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Cripple Wolf
Part man.
Part wolf.
100% crippled.
Welcome to Fetish Flights, the only airline where BDSM flight attendants service your every need. Aboard a red-eye flight from Tokyo, Japan to Portland, Oregon, a disabled Vietnam vet is harboring a secret. Every full moon he turns into a ravenous killing machine. When he transforms mid-flight and slaughters most of the passengers and crew, a Japanese punk band, a limbless superhero, a Muslim terrorist, and two stoner pilots must fight to stay alive until they reach land. In the spirit of Snakes on a Plane and Tokyo Gore Police, Cripple Wolf is a hilarious, perverted, and hyper-violent ride for fans of video games, comic books and trash culture.
Part wolf.
100% crippled.
Welcome to Fetish Flights, the only airline where BDSM flight attendants service your every need. Aboard a red-eye flight from Tokyo, Japan to Portland, Oregon, a disabled Vietnam vet is harboring a secret. Every full moon he turns into a ravenous killing machine. When he transforms mid-flight and slaughters most of the passengers and crew, a Japanese punk band, a limbless superhero, a Muslim terrorist, and two stoner pilots must fight to stay alive until they reach land. In the spirit of Snakes on a Plane and Tokyo Gore Police, Cripple Wolf is a hilarious, perverted, and hyper-violent ride for fans of video games, comic books and trash culture.
This collection includes six additional stories: Punk Rock Nursing Home, Adrift with Space Badgers, Cook for Your Life, Just Another Day in the Park , Frosty and the Full Monty, and House of Cats.
152 pages, Paperback
First published September 8, 2011
1 person is currently reading
146 people want to read
About the author
Jeff Burk
24 books169 followersJeff Burk lives in Portland, OR where he edits the Magazine of Bizarro Fiction. He writes Bizarro fiction and is the author of Shatnerquake.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 13, 2015
A while back, I referred to Jeff Burk as the clown prince of Bizarro and there is nothing in this very Bizarro collection of short fiction that would lead me to jerk away that title from him. These are stories that are hilarious and outrageous in the most Bizarro way.
Now for a blow-by-blow-description.
Cripple Wolf: The title tale; the best and longest in the book. Add on an infant werewolf, fetish laden airplane attendants, spiff smoking pilots, and suicide bombers and you have the Citizen Kane of werewolf-on-a-plane stories. I love the author's answer on how to make a werewolf on a plane story more than two pages long. Make it a very big plane and put the werewolf in a wheelchair.
Frosty and The Full Monty: I always wondered what really happened to Frosty. I can never hear that song in the same way again.
Cook for Your Life: A cross between Iron Chef and The Hunger Games; My second favorite story in the book even if the author can't resist throwing in some plugs for his other books. Which reminds me. When are we getting Shatnerpocalpyse?
House of Cats: As my cat Fanci would say, "He doesn't like cats." Nonetheless it is an disturbing but impressive story that reminds me of Otsuichi's "The White House in the Cold Forest"...but with cats.
Adrift With Space Badgers: I don't read much science fiction anymore but I'll hazard a guess that this is Hugo material. A take on badger evolution that, as the author writes, "Darwin never saw these little bitches coming."
Punk Rock Nursing Home: Answers the question; what happens to punk rockers when they get old? Kind of sweet in a punk way. But "Killing Kittens for Fun and Profit"? You really don't like cats, do you?
Last one is Just Another Day in the Park: Short but interesting. Not my favorite but still good.
So this is a very good collection. It would be a good starting point for the Bizarro beginner. But Jeff..quit picking on cats, will ya?
Now for a blow-by-blow-description.
Cripple Wolf: The title tale; the best and longest in the book. Add on an infant werewolf, fetish laden airplane attendants, spiff smoking pilots, and suicide bombers and you have the Citizen Kane of werewolf-on-a-plane stories. I love the author's answer on how to make a werewolf on a plane story more than two pages long. Make it a very big plane and put the werewolf in a wheelchair.
Frosty and The Full Monty: I always wondered what really happened to Frosty. I can never hear that song in the same way again.
Cook for Your Life: A cross between Iron Chef and The Hunger Games; My second favorite story in the book even if the author can't resist throwing in some plugs for his other books. Which reminds me. When are we getting Shatnerpocalpyse?
House of Cats: As my cat Fanci would say, "He doesn't like cats." Nonetheless it is an disturbing but impressive story that reminds me of Otsuichi's "The White House in the Cold Forest"...but with cats.
Adrift With Space Badgers: I don't read much science fiction anymore but I'll hazard a guess that this is Hugo material. A take on badger evolution that, as the author writes, "Darwin never saw these little bitches coming."
