By d. emerson eddy — “Once the Wolf has you, you can't ever get away.”

True not just of the antagonist, but of the entirety of my next recommendation too. Wolf Moon by Cullen Bunn, Jeremy Haun, Lee Loughridge, and Travis Lanham is one of the most harrowing and visceral werewolf tales I've read. Not only does it give us another unique take on the werewolf, working in elements of Native American lore regarding skinwalkers, it gives us a unique perspective from survivors. The story takes elements of a psychological thriller along with the more common werewolf bits, resulting in a horror story that is incredibly compelling.

Cullen Bunn does something interesting with the narrative right from the beginning—nicely reflected in Travis Lanham's lettering almost in the style of a journal's handwriting—setting the tale from the point of view of someone who has been possessed by the Wolf. Because in this werewolf tale, it's not so much a curse, as the spirit of the Wolf moving from host to host. It puts us inside the mind of someone who transformed, who went through the horror of three nights of murderous rampage, and the lengths to which that guilt has driven him to continue hunting the beast so that no one else has to suffer that burden. It's a wildly different situation than that of someone who still is a werewolf or even the standard survivor of a werewolf attack and it feeds into the motivations of other hunters that we come across in the course of the story.

It's kind of a one-two punch of cerebral and visual horror as the latter is absolutely nailed by the artwork from Jeremy Haun and Lee Loughridge. From the start, Haun chooses a rough, freehand style for the panel borders and it's a little thing that enhances your feeling of unease even before we see the raw fury and violence of the Wolf. There are some very dark, disturbing moments both of the Wolf's attacks and of the nightmares that it elicits in some of its hosts that are just haunting. Enhanced even further by Loughridge's colour choices, opting for variations on blues, reds, and yellows for the most part, washing scenes in hues of single colours. It gives many scenes a somewhat spooky atmosphere, that then explodes when we get those washed in red.

Wolf Moon by Bunn, Haun, Loughridge, and Lanham is a compelling tale of predators and prey, making you wonder at times who is hunting who, and the transformative nature of having been touched by the violence of the Wolf.

Classic Comic of the Week: Wolf Moon

Wolf Moon
Writer: Cullen Bunn
Artist: Jeremy Haun
Colourist: Lee Loughridge
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Publisher: DC Comics / Vertigo
A new brand of Werewolf carves a bloody rampage into this collection of WOLF MOON!
How do you hunt a werewolf if a different person becomes the monster with every cycle of the moon? Dillon, a former victim of the Wolf's transformation, is taking it upon himself to track the sporatic movements of the Wolf in hopes to kill it. Hoping to uncover some clues, Dillon turns to a reclusive expert on werewolf legends, and what he learns crushes any hope of ever destroying the creature.
Release Date: October 27, 2015
Buy It Here: Digital / Physical

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d. emerson eddy is a student and writer of things. He fell in love with comics during Moore, Bissette, & Totleben's run on Swamp Thing and it has been a torrid affair ever since. His madness typically manifests itself on Twitter @93418.