I was a tad suspicious when I first read the solicit for the new graphic novel, THE LYCAN. The first thing that jumped out was the name Thomas Jane. Many of us comic nerds know him best from his turn as Frank Castle in the 2004 film THE PUNISHER. Maybe it’s the death metal, indie scene gatekeeper in me that’s infiltrated other aspects of my life and has caused me to turn my nose up when I see celebrities throwing their hat in the comic / graphic novel world. But, I do and I know it’s wrong, but I’m trying to be a better person. What do you want me to say? Anyhoo, again, I was skeptical about what this book was. My skepticism, however, was wholly unwarranted. This book was awesome! Let’s get into it.
“The North Sea, 1797. Twenty miles from the Scottish Coast”. The good ship, The Brigantine Calydonian, is weathering rough seas and treacherous waves to shuttle a band of hardened hunters, led by the steely Absalom Coffin, home from an arduous expedition. Off-course, the crew mistake the far off light of a lantern as a lighthouse beacon and find themselves shipwrecked on the shores of a small British island. It is here our intrepid adventurers are taken in by a battalion of British soldiers who are stationed there. The commanding officer, Colonel Ludgate, strikes a deal with the hunters to repair their vessel in exchange for their skill set to help rid the inhabitants of the island from a pack of murderous wolves who are hunting and slaughtering the island’s residents. A good deal being what it is, the hunters agree. It’s not long before the men realize these creatures are far more than mere wolves and that contracts are quickly broken when survival is the order of the day.
Getting back to the Thomas Jane of it all, he’s credited for the story alongside David James Kelly. However, it is writer Mike Carey (The Girl With All The Gifts, GhostBox) and artist Diego Yapur, who take this story and craft it into a refined and structurally sound narrative that echoes all that was great about the Hammer Horror movies of the 50s and 60s. I’m not old enough to have seen those films upon their release, but they were a major part of my early horror education in the 80s. Between the dialog and detailed line work and the velvety shading and coloring of that art by colorist DC Alonso, this comic takes me back to being a seven year old kid, mesmerized by Peter Cushing, absolutely dominating every scene he entered. This is what THE LYCAN takes me back to. And I enjoyed nearly every second of it. Between the story created by Jane and James, to the fleshing it out by Carey, Yapur and Alonso, this is without question a winning creative team.
The design of the creatures was something that didn’t blow me away at first, but as I got further into the story, I realized a more overdone design would have potentially taken away from the raw animalistic savagery that was intended to come across. So, again, yet another smart idea to keep it simple and powerful.
As we all know, there is no such thing as perfection and as much as I enjoyed the read, there were two things that I wish could have been slightly tweaked. First, it seemed a bit too coincidental for this crew to end up on this island that just so happened to be where they needed to go in order for Coffin to fulfill his as yet un-verbalized life mission. But, kismet does what it does, sometimes, and we just have to chalk it up to comic logic and just enjoy the ride. I can do that to a degree, but I wish they could have presented a more solid, narrative-related reason for the crew to end up where they did based on something more than just chance.
My other issue is something akin to the “magical negro” trope. First, I want to tell everyone to relax, I’m black. And, more importantly we’re, presumably, mostly adults here. We can talk about things maturely no matter what the internet says. I firmly believe that. So, let’s proceed. In the book, there is a character by the name of Said (pronounced cy-eed) who is the right hand man of Absalom Coffin. Said is a pretty cool character but he is presented as a type of exoticism from the mysterious African continent. He’s big, black and fully adorned with tribal regalia. He’s the black friend the crew has around to show to the readers what stand-up guys they are. In fact, the writing goes quite the distance to show that, in spite of the time period of the story, the crew of the Calydonian are anything but racists. There was even a small moment when Coffin pretended to see Said as less than an equal in front of a group of British soldiers but, once they were away from prying eyes, quipped that next time would be Said’s turn to pretend. Oh, Absalom. You cheeky rogue, you.
Later in the issue, Said dispatched one of the ravenous island creatures with seemingly great ease in comparison to his shipmates. Toward the end of the story, the crew needed to reach their vessel as it thrashed around, ready to drift out to sea. An impossible situation, you say? NOPE! Not with the nearly superhuman, African marvel at their side. Said leapt from the cliff, surviving the jagged rocks beneath and dangerously turbid waters to somehow swim out and board the vessel. I mean, seriously? The only thing missing was someone complementing him on how ‘well-spoken’ he was. We don’t have to do this with black characters, ladies and gentlemen. The insistence on “otherness” even if the intent is positive is exhausting. I could go on, but I won’t because I don’t feel that Mike Carey’s intention was in any way ill-willed, especially since he has written great black characters in the past in his other series GhostBox and also because, the story was not his idea, so it is quite possible he made some attempts to correct what may have been a worse characterization of Said. I won’t speculate. But, I’d be delinquent in my duties if I didn’t mention it.
Overall, THE LYCAN was a great read that went by way too quickly simply because I had trouble putting it down. The art, the plotting, the dialog, the coloring, all top notch. There is some meat left on the bone so hopefully we’ll be seeing more from the world of THE LYCAN in the future.
SCORE: 8 OUT OF 10
Story by: Thomas Jane and David James
Written by: Mike Carey
Art by: Diego Yapur
Publisher: Comixology Originals 03/03/2026
Page count: 148 story pages
Rating: N/A (some nudity)