Punk Rock Nursing Home: Answers the question; what happens to punk rockers when they get old? Kind of sweet in a punk way. But "Killing Kittens for Fun and Profit"? You really don't like cats, do you?
Last one is Just Another Day in the Park: Short but interesting. Not my favorite but still good.
So this is a very good collection. It would be a good starting point for the Bizarro beginner. But Jeff..quit picking on cats, will ya?
November 30, 2016
How do you describe Cripple Wolf? It's bizarro with hints of horror, and it's a book that would make a great introduction to classic bizarro. The kind of bizarro you just don't read anymore. As I read it I was reminded of how great this genre was and still can be. This short story collection starts off on a high note and just doesn't let up. There's not a bad story here and Burk is a great story teller that isn't so out there that you can't grasp the concept of the stories. Each story here is amusing, and well written. The lead off story Cripple Wolf feels like a classic B-rate horror film. It's got gore, and best of all a werewolf that happens to be in a wheelchair. For those with an aversion to the holidays there's even a twisted take on Frosty the Snowman that is quite disturbing.
Of all the bizarro short story collections I've read, Wolf is one of my favorites. It's a classic collection that never fails to entertain and it has everything you would want in a book of weird fiction. Is it for those with an aversion to violence, or drugs, or elderly punk rockers? Nope, but you should read it anyway because it's a fun yet quick read that will no doubt become your gateway drug to the wonderful and brilliant genre that was bizarro fiction. Burk has created a classic short story collection that hits all the right notes and you won't be able to stop reading it once you've started.
November 22, 2012
Cripple Wolf by Jeff Burk is a series of short stories, all in the bizarro subgenre. I don't know how I would characterize them, which is probably one of my problems with it. The stories are as follows.
Cripple Wolf: The title story. Basically werewolves on a plane.
Frosty and the Full Monty: I read this one before in Christmas on Crack edited by Carlton Mellick. A dark, more modern take on the Frosty the Snowman tale. Sort of.
Cook For Your Life: A tribute to Iron Chef. And Soylent Green.
House of Cats: A homeless man builds a house of live cats. But is it up to code?
Adrift with Space Badgers: Kind of like the Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles,” but with badgers. And space whales.
Punk Rock Nursing Home: What happens to punk rockers when they get old?
Just Another Day in the Park: This one is weird, and honestly, I'm not really sure what to make of it.
It's kind of funny and somewhat clever the way Burk peppers some advertisements for his other books or other bizarro authors' works within the stories. And, strangely, it's not jarring. It actually fits with the tone of each story. I have to give kudos to Burk for that one. He's missed his calling as a product placement specialist.
The stories are generally good. The title story and Cook For Your Life were my personal favorites among the bunch. But there's a couple nagging problems here.
The first and foremost is the editing. I'm sorry, and I know that I nitpick this a lot, but clean editing is really essential to me, and there's enough grammar problems throughout that didn't get caught that they pulled me out of the story. It one of those things that really sticks in my craw.
The problem is that, while the stories are enjoyable, there's not a whole lot that really stands out. It's that I didn't like the stories. I did, but if you asked me for many details now, I would be hard pressed to come up with many, although you will be hard pressed to find another book that contains the line “I think a baby werewolf just stole our coke.” They're not bad at all, but they also don't really stand out much for me. Combine that with the editing problems, and I'm forced to give this book a middle of the road review.
Cripple Wolf by Jeff Burk earns 3 coked-up baby werewolves out of 5.
Cripple Wolf: The title story. Basically werewolves on a plane.
Frosty and the Full Monty: I read this one before in Christmas on Crack edited by Carlton Mellick. A dark, more modern take on the Frosty the Snowman tale. Sort of.
Cook For Your Life: A tribute to Iron Chef. And Soylent Green.
House of Cats: A homeless man builds a house of live cats. But is it up to code?
Adrift with Space Badgers: Kind of like the Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles,” but with badgers. And space whales.
Punk Rock Nursing Home: What happens to punk rockers when they get old?
Just Another Day in the Park: This one is weird, and honestly, I'm not really sure what to make of it.
It's kind of funny and somewhat clever the way Burk peppers some advertisements for his other books or other bizarro authors' works within the stories. And, strangely, it's not jarring. It actually fits with the tone of each story. I have to give kudos to Burk for that one. He's missed his calling as a product placement specialist.
The stories are generally good. The title story and Cook For Your Life were my personal favorites among the bunch. But there's a couple nagging problems here.
