writer Jacob Knight speaks more highly of the 1974 exploitation film than Craig J. Clark did in his Full Moon Features review, although both writers noted the laggy pacing and “it’s just a dog” werewolf effects. The film is getting a new release on January 16th as part of the Amicus Collection, where it will join And Now The Screaming Starts and Asylum on Blu-ray for the first time.

Yes, the basic concept behind The Beast Must Die! (’74) is one Amicus’ most ingeniously exploitive: an Agatha Christie riff (call it Ten Little Lycanthropes), combining the racial tension of Blaxploitation with the modern updates of monster movies the studio had made its calling card over the last decade, competing with Hammer Studios for supreme dominance of the ’70s British horror market. Soon, six associates will arrive at Newcliffe’s home, all with various shady backstories. One of the them is a werewolf, and when the full moon rises that evening, the noble hunter assures us all that the beast must die.

This strikes me as one of those werewolf films that everyone assumes every other werewolf fan has seen, but I missed it growing up, when it aired on channels we didn’t get, far after I was supposed to be in bed. Now that I can just watch it at home at my leisure, I might need to cross this off my list, although I might opt for the more affordable stand-alone DVD release from 2006.

The conclusion of Craig J. Clark’s Full Moon Features review nearly encapsulates the reason I haven’t bumped this film higher up my list:

The biggest disappointment, though, is when the monster is revealed to be a big, black German shepherd. That’s not a beast that needs to die. It probably just wants to go walkies.

Jan. 6th 2018

“Lycanimator” trailer leans hard into goopy, colourful B-movie territory

Whatever you might say about its production values or its gratuitous fetish content (“Who’s afraid of the big slimy wolf?” sounds like a writing prompt for a very DeviantArt sort of short story), writer / director / actor Sébastien Godin‘s upcoming film Lycanimator certainly looks fresh as hell. I spy that one werewolf mask everyone’s using in their low-budget werewolf movies, but it gets remixed into a horrific neon nightmare of ooze and incredibly long claws. Dread Central has the exclusive trailer (or watch it below) and more credits. Keep an eye on its Facebook page and its Werewolf Movies entry for release dates.

Jan. 5th 2018