A man in a straitjacket looks over California, singing Hellhound On My Trail by Robert Johnson. He’s on fire. This is how “Wolf #1” by Ales Kot and Matt Taylor opens and it only gets stranger from there.
Check out our spoiler free review of the issue down below to find out why you should be reading this book.
Written by Ales Kot
Illustrated by Matt Taylor
Bestselling new star writer ALES KOT teams up with white-hot artist MATT TAYLOR and DEADLY CLASS colorist extraordinaire LEE LOUGHRIDGE for an all-new ONGOING SERIES! The crime noir thrills and characters reminiscent of True Detective meet with mythical stakes worthy of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman in this original fantasy/horror/crime saga for mature readers. Antoine Wolfe, a hard-boiled paranormal detective with a death wish, has to cope with sudden responsibility for an orphaned teenage girl who might be the key to the impending apocalypse, California-style. The road to hell and back begins in a MAX-SIZED FIRST ISSUE, with fifty-eight pages of story and no ads!
The only way I can describe “Wolf” #1 is if John Constantine accidentally stumbled into David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr.. Now, if you’re anything like me, that’s a description that should have you very intested in the book and for good reason. “Wolf” #1 is a stellar debut for the series. Ales Kot has proven himself an accomplished writer time and again at this point and this collaboration with Matt Taylor is the beginning of a series that looks to be very interesting. With “Wolf”, Ales Kot and Matt Taylor blend the liminality of Los Angeles with a sense of mythic undertones. The world isn’t what it seems. People hide darker, weirder lives than you can even imagine. And the only one that figure anything out is an immortal paranormal detective with a death wish.
At 64 pages, the first issue of “Wolf” can afford to take a slower pace and a subtler approach to introducing the series. Kot and Taylor don’t overload the issue with information and instead use the extra space to take a story that could have fit into an issue have this size and give it room to breathe. It allows them to introduce Antoine Wolfe, establish his condition and his personality to the reader through a series of scenes that follow him through the day and then, once he has been established, throw open the door and thrust him into a much weirder world.
It’s through Antoine that we explore this mythic Los Angeles of “Wolf” and so taking the time to establish his personality through smaller scenes like a conversation with a homeless woman or an encounter on the bus was a very smart choice and allows the second half of the issue to begin to explore the world with Antoine as our guide. This world that blends the supernatural undertones of something like “Hellblazer” or “The Sandman” with an otherwise rather realistic portrayal of Los Angeles.
It’s this realistic portrayal of Los Angeles that’s one of the best qualities of Matt Taylor’s artwork in this issue. Taylor understands the feel of the city, that isolation of highways and high rises, power lines, bus and desolate sidewalks. It’s a feeling that permeates the issue and feels very inherently like Los Angeles and grounds the issue in a very real location that allows Taylor and Kot to juxtapose that with the more supernatural aspects of the book in the second half. This effect is also achieved by Lee Loughridge’s colours.
Loughridge employs a very muted palette here, keeping colours earthy and grounded with a wash of green in some scenes. There’s even an almost washed out, desaturated feeling to some of the earlier scenes. Loughridge begins to contrast that feeling more and more as the supernatural aspects are introduced by having the colours appear more vibrant. This is a subtle affect at first with maybe one or two elements becoming more saturated at first until soon the whole setting feels awash in an unearthly hue.
Matt Taylor’s art style brings a very interesting look to “Wolf”. Taylor’s linework in the first couple of pages is intense and, coupled with the master colours from Lee Loughridge, makes for a fantastically crafted opening scene. However, for the rest of this issue, he employs a more sparse line style. He isolates characters in backgrounds that have maybe one or two background elements or sometimes none at all and the background is simply a flat colour. That sparseness allows Taylor to keep the focus on the characters, usually their faces.
Continued belowTaylor creates a world where the characters all look unique, distinct and recognisable different in the way they are standing and posed and through their expressions. It brings the human quality of the book to the forefront. Against the desolate background of Los Angeles, a city that feels so empty at times, focusing on the human characters brings a lot of heart to Taylor’s work and the story. Again, the choice to use the extra page count not to overload the book with plot, but to introduce the characters at a measured pace makes for a much more engaging book.
What’s interesting about “Wolf” #1, though, is how low key Ales Kot’s writing is. Kot is known for grand, genre-bending ideas that have a tendency to break down what is possible with the medium. That’s not really as present here and, once again, contributes to that sense that the focus of the issue is on the character of Antoine Wolfe. While those elements of Kot’s writing are hinted at here and it’s likely we’ll see them come into play later on in this series, the writing of this issue is understated and subtle. A focus is on the conversations between characters and using that to build and establish their personalities to the reader more than anything. While that does mean a fair bit of this issue is simply two people sitting and talking to each other, the writing of the conversation is engaging and nuanced.
Once again, Ales Kot does not disappoint as a writer. “Wolf” #1 is a stellar debut with some fantastic art by Matt Taylor and Lee Loughridge that captures the heart of the city of Los Angeles and plays it against an encroaching sense of otherworldliness. The book captures a realistic, grounded feeling with the focus on characters and their interactions while a sense of supernatural dread creeps into the book as the story goes on. That, along with a last page cliffhanger that blows the doors open in the ways the series could go, makes this a definite read even at the $4.99 price tag.
Final Verdict: 8.9 – Make sure you have a copy of Mulholland Dr. on hand before reading this because you will be sure to want to watch it as soon as you put the issue down.