The first and foremost is the editing. I'm sorry, and I know that I nitpick this a lot, but clean editing is really essential to me, and there's enough grammar problems throughout that didn't get caught that they pulled me out of the story. It one of those things that really sticks in my craw.
The problem is that, while the stories are enjoyable, there's not a whole lot that really stands out. It's that I didn't like the stories. I did, but if you asked me for many details now, I would be hard pressed to come up with many, although you will be hard pressed to find another book that contains the line “I think a baby werewolf just stole our coke.” They're not bad at all, but they also don't really stand out much for me. Combine that with the editing problems, and I'm forced to give this book a middle of the road review.
Cripple Wolf by Jeff Burk earns 3 coked-up baby werewolves out of 5.
June 19, 2012
So. This was my introduction to bizarro short stories, which seem to have just as much weird shit going on as a bizarro novella only with fewer sanity reference points thrown in like escape pods. Which this collection has (escape pods, not sanity). And they seem to be filled with Hungry Hungry Space Badgers. Because when you start off with a story about motherfucking werewolves not getting off your motherfucking plane, you can only top that with space oddities. And also houses made of cats. (Not houses filled with cats, which is what I was expecting. What, is cat-hoarding too weird for you, bizarro?)
The short story is not at all my favorite storytelling vehicle (unless you're Raymond Carver, and most people aren't) but it really works for this genre in general and these stories' tone in particular for a number of reasons. It's a nice little sampler, only instead of chocolates or cheeses it's geriatric punk rockers (in what is probably the best recapturing-one's-youth yarn I've encountered since "Cocoon") and reality television to the extreme (or the next logical step, depending on your preferred degree of society-directed pessimistic realism). It gives a broad overview of the different bizarro flavors -- the shocking and gory, the reality that's just a bit more off-kilter than ours, the unfamiliar landscapes, the just plain weird -- so that it serves as a really great introduction to all the places the genre can go. It also keeps the more viscera-strewn tales from getting to be too much for the reader who isn't used to encouraged cannibalism and Frosty dancin' to support his meth habit.
But it also totally spoiled "Shatnerquake" for me, so points off. Though said spoiler is mentioned in one of the best and least shameless approaches to self-promotion ever, which is quite redemptive.
Additional points off for needing juuuust a little more editing. My proofreading superpowers, having been instilled in me via a proclivity for eating and not being homeless, are not a part of my awesome that I can just turn off, so seeing "want" instead of "what" or "this" instead of "his" or "an" instead of "and" just irritate the pants off me. Not that I was wearing pants in the first place.
The short story is not at all my favorite storytelling vehicle (unless you're Raymond Carver, and most people aren't) but it really works for this genre in general and these stories' tone in particular for a number of reasons. It's a nice little sampler, only instead of chocolates or cheeses it's geriatric punk rockers (in what is probably the best recapturing-one's-youth yarn I've encountered since "Cocoon") and reality television to the extreme (or the next logical step, depending on your preferred degree of society-directed pessimistic realism). It gives a broad overview of the different bizarro flavors -- the shocking and gory, the reality that's just a bit more off-kilter than ours, the unfamiliar landscapes, the just plain weird -- so that it serves as a really great introduction to all the places the genre can go. It also keeps the more viscera-strewn tales from getting to be too much for the reader who isn't used to encouraged cannibalism and Frosty dancin' to support his meth habit.
But it also totally spoiled "Shatnerquake" for me, so points off. Though said spoiler is mentioned in one of the best and least shameless approaches to self-promotion ever, which is quite redemptive.
Additional points off for needing juuuust a little more editing. My proofreading superpowers, having been instilled in me via a proclivity for eating and not being homeless, are not a part of my awesome that I can just turn off, so seeing "want" instead of "what" or "this" instead of "his" or "an" instead of "and" just irritate the pants off me. Not that I was wearing pants in the first place.
November 16, 2011
Remember those gruesome horror flicks. Body parts everywhere. Crippled Wolf is one of them. Action packed heads roll in a bloody airplane ride you'll never forget. My second favorite had to be Cook for Life. A reality show with you guessed cooking but a cannibalism gourmet treat. After these two stories I was smashing my remote over my palm trying to find a channel with the likes of Jeff Burk. Other worthy titles to check out in this short story intelligence.
House of Cats
Punk Rock Nursing Home
House of Cats
Punk Rock Nursing Home
August 3, 2024
Every single story, save the last one, made me laugh out loud. Would be a 4.5 if not for the numerous errors that would have been caught by a decent proofreader. That annoys me. It tends to happen a lot in Bizarro books. I would totally proofread the hell out of these things for free books. Just saying.
