By Dustin Cabeal
I liked the trailer for Wolf Cop, but I couldn’t finish the film. Why bother trying the comic right? Well, because maybe it’s an idea that works better as a comic? Part of that is true as the special effects have been replaced by the art from Arcana Studios. It’s just the writing that kills this story.
The premise is generic. Wolf Cop and friend are chased out of town; their car breaks down, and some bikers show up to fuck them up. Wolf Cop wolf’s out and makes short work of the bikers. One of the women that they captured tells them that there’s more people that have been captured. We see the bad guy who has a big nose, and he’s eating people. He has piles of people and seemingly eats people all day long. Fight, fight, good guy wins, blah, blah, blah.
Again, the art is impressive. I enjoyed it from beginning to end, and it’s honestly a lot better than Dynamite’s usual art. Sure, Dynamite has improved, but Arcana, a smaller studio, delivered better art. The art has some problems, but I think that comes from the script. There’s a lot of wasted panels, talking heads and not enough pages for the action. Again, because of the talking heads.
I wanted to quit reading this book after the second page. If I weren't reviewing it, I would have. The dialogue is stiff and unrealistic. There’s no flow to the conversations, and the humor isn’t meant for a comic book. It’s movie gags, moving visual gags, which have been stiffened into comic gags. They don’t work; they’re not funny. I don’t know if the writer has written other comics, but the story and script was lacking comic book fundamentals and ended up feeling like a transposed film script. Kind of like the shit that BOOM! did with Frank Miller’s Robocop 3 script. That point is, it's not enjoyable because it doesn’t read like a comic. It does make you read, though, a lot. Again, more pages should have been dedicated to the action given how little of the dialogue affected the story.
If you loved the film, grab the comic. I’m sure you’ll love it. It’s not a bad premise to bring to comics, but then it also doesn’t effectively use the medium to tell a story. That’s the number one problem with adaptations like this; they try to be the medium they’re coming from, rather than respecting and using the medium they’re being presented in now. Simply put, if I wanted more of the movie, I would re-watch/finish the movie. However, I wouldn’t pay four bucks to read the sequel.
Score: 2/5
Wolf Cop vol. 1 Hog Wild #1
Writer: Max Marks
Artist: Arcana Studios
Publisher: Arcana/Dynamite