Marsha, the sultry werewolf lady from the original Howling film, continues her murderous rampage through LA, and Chris, the movie’s last man standing, continues his crusade to eliminate the wolves. There’s not much more to go on here than that: Marsha acts sexy, then kills people; Chris runs around town in a near-panic as he realizes how the truth of the werewolves is being covered up. There’s only so much ground you can cover in two dozen-ish pages when at least a quarter of them have to feature dismemberments.

Click images to enlarge

The folks who witnessed the ending of the movie are turning up dead, and Chris (rightly) suspects werewolf-related foul play. He sells the engagement ring he’d planned to give his deceased lady friend to buy more silver bullets. Marsha, meanwhile, attacks a businessman who has recently purchased a werewolf artifact called the Hand of Akkara. Apparently she plans to use the Hand to usher in a new age of werewolf rule, as of old, ye foolish mortal children, etc. etc.

As before, this comic doesn’t suck. It has a cohesive story, competent writing, and an appropriate, if somewhat bland, art style. Unfortunately, so little has really happened so far, aside from characters we just met getting killed a few pages after appearing, that it’s hard to feel especially interested in any of it. There’s little sense of urgency until the final panels, when Marsha soliloquizes her plans for world domination. So, I guess, werewolf apocalypse?

Click image to enlarge

I’m still stuck on the fact that somebody liked the original Howling movie enough to pen a sequel in a different medium. I didn’t hate the original film, but it’s so buried under the stank of the sequels that I’d all but written the franchise off. (In case you missed the last review, this comic line picks up immediately after the first film ends.) Neilson’s doing pretty well with the comic’s narrative so far, but I hope things pick up soon, because disembowelments lose their appeal after a while.