August 19, 2022
A fun read with some clever stories that feel like a Robot Chicken or Love Death And Robots episode.
Not that fun when you notice how much this author seems to hate cats.
Personal favorites from this collection:
-Cook For Your Life!
-Cripple Wolf
Not that fun when you notice how much this author seems to hate cats.
Personal favorites from this collection:
-Cook For Your Life!
-Cripple Wolf
December 30, 2022
Mi primer libro en inglés, lo pude terminar por lo interesante que fue
March 2, 2012
There’s quite a large bang for the buck here, in this collection of seven stories. The titular “Cripple Wolf” starts the collection off with a full on bucket of Italian horror filmesque, nightmarish insanity. Things just get crazier as the pages turn (which was a a fairly rapid rate). Next is “Frosty and the Full Monty”. This is a torrid tale involving Frosty the Snowman, but not as you would remember him from the old TV shows. Have you ever wanted to watch a reality show about cooking that had stakes much higher than being sent home? “Cook for Your Life” is that show. I wasn’t sure how I would like “House of Cats”, as I am a cat owner, but as it turns out, it was a quite enjoyable read as with the previous stories. “Adrift With Space Badgers”… Good stuff, and that’s all I have to say about that. As an almost forty year old punk rock dad, “Punk Rock Nursing Home” hit a high note with me, and was probably my favorite in the bunch. The final story, “Just Another Day in the Park”, is an odd little venture into a park full of philosophy spouting and curiosity, and possibly the strangest tale of the seven.
January 15, 2012
I became familiar with Jeff Burk’s name through the Bizarro community and had even thought about purchasing his novel Shatnerquake, but I didn’t. But then I saw the announcement on Bizarro Central about his new book, Cripple Wolf. After reading the book description I had to get this book, and I’m glad I did. The story Cripple Wolf is every bit as awesome as the description sounds. If you like lots of gore, action, and comedy all rolled into a unique and well written story, then you need this book. Along with this story there are six shorter stories, all of which are original in their bizarreness, and super fun reads. My personal favorites were Frosty and the Full Monty and Punk Rock Nursing Home. Burk finishes the book off with a short glimpse into the behind the scenes of each story, and being the nerd I am I loved this little insight. I would defiantly recommend this book to anyone into pop culture, b-movies, and awesome books.
March 25, 2012
Cripple Wolf is brought to you by Jeff Burk, who not only writes but is one of the main men behind Deadite Press. He has also released Shatnerquake and Super Giant Monster Time! although Cripple Wolf could be the one to take him to the next level.[return][return]This book is a short story collection featuring seven tales which quite frankly can only be described as bizarre! Space badgers, a werewolf in a wheelchair and a house made of cats are all contained within this book along with plenty more surprises. Whilst this may sound a bit silly it does work really well. The book is a good light-hearted read and the stories are original and inventive enough to keep you reading until the end and then wanting more.[return][return]I won't go into the individual tales as that would only ruin the book in my opinion; but I can happily say that if you are after a horror book which contains gory and hilarious moments all of which are original then you won't be disappointed.[return][return]4/5
March 30, 2014
An excellent short story collection, and one of those rare ones where there isn't a bad one in the bunch. I'm a big fan of Jeff Burk since his Shatnerquake book, and I love bizarro fiction to begin with, so this one was a true pleasure to read.
I'd normally recommend this to everyone, but bizarro fiction is an acquired taste. If you like Bill Burroughs, Philip Jose Farmer or Philip K. Dick, then you should definitely give this one a try.
I'd normally recommend this to everyone, but bizarro fiction is an acquired taste. If you like Bill Burroughs, Philip Jose Farmer or Philip K. Dick, then you should definitely give this one a try.
September 5, 2012
This book will be reviewed on an upcoming episode of Books, Beer and Bullshit Podcast. After the episode is released, a full written review will be published here.
Until then please enjoy other great book reviews from Books, Beer and Bullshit Podcast @: http://booksbeerbullshit.podbean.com
Until then please enjoy other great book reviews from Books, Beer and Bullshit Podcast @: http://booksbeerbullshit.podbean.com
November 16, 2012
A solid fun filled book of gore n randomness but great story telling to back it up!
September 11, 2012
every happens so fast in this book you want to read it again as soon as you finish it..funny as hell with a bit of horror added for fun.Rasta!!!
December 10, 2012
A great collection of the author's work. I read this in preparation for a painting project. Each story is entertaining and straight to the point.
November 27, 2015
It made me hungry. It taught me the recipes to vomit rainbows. It was fun.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews