Cover: Gianluca Pagliarani
Writer: Warren Ellis, Mike Wolfer
Art: Gianluca Pagliarani
Before history was recorded in stone and ink, some men wrote it in blood! Ellis and Wolfer, the writing team on Gravel, unveil the next six-issue barbaric epic of Wolfskin, this time joined by Gianluca Pagliarani, the star artist of Ignition City! His leather boots have carried him far, across an Earth both young and terrifying. He has wandered from the boreal climes of the his former home among the Northish tribes to the bustling seaports of the southern fjords, neither escaping his past nor embracing his future. But for the nomadic, berserker warrior named Wolfskin, past and future are about to collide in an unprecedented adventure of cataclysmic proportions. Having slaughtered his own tribesmen in the throes of an uncontrollable blood-rage, Wolfskin hopes to find a purpose in life by accepting a position as guide and hired swordsman on a rescue quest to the volcanic, High Northish ice plains. Accompanied by a rogues gallery of misfits and magicians perched between prehistory and the advent of technology, Wolfskin will become the central player in the greatest undocumented heroic legend to ever be lost in the corridors of time.
This all-new, full-color six issue series is available with several historic covers. Series artist Pagliarani provides the Regular and Wraparound covers, maestro Felipe Massafera delivers the lush Painted cover, super-star artist Juan Jose Ryp serves up the violent Blood Thirst cover, and retailers are able to order a super-limited Bronze & Blood edition.
Follow behind the cut for my thoughts
Just like with my comments in my Crossed review, we now find ourselves with the continued adventures in a universe created by one men being followed up by another. While Warren Ellis wrote the story, Mike Wolfer is in charge of the script here, and you can tell the differences right off the bat. One of the things I really liked about Wolfskin was how quick and to the point it was. It did not need to be a very deep story – we followed the adventures of the titular character as he found himself involved in an argument he had no opinion on, simply because he wandered in at the wrong moment. Wolfer’s approach to the Wolfskin mythos is much different, as he spends a lot of time building up the story around the character(s), not just throwing him in and having pieces be discovered as they go. That and the intense upgrade to the dialogue is the notable difference here.
I gotta say, ultimately it doesn’t work as well. With a genre story like this, especially in a situation where you’re following up a three issue mini and one annual (both with rather little or rapid fire dialogue, with the annual actually being written by Wolfer) with a comic that is quite verbose with it’s backstory, it creates an uneven flow between the stories. Plus, taking some of the focus away from Wolfskin here is a detriment to the story because the other characters don’t seem as interesting. It really doesn’t flow like the first mini did because the story seems like it will be too long (this is issue 1 of 6, as opposed to 3), and I don’t think we need a lot of character development here.
This is not to say the writing is bad. The story is interesting, and Wolfer is a good writer. But I went in expecting something a bit more action packed and driven, filled with lots of genre gore made for the more testosterone rage driven inner child.
I will say this, though: as much as this is a different kind of story, a lot of the same beats are here. While there are scenes that get wordy with explanation, when Wolfskin first arrives in the story, it’s just as it should be, and with the help of artist Gianluca Pagliarani (who previously kicked ass on the book Ignition City) the book looks great. The scenes in this book are just as detailed and choreographed as they were in the original book under the pen of Juan Jose Ryp, and it acts as a good follow up to the annual that Pagliarani did.
Wolfer and Pagliarani proved they were a good Wolfskin team on the annual. I just wish that the first issue of Hundredth Dream were more of a reflection of that. The less dialogue and more emphasis on art there is, the better. A book like this, which (again) is very genre specific, benefits from the artist and writer melding with the action sequences more than the dialogue and backstory ones.
Final Verdict: 6.8 – Browse
