‘Werewolf By Night #4’ (review)

Written by Taboo and
Benjamin Jackendoff
Art by Scot Eaton
Published by Marvel Comics

Woof.

I know that’s a glib reaction to Werewolf By Night’s closing issue to this series.

It’s not that the setup of it is bad. Jake was abducted by Life Pharmaceuticals and the strange cybernetic woman, Dr. Eve Makowski.

But it’s all the little things that make this issue feel deeply juvenile for what I hoped was going to be more slam-bang monster comics.

We know co-writer Taboo is an ostensible musician because he’s in The Black Eyed Peas. But the overwritten narration of Jake riding the rhythms to control the werewolf just took me out of it.

Writing about music is really difficult.

And writing about music’s abstract power is a herculean task that is beyond our guys here, to me, even if it’s supposed to be in the unsophisticated voice of a teenager.

That’s not all, though.

At one point they had to sneak “Let’s Get It Started” in there as one of Jake’s wolf-up anthems. Or when we quickly get a new No. 2 boss, the fight dialog between him and Jake is about them comparing Metallica albums in the most on-the-nose way.

Or the fact that the main villain is referred to as “Dr. Eve Makowski” every single time.

Wouldn’t she just be “Makowski” or “Dr. Makowski” by now? Marvel is littered with mad scientists, and we’re not out here saying all their full names with honorifics, are we?

And that’s before we get to a Makowski moment in the comic that’s so out of left field, so WTF, that even werewolf Jake says, out loud, “What the actual …?”

Scot Eaton’s artwork in this moment is not served so well by the script, which feels like it had to stuff a lot more story into this short window.

They had to reintroduce the superpowered teen miscreant Pathmind, give Red Wolf and JJ a sweet plot to break into Life Pharma, walk us through Jake’s escape and Makowski’s plot, then some fights, the climax, pay off the Molly-Jake relationship, and wrap up the story while blatantly leaving the window open for more stories.

The fights just don’t last long enough, and so much action gets crammed into the pages that it deflates the drama.

I don’t want to spoil the WTF moment, but it’s staggering.

In a better comic, it would be amazing. However, it would have had more impact had we spent more time with Makowski as a character. I came away from these four issues without a real sense of her endgame.

I’m disappointed!

It may hit better with younger readers than 40-year-old me. But how young is the target audience? It’s rated Teen-Plus, and I’d think some 16-year-old reader may be too savvy for this.

That said, there definitely is room for growth here, with better storytelling. The concept is solid.

As is the concept for Taboo and B. Earl’s next Marvel project, advertised on the back page: Kushala, an Apache warrior who was both the Sorcerer Supreme and Ghost Rider in the mid-1800s. Don’t you want to read a comic book about her?

I’ll quote RuPaul to Taboo and B. Earl for that project: Good luck, and don’t eff it up.