Sometimes I try to put these scans in context, and then sometimes we just throw them out there. This one's from Marvel's Shadows and Light #3, "Even the Beast Hates!" Written by Jim Starlin, art by Tom Grindberg.
In the bio before the story, Starlin as much as admits not being especially interested in the Werewolf by Night character; he basically wrote an Andrew Dachss story with the Werewolf in it. Well, OK...I had to look it up, since I thought Jack Russell grew up in Transylvania, a locale you don't immediately associate with child molestation. (Actually, Jack was born there, but apparently grew up in California.) I thought Starlin might be taking a bit too much of a liberty with the character, just to liven things up.
(Before I seem like I'm being too harsh on Starlin, among a good chunk of his other work like Dreadstar and Warlock, I did also like his novel Among Madmen.)
Anyway, although Jack and the Werewolf are almost separate entities, they work together after finding the body of a little boy in the woods. With the superior senses of the Werewolf, Jack is able to track the killer down easily, setting him up for a motel room encounter he could never have expected. The Werewolf plays with the killer like the proverbial cat-and-mouse, 'playing' with him instead of merely killing him outright, until the killer takes his only way out.
Grindberg does a great, old horror-style take on the art for this one. It's only a twelve-page story, but not bad; even if it kinda seems like Grindberg really wanted to draw some Werewolf and asked Starlin to grind out a story for him. I don't think Marvel ever had the success with it's black-and-white short story books that DC did (one word: Batman) but this is a damn sight better than the average Marvel Comics Presents short.
This issue also featured a slight, but fun, Keith Giffen Spider-Man story. What the heck, let's go out on a little of that:
This might be it for this week: I'm having a little computer trouble, and had the bright idea of swapping a possibly non-working drive with an old one; which woulda been sharp, if the connections had matched. (There's doubtless a way around that, but I've hit the wall of my knowledge.) Looks like I'll be making a trip to Best Buy or something after work...and if worse comes to worst, Tuesday's Citizen Kang and Wednesday's "They Saved Doom's Face!" are already set up.
I vaguely remember the Shadows and Light mini-series. I think I only bought a single issue, coincidentally enough because it had a short Doctor Strange story by Jim Starlin. My problem with anthologies is that they're always so inconsistent. Maybe you'll have one story by some top drawer talent, and then the rest will be filler by writers and artists of whom you've never heard. I ain't payin' three bucks for that.
ReplyDeleteStill, this issue looks pretty neat. I love the Tom Grindberg art, and Keith Giffen is generally pretty reliable if he's drawing (because even if the story is unintelligible, at least his artwork is always neat).
By the way, a couple of years ago I was doing a blog that you put in your sidebar. I hung it up for a while, though I'm kinda-sorta reviving it. New address, though. It used to be "uatublog", now it's "in between the lines" at http://uatublog.blogs.uatu.net.