Universal Monsters: Blood of the Wolfman #1 // Review
Adam’s dad got the call from the hospital. He ended-up in the emergency room. Naturally, his dad is going to head straight out to see what might have happened to his son. Thankfully, he’s in good shape. Just a little scratched-up. Of course...when he asks his son what happened..Adam tells him that he was at a party. And...they’d talked about this. Adam has a lot of explaining to do in Universal Monsters: Blood of the Wolfman #1. Writer Joshua Williamson and the art team of Pip Martin and Leomacs put together a thoughtful opening to a whole new Wolfman story set a little bit closer to the present than the Universal monster movies that serve as its inspiration.
Even a man who is pure of heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the Autumn moon is bright. That’s the legend anyway. It’s more than a legend to Adam. It’s actually something of a nightmare. He was only going to a party. It wasn’t anything any more dangerous than a casual get-together. Something happened. He blacked out and he could remember doing horrible things that weren’t human. Now the police want to question him.
Williamson works cleverly with the specific flavor of lycanthrope that had been developed for the screen by screenwriter Curt Siodmak for the 1941 movie starring Lon Chaney Jr. It’s a really simple adaptation of a premise that can get very, very complex...so there are a lot of different ways that the premise might be adapted. Williamson develops a father and son story that’s definitely veering-off in a direction of deeper psychological horror beyond the surface-level lycanthrope. Adam seems like an interesting kid. The relationship he has with his father could be really interesting moving forward.
The art team develops a suitably cinematic look for the opening issue. Previous entries in Skybound’s Universal Monster series have done a pretty good job of delivering a cinematic feel.Martin and Leomacs do a particularly good job of framing a look for the visual momentum of Wolfman that feel particularly cinematic from the opening splash that feels like an opening title card of a film to the quick cuts between scenes that feel like a well-edited horror film. It all fits together quite well visually with some rather creative framing that never overpowers the momentum of the story.
Given just how solidly the Wolfman myth adapts into all kinds of different settings, it’s kind of surprising that it’s not embraced at least a bit more into popular culture than it has over the years. It reaches straight into the heart of the human/animal conflict at the heart of human existence. It’s so fundamental to the myth of civilized humanity. It’s strange that it hasn’t been fit more prominently into 20th century and post-20th century popular culture. It’s nice to see another foray into human animalism in a form that harkens back to the classic 1941 horror film.
