MYTHCOMICS: "WOLFTIMES" (JOURNEY #22, 1985)

This is another mythcomic that hasn't seen a lot of scans online, perhaps because it was largely published by two of the "independent" publishers of the 1980s: Aardvark-Vanaheim and Fantagraphics. In addition, the series, titled JOURNEY: THE ADVENTURES OF WOLVERINE MCALLISTER, concerned subject matter not overly popular in fan-circles, as the title character is a trapper/backwoodsman living in Revolutionary-Era America. Most of the time the subject matter was largely naturalistic, though the series sometimes involved marvelous elements, as does the short arc "Wolftimes," which boasts a ghost in the midst of its B-story.

This short arc takes place in the midst of an extended and somewhat rambling long arc, and largely concerns what the title character calls a "feud" between himself and a marauding grey wolf. McAllister, as stated, is a backwoodsman who usually stays clear of civilized territories, but for complicated reasons he ends up seeking out a frontier-town, New Hope. Traveling alongside the woodsman is a citified Easterner, Elmer Alyn Craft, who provides a lot of the serial's humor as well as being a combination spoof of both Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. Since I find no scans of internal pages from JOURNEY, here's a cover showing McAllister and Craft together.

Not long after McAllister and Craft arrives in New Hope, a wolf begins raiding the community's stock of turkeys. Writer-artist Bill Messner-Loebs begins the story in the wolf's POV, having the creature ruminate in a fashion comparable to Jack London in CALL OF THE WILD:

Blood calls to blood... you can smell it on the wind... it's warm...living... your life... dwelling in another's flesh... it is time to take it back.

Two pages later, as the wolf corners one of the turkeys in its coop, the wolf thinks:

The feathered meat fears and yet hopes... for at the level of the cells, where nerve and muscle meet... soul is but electricity yearning for discharge... Death is joy... and blood calls to blood...

Though McAllister does not see the wolf make its kill, he senses that it's his old enemy, and volunteers to go along with Mandrell, the foremost hunter of the New Hope community. Why the citified Craft goes along with the two men is a point Messner-Loebs does not address, though it's probably just so he could make the comments that any other non-woodsman might make:

I can't see how you fellows can even see to track in this snow.

This gives Mandrell the change to state his credo of the woodsman:

It's livin' wild, Craft. My bones lead me t' that wolf!

Later, Mandrell even re-states the lupine's gospel of identity with the prey in his own terms:

...well, when you slay, it oughtta be like [sex]... takin' and givin' at once.. runnin' through you like lightning... killer an' killed get mixed...

 Mandrell, however, is not fated to meet the wolf at all. McAllister slips away from the other two, sensing another presence in the snowy wasteland. It turns out to be a lone Native American who's not even aware of the hunting-party. The Indian links to a later plotline, but here his own purpose for being in the story is to distract McAllister long enough for the woodsman's old enemy the wolf to attack. For four pages the hunted fights the hunter, until they plunge over a cliff and get buried in the snow-- their survival depending on who gets free first.

Before the cliffhanger conclusion of the story, Messner-Loebs also devotes considerable space to the aforementioned B-story, in which three previously introduced characters-- two brothers and "Jemmy Acorn" (a spoof of Johnny Appleseed)-- run into a French necromancer named "Pere Winter." This turns out well for the trio, because they're being haunted by the spirit of the brothers' deceased sibling. Winter, after listening patiently to the ramblings of the three goofs, simply banishes the ghost by saying:

'Ey, Cochon! Wake up! You're dead!

Though this encounter with the world of the deceased is played for laughs, it provides a counterpoint to the serious life-and-death battle of the hero and his nemesis. For any readers who don't have JOURNEY #23 handy, the conflict is concluded to McAllister's advantage therein, though not exactly in the approved "Dan'l Boone killed him a bar when he was three" manner. To get into that plotline would be to examine the longer arc of the ongoing "New Hope" story-- and what makes "Wolftimes" mythic is its attempt to connect the psychology of the hunter with the biological urges of the predator, and even with that of sexual congress.