In the modern age of comic books, the independent comic has become increasingly more abundant and taken ever more seriously. With great strides as Spawn and the Walking Dead have done over the course of the last twenty years, more independent titles are gaining spotlight. No more are they the black and white comics printed in someone’s basement. This is the same for independent companies as well as titles.
A new company has hit the comic scene, Delcourt. The name alone makes one imagine the phrase, “The French are coming!” Delcourt has been around for a while since 1986 producing American-British Comic Books as well as Manga translated into French. Lately they have been publishing some comics which have come to the attention of the mass comic book audience.
One such title is ‘The Curse of the Wendigo.’ Written by Mathieu Missoffe and drawn by legend Charles Adlard, the series seems to be only two issues; issue two having dropped on stands this past Wednesday.
The first issue is utterly amazing. Even Charles Adlard states in his preface that this comic is everything he ever wanted from a comic. I loved it! It takes place in the trenches of World War I. I have always been into Lovecraft and Call of Cthulhu. The first issues has that feel and a setting not often found in Lovecraft tales so it does make for a nice change. So with it’s very Call of Cthulhu in the trenches of World War I as something… is killing soldiers in the night along the trenches and one soldier recalls a story he was told by his grandfather who was in the America Civil War; who encountered an Indian tribe who told stories of… the Wendigo… as everything points to a Wendigo walks the trenches at night!
The pacing of the first issue is that of a classic horror film. At first you don’t know if it’s the crazy whims of an officer who has suffered shell-shock or a real supernatural threat in the trenches of war torn Europe at night?
The second issue shifts gears and takes place relatively after the war and sheds some light on what transpires in the first issue. To myself the second issue really lost me and didn’t have that air of mystery and horror which the first issue does so well. Does this make the series bad? No, just a great story with a small hiccup at the end in one’s opinion.
This shouldn’t deter one though, it only serves another reason to check out what Delcourt has lined up in their publisher queue in the coming months.
