(BOOM! Studios, 2014)

Written by Michael Moreci and Tim Daniel
Art by Riley Rossmo and Colin Lorimer
Additional Colors by Tamra Bonvillain
Letters by Jim Campbell

As I woke up Tuesday morning and stumbled out to my truck, dragging my feet through new-fallen snow I happened to look up and see the red orb of the moon hanging low in the early morning sky.  It is one of those things that help to conjure an image for certain.  How appropriate that the week of the blood moon eclipse also sees the release of Curse #4 from Boom! Studios, the last in a four issue short from Michael Moreci (Hoaxhunters) and Tim Daniel (Enormous).

I have mixed feelings about this last issue.  The series so far has been an intense twist on the werewolf theme, delivering a constant stream of twists and turns that sometimes leave you questioning the motives of Laney, the main character, and wondering at the final outcome.

To recap…Laney is a retired football player, a widower, and most importantly the father of a fatally ill child.  Over the course of the four issues that has become the driving force for Laney and by far the most compelling aspect of the story.  Moreci and Daniel have taken an ordinary man and placed him in an extra-ordinary situation.  It is the perfect premise for any story.   Even an ex-football player can be ordinary when faced with the mortality of his child and Laney finds that he has been reduced to pure action.  And that begs the question…which is the man and which the beast?  Laney behaves like a caged animal, acting on instinct, lashing out and running like a lone wolf instead of looking for help.

It is the deft touch that only a father, or pair of fathers, could bring to a story.  As I write this I can see the faces of my sons peeking around the windows from my screensaver, and I know, not what Laney feels, but what Daniel and Moreci have instilled the this character.  It is the choice at the end of the book that is truly heart-breaking and liberating at the same time, the choice that only Laney can make for his son that is the heart of this story.

Riley Rossmo (Proof, Green Wake) and Colin Lorimer (Harvest, Blackout) have once again, and continually, delivered a great-looking book.  There are some images, especially during Anton’s last transformation scene that brought a chill to me as I read it without first knowing why.  Then I realized it was because one of the panels was a direct pull from An American Werewolf in London, the one where there is a close-up of just the wolf’s eyes and a bit of his snout as he transforms.  It worked perfectly here as well; bringing an amount of feral terror to the page that was timed just right.

I said in a previous review that I would like to have seen more than just a short four-issue run from this book, and that is still true, but as I see it, this is the best, feel-good ending possible for this tale of murder and howling madness.  Pick up Curse #4 this week, and get your wolf on.

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Brad Gischia is a writer and artist living in the frozen Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He is married and has three kids and a dog, who all put up with his incessant prattling about comic books.