Alabaster: Wolves is the first Comic-Book adventure featuring Caitlin R. Kiernan’s recurring character Dancy Flammarion, a 16 year-old Monster-killing tool of the Lord. Dancy was introduced in Kiernan’s novel Threshold, and her short prose adventures were collected by Subterranean Press in limited-edition book form in the collection entitled Alabaster. I own both of these books, but haven’t yet read them, which means that I opened up Alabaster: Wolves cold, with no real knowledge of Dancy at all.
That said, this is a pretty accessible book to new readers. Dancy, driven by a Angel that compels her to travel the Country killing Monsters, becomes trapped in a small town that is infested with Werewolves. Dancy angers her Angel, who abandons her, leaving her wounded, but hardly defenseless, against the town’s evil. The story is fairly self-contained, and my lack of knowledge about the character and the world she inhabits didn’t really dampen my enjoyment of the story, but it left a lot of nagging questions that I had to take to Wikipedia to have answered. I don’t think it would have been a bad idea to give new readers a recap of Dancy’s history somewhere within the book. There’s literally nothing given as far as background goes, aside from the fact that Dancy is guided by an Angel, which may or may not be true…she might just be crazy. There’s a fairly game-changing event at the end of the book that didn’t have the impact that it may or may not have had if the character’s background had been explained better. Dancy is certainly a fun character to read, though, and the artwork, by Steve Lieber, perfectly compliments Kiernan’s story. Dancy is cute and plucky, the Werewolves are nasty and gross, and the book fairly drips with both gore and Southern flavor.
Alabaster: Wolves reprints all five issues of the mini-series, complete with covers, and an additional short Dancy Flammarion short story. Here’s hoping that Dark Horse and Caitlin R. Kiernan aren’t done with Dancy just yet….
- The Scarlet Gospels - March 9, 2015
- Inspector of the Dead - February 23, 2015
- The Boneyard - February 23, 2015
- The Deep - February 2, 2015
- Pumpkin Cinema: The Best Movies For Halloween - November 20, 2014
- The Wake - November 20, 2014
- Dark Screams, Volume One - November 20, 2014
- Horror Library, Volume 5 - September 16, 2014
- Ghost Heart - September 16, 2014
- Monster & Madman - August 6, 2014
