By d. emerson eddy — How far would you go to protect a loved one? What would you do for your kids? I bet you'd go pretty far. We're practically hard-wired to fight tooth and claw for our blood and many of us would go to extreme lengths to make sure that our family is safe. This is the set up for Curse by Michael Moreci, Tim Daniel, Riley Rossmo, Colin Lorimer, Tamra Bonvillain, and Jim Campbell as Laney Griffin is stretched to the limit trying to help his son fight leukemia, dipping his toe into questionable territory for money, and then finding out that his quarry is even stranger; a werewolf.

Curse is the first of a very loose trilogy of horror tales penned by Moreci & Daniel (Burning Fields again with Lorimer and The Plot with Joshua Hixson, the other two) and it's pretty much a tour de force. It sets up a number of moral quandaries for Griffin, in financing his son's healthcare, conflict with his sister-in-law who's also the sheriff, a gold-digging neighbor, and of what to do with the killer once he's caught. It's very unlike many other werewolf stories out there and also makes you question who is the real monster of the story.

The story is made all the more impressive with the artwork from Riley Rossmo, Colin Lorimer, and Tamra Bonvillain. Rossmo and Lorimer trade off art sequences and the difference between the two really couldn't be much greater. Lorimer, handling most of Griffin's present tale, has a thick-lined, heavy-shadowed style in the vein of something like Shawn Martinbrough, but not quite as exaggerated. It serves as a nice “realistic” baseline for the main narrative, with some moody blues and greens to help with the horror atmosphere. Then there's Rossmo's werewolf past vignettes, which are visceral, exaggerated, and largely black and white with punctuated spot colours of red. It's violent and helps also drive home the theme that we get of a dual nature of the wolf. This is also nicely captured through Jim Campbell's letters, giving a scratchy, gruff feel to the text and word balloons for the werewolf.

Curse from Moreci, Daniel, Rossmo, Lorimer, Bonvillain, and Campbell is a wonderful horror story and a unique werewolf tale. Yet, where it really excels is making you wonder if sometimes doing the morally wrong thing is the right choice.

CLASSIC COMIC OF THE WEEK: Curse

Curse
Writers: Michael Moreci & Tim Daniel
Artists: Riley Rossmo & Colin Lorimer
Additional Colorist: Tamra Bonvillain
Letterer: Jim Campbell
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Laney Griffin is a man who will do anything to save his son from leukemia, but the cost of treatment has broken him financially. When he pursues an elusive murderer in the wilderness of his small, rural community in the hopes of securing a substantial bounty, Laney is confronted with something he never could have expected: a werewolf. The captive Lycan, in human form, turns Laney's life upside-down, forcing him to confront his haunted past and race against the clock because there's only 30 days until the next phase...
Release Date: January 14, 2015
Buy It Here: Digital / Physical

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d. emerson eddy is a student and writer of things. He fell in love with comics during Moore, Bissette, & Totleben's run on Swamp Thing and it has been a torrid affair ever since. His madness typically manifests itself on Twitter @93418.