Fall of the Wolfmen review

The trick to writing a sequel is not to write a sequel. Terminator 2: Judgement Day is a high-octane adventure movie - faster and leaner than it's predecessor which in many ways owes more to slasher horror than the action genre. The very best sequels expand the world built in the first installment, introduce new characters without forsaking the principle players, and ADD to the mythos with something new and fresh to say about a property we are familiar with.
So it is with Fall of the Wolfmen. The second part of Dave West and Andy Bloor's Wolfmen trilogy, published by Accent UK and unveiled at Whatever Comics in Canterbury of October this year.
If it were at all possible, West and Bloor have created a more muscular comic than their first effort. This is about acts of revenge, a natural evolution from the 'heist movie gone wrong' in book one. Packing it with more action and emotion, they have widened the scope to insinuate that the Wolfmen are not only following you down the street but are instead in all places at all times. They are inescapable. It is a nice choice of Dave West's in a book that is about the consequences of revenge, and the risk of retaliation. That retaliation comes when Grey's wife, Jenny, is embroiled in the plot(as a side note: it is nice to see a female character take such a large role in the noir comic, always considered a man's world.)

There are places in which a let up in pace, a little breathing room, would have been welcome, but it is a minor quibble with a book that competes in quality with the american industry. One might argue that Andy Bloor's bulky gangsters unrealistically rendered, but I think this misses the point. This is a question of style. Andy's characters are a perfect fit for the story being told. The Wolfmen are too big and mean to fit inside his panels, too unrestrained.

Fall of the Wolfmen is an ambitious comic, one that the UK small press needs because it reaches for something higher and is not held back by it's humble surroundings. Get your paws on it now.