Comic Review: The Astounding Wolf-Man #7

[jakebe]

Things take a very strong turn for the sudsy here. All of the threads that have been steadily building since the beginning of the series come to a head at once, and the result, as you might imagine, isn’t pretty.

Gary flips when he realizes Zechariah has turned Captain Superior into a vampire, which is an understandable reaction. Tired of the secrets and feeling manipulated, he breaks his “apprenticeship” right then and there. Meanwhile, the good Captain promises to explain to his teammates what the hell is going on.

When Gary gets home, he finds Rebecca waiting for him. He tells her she was right about Zechariah, and she tells him she’s leaving and taking Chloe with her. He manages to talk her out of outright divorce, but the compromise was to give Gary the space he needed to figure things out, and for Chloe and Rebecca to come to terms with their new life. It wasn’t ideal, but it was something.

Zechariah is waiting for Rebecca when she goes to the lair to pick up the last of her things. He tries to tell her how much Gary needs him, but she ends up attacking him. He loses control, snaps her neck, and then drinks her blood. (Yeah, I know, I was shocked too.) This is the perfect time for Gary to walk in on them, and he does. This time, he goes absolutely ballistic. Zechariah escapes, while Gary holds his bloodied dead wife. This, of course, is the perfect time for Chloe to walk in on them, and she does. She goes ballistic. Gary leaves, after telling his butler Dunford to take good care of his daughter.

Finally, we see the super-team dead and drained. Captain Superior, it would appear, killed them on Zechariah’s command. The vampire is pretty unhappy with the way things went down, though.

The initial arc is now completed; the slow unraveling of Gary’s life due to his lycanthropy and his subsequent attempt to become a superhero with it has become full realized. His company was bought out from under him, his nice home is gone, his wife is dead and his daughter believes he did it. His mentor is the real culprit and his new apprentice is now a super-villain vampire. It’s hard to imagine things getting much worse; this is pre-Jasmine fourth season of Angel bad.

Even though we’ve been prepped for this for the past six issues, everything still happens too fast. Gary’s thrown from tragedy to tragedy like a pinball, and he’s not given enough time for anything to fully sink in. We’re just railroaded from point to point, and while a lot of the points do provide a nice initial jolt (I honestly did not see Rebecca’s death coming), it all feels tailored to be the worst thing that could possibly happen. The reveal of Captain Superior’s murder of all his teammates feels tacked on by the time we come to it, and doesn’t have nearly the impact it should. It’s just confusing and anti-climactic, considering how just a page ago we were seeing the main character holding his dead wife while covered in her blood. It’s hard to top a thing like that.

There was enough here for two solid issues, and I think that the story was really done a disservice squeezed into one. Instead of having each blow land with its full weight behind it, it feels like the story’s being forced, which is just horrible for a climactic incident like this.

Despite that, this is a pretty solid story. The surprises are fast and numerous, but they don’t come out of nowhere. Gary is still a very sympathetic character, even though his life has turned into a country song. I’m really interested to see where he goes next; Kirkman has been hinting that the series turns rather dark and bloody starting with this issue, and I’m sure Image told him to say it, because that’s the only possible way I could imagine someone using this as a major selling point.

The art by Jason Howard continues to be pretty neat. The palette is mostly black and white with splashes of red for vampiric eyes and blood. This can be good for a subtle effect, but later on in the issue it looks like someone’s spilled ketchup all through the panels. In the end I don’t know if Howard’s blocky, cartoonish style is a good match for the graphic realism they’re interested in getting away with. I like his art style; it’s clean and distinctive, but it’s not gritty. If that’s the direction they’re really interested in taking this, then there could be problems later on.

I’m harping on the problems a lot, but that’s mostly because of the standard I’m holding the title up to. This is its most ambitious issue yet, and while I can certainly respect the effort, it’s exposed a few problems.

Rating: 6/10