Tomorrow, Image Comics releases Wolf #1 by writer Ales Kot and artists Matt Taylor and Lee Loughridge, a comic about the supernatural with a very noir type of vibe.
The comic follows the life of Antoine Wolfe, a paranormal detective who's seen it all and has about had it with everything, and is even slightly suicidal, but he's still forced to go up against those who would use his abilities, as well as those things that go bump in the night, including vampires. When an orphaned girl shows up on his doorstep, though, he knows he's officially on the road to hell.
Wolf #1 is an oversized issue, with a lot of additional story, so much so that it's often hard to keep track of all the threads Kot has included. It starts with Wolfe being burned alive as a sort of test, and then he gets kidnapped by the man who wants to make sure that Wolf really has certain gifts. In the meantime, a brutal murder scene occurs, and the only person left standing is an orphaned teenage girl who talks to invisible things or people, things that, for others, aren't there.
Then, we get introduced to a monster straight out of an H.P. Lovecraft story, as well as vampires, and at that point, it's hard to keep up. That's not to say that Wolf #1 isn't an interesting story, but there's a lot of story details in this maxi issue, and everything gets thrown at the reader immediately so that it's often disorienting.
At times, Wolf feels a lot like a different version of John Constantine, taking its cue that the supernatural is an ordinary thing that he deals with on a daily basis. He also seems to have a lot of Constantine's self-destructive behaviors, but at the same time, Wolf is a character of Kot's making with a lot of things going on around him.
Kot mostly handles all these plot points well, but it's really the art that pulls it together, including panels without dialogue that show action. That's thanks to the work of Taylor and Loughridge, who have created this modern supernatural-laden world that still feels like a 1940s version of Hollywood. The panels with color stand out from the panels that are more whitewashed, showing the drastically different worlds that exist in La-La Land.
Wolf #1 is not an easy comic for casual readers and probably requires multiple read-throughs to catch everything. There is no explanation or background given for the characters or the setting, and the reader gets thrown into the action immediately. However, it is likely (and hinted within the pages of #1) that future issues will explore these missing details later on, so Wolf #1 is worthy of a read in spite of its complexity.
Wolf #1 is available at comic book stores and online on July 22.
Story
★★★☆☆
Art
★★★★☆
Overall
★★★★☆
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