While operating the camera during EiC Matt’s interview with Ms. Becky Cloonan, I spied a short looking mini-comic I had never heard of before. Given my love of Ms. Cloonan’s work and my appreciation of the animal that is the book’s namesake I immediately knew that it must be mine. Five dollars and a few pleasantries later and Wolves was nestled safely in my bag.
Originally written and drawn for the Japanese comic anthology Journeys, Becky has now rewritten the script and added new material to this self-published version of the story and, much as I suspected, it is a thing of pure beauty.
Click on down to find out why.
Cloonan’s work has always had what can only be described as a visceral quality to it. Nothing that she puts down on the page could ever be considered calm. Everything from her characters to her backgrounds to her singular objects is imbued with a frenetic, almost unsettling quality to it. While some could be quick to to categorize her work as “scratchy” or “undefined”, to my eye her work manages to straddle the line between clarify and uncertainty. If blurred vision were an artistic quality, her work would be it; where you are not quite sure of what you are looking at until you look deeper and stay on your toes.
Given that, her work on this book is some of the best I have ever seen from her. Her characters are smooth and textured human beings that at once seem out of place and in perfect sync with the raw and highly detailed backgrounds she has drawn for them to inhabit. The time period of “some disparate part of the middle ages” is perfectly represented by the characters’ clothing and demeanor and the largely untamed and beautifully foreboding surroundings. It is clear from her time spent on Northlanders with frequent partner in crime Brian Wood that she is comfortable in this type of setting and time period and serves to only ramp up my anticipation of the duo’s run on Conan next year.
As far as the story itself is concerned, while I know “epic” is not a descriptor a journalist should ever use, it is very hard to not pull it out in this one instance. Despite being a relatively short tale, Cloonan has packed up a surprisingly heartfelt amount of depth both through the dialogue and the arrangement of the images on the page. While I could not even think of spoiling this one for you, I will say that the book takes quite the interesting slant on both the star-crossed lovers story as well as a more sprawling “kill the beast!” tale and all the moving parts slip in together perfectly by story’s end.
Ultimately, this is one story well worth your time. My one complaint is that the half-page (or “zine-like”) publishing choice, while no doubt necessitated by cost, only made me long for a larger format with which to take in the breathtaking art forcing its way through my eye-holes. Either way, head on over to Becky’s Big Cartel page and throw a lincoln down for this sucker. You won’t regret it and if you do, keep reading it until you don’t anymore!
Final Verdict: 9.5 – Buy
