Zenescope - Omnibusted #67: Werewolves - The Hunger

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Were-Retrospectre.

I know, it's not Halloween yet, so I have no business declaring myself a werewolf ghost like I'm some quarter-thought-out Angry Video Game Nerd boss. Especially since I should have used the Omnibusted byline for this instead.

Maybe The Hunger is affecting my intelligence? Maybe it's Maybelline.

Also, there's no way I'm going to be able to watch all of the Terrifier movies and review them by Friday, so that's going to be next year's Halloween special. I have declared it so.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the eight-chapter sampling of my latest writing endeavor (titled Darkness In Crimson: I Reincarnated As Prey In A Fantasy World, So I Charmed the Vampire Queen) that I shared on Monday as my thousandth post special. So now, I'm a werewolf, ghost, Omnibuster (who you gonna call?), and five-time (I couldn't find a decent Booker T gif, but just imagine it goes here) attempted author. But whatever you call me, I'm still a Blogger at heart. So let's get to talking about Werewolves: The Hunger.

Unleashed Tie-In

Werewolves: The Hunger

As it was only three issues long, Werewolves: The Hunger was compiled with the three issues of Vampires: The Eternal (and its trilogy of Helsing-focused short stories that were paired with each issue and got duplicate prints as bonus material) in the Vampires & Werewolves Trade Paperback. The Trade cover re-uses Unleashed #1's A Cover by Ivan Nunes, and the credits and Table Of Contents background makes use of those #1A mural covers by Anthony Spay and Nunes that I mentioned in my Hunters review a few months back.

You may recall that I ran into some chronological confusion with the Unleashed event before, and this is no different, because time-dilation is a thing here, and because I had read and reviewed Zombies: The Cursed, not knowing when I began that it would end with the reveal that Werewolves: The Hunger had already taken place. Oops, I did it again....

In this miniseries, we're supposed to sympathize with racist one-liner-spewing, traitorous werewolf hunter Roman Asher because (as we learned in Hunters: The Shadowlands) a combination of Little Boy Blue, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Hansel & Gretel, and him being a lazy, rebellious prick with ADHD when he was a kid, led to his village being massacred and his sister being turned into a werewolf who would later slaughter his wife and children.

Since then (and since Werewolves: The Hunger takes place after he's made an as-yet-unspecified deal with Samira at the end of Hunters and returned from the Shadowlands in Day Breaks), Roman has spent his days tracking Werewolves, protecting their potential victims (with particular, personal focus on troubled or estranged fathers) and killing the turned loved ones of those he rescues as a way of making up for his past because that makes sense and not even the extras in the story are supposed to like him.

But because there needs to be a character we can find more compelling and disturbing than a serial-family-annihilating racist, the lyrical stylings of Neil Diamond's "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon" (perhaps chosen as a nod to werewolf narratives being puberty allegories?) lead us to the introduction of Dr. Rachel Campbell, a cold veterinary surgeon with an...invasive operating style who secretly works for the organization behind the Realm Knights and the assassination of Patricia Braddock. Their latest quarry is a girl named Charlotte, who was bitten by the Werewolf that Roman is currently hunting.

With Charlotte in custody, Campbell (the blonde on the Ken Lashley/Juan Fernandez cover, because Anonymous Blonde Syndrome is still a thing) starts her examination. The doctor is creepily excited, comparing it to prom night (not knowing or caring that the outcome will probably be somewhere between the Jamie Lee Curtis movie and the end of Carrie), but must first exposit to her overwhelmed intern Jeff (whose name she gets wrong until writer Mark L. Miller—Pat Shand only has shared story credit here—runs out of J names and believable rhymes like Seth) that fiction is just other Realms of reality channeled through creative minds. This might be a nod back to Call and Madness Of Wonderland, where "America's Favorite Racist Until Donald Trump Took Office," H.P. Lovecraft, was written to be one of those chosen creatives with Provenance-attuned minds. We also get images of Hansel & Gretel at the witch's house, knights fighting a serpentine dragon, and a man with a stake (Abraham Van Helsing?) facing off against a vampire reminiscent of Drake's transformed state, among other things. She even proves it to Jeff by using Bulma's portable Blutz Wave Generator to make Charlotte transform.

Meanwhile, Roman looks like Old Man Punisher as he tracks the Werewolf through busy, modern day streets to the vet clinic-turned-black site. There's some subtle visual language (and exposition) in Roman's parts that juxtaposes the solitary intimacy of the loud and direct relationship between Hunter and monster with the congested, busy, ignorant environment that turns to blood around them. But the story is almost over, and there hasn't been much of a story to it beyond Campbell's experiments (that she hasn't really gotten to do yet because Jeff requires yapping) and Roman's hunt.

No, Belinda, Sela, and Baba Yaga do not get captured and turned into naked lycanthropy guinea pigs in this issue, so prepare to be disappointed by more than the Alfredo Reyes/Juan Fernandez cover. There's no big, personal showdown, no grand revelation worth digging deep on, no changes of heart or character, and again and still, not much of a story.

It's just Roman standing on business, quelling the spread of a curse by killing people whose souls no longer exist, so that hopefully, one day, no one will have to know the pain of a strange, buff old racist with a gun killing the people they love.

And it's just Dr. Campbell standing on business, finding a use for the human stall device known as Jeff so she can still escape the carnage with a freshly-bitten test subject while letting Roman clean up her mess by doing what he does.

I guess the cold, routine nature of it all was the pointless point here, so I can't be mad at Werewolves: The Hunger. But the fact that said unsharpened nub of a purpose exists and didn't accomplish anything by my having read it...now twice? I can only stand on business myself, do what I do, and call that operation a subjective failure.

Next week, I close out the monster miniseries with Demons: The Unseen, and Saturday will see the return of Time Drops as I try to get back on track for the remains of the year.

It's a new era (whatever I decide that means) with a thousand posts behind me, so Stay Tuned, and as always, please continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder (none of you have yet), leaving a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, helping out my ad revenue as you read because silver (and everything else) is expensive, and following me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Patreon, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Omnibuster,

Out.