The Wolf

by Tom Neely

The Wolf is a painted novel by Tom Neely. The book tells a simple love story, but one woven with surrealist horror, werewolf lore and its own brand of nightmare logic. With The Wolf, Neely progresses from the traditional cartooning style he showed off in his previous books, The Blot and Brilliantly Ham-Fisted, to a form that blends comics-style storytelling with a fine arts approach to imagery. The ultimate effect is equal parts touching and chilling.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

228 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Tom Neely is an American illustrator and comic book artist based in Los Angeles.
Best known among his works are the indie comic book Henry & Glenn Forever, the graphic novel The Blot, winner of an Ignatz Award, and the series The HUMANS, which he created with Keenan Marshall Keller for Image comics.
Neely has also a long career as illustrator for magazines, literary journals, album covers and festival posters.

Reviews

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's described as a painted novel, but painted folk tale would be more like it. At first I thought it was going to be mostly a horror thing, a la Al Columbia's Pim and Francie, with which it shares a similar devotion to single panel pacing erupting now and again into really effective two page spreads. It's certainly got some pretty freaky stuff in it, but it has a straight ahead narrative unlike Columbia's book, and ultimately becomes a really moving fable like erotic tale. Really topnotch stuff.

[Rick Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tom Neely renders a painted comic about a werewolf that is grotesque and beautiful all at once. Completely wordless, but has a very easy to follow narrative that makes for a very satisfying experience.

I don't often return to wordless comics, but I definitely feel like this one is worth revisiting every so often due to the unique artwork.

[Roman Stadtler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this! I like Henry & Glenn Forever and The Blot a lot (heh. That was fun to write), but The Wolf is my favorite Neely work so far. Beautifully haunting, horrible and erotic, creepy and werewolfy. Werewolves are my favorite classic monster, and they get short shrift in most current media, so I'm a sucker for a good werewolf story. But(!) this is more than a simple werewolf horror story; it's a complex love horror story, with a werewolf. Let some images speak for themselves http://www.iwilldestroyyou.com/#/thew...

[MariNaomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so beautiful!

[J.T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous and disturbing, as usual.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intense, surreal and disturbing.