The Return of the Werewolf: Retro Comics, Vol 7, Werewolf 1

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More than highly recommended! Great characterization and a better, kinder view of the werewolf myth. Classic stuff from the good old days, when men were men, women were women, and the FBI recruit was a were wolf.

The Werewolf of Paris

Aug 31, Werner added it Shelves: All of the stories included in this anthology are included in the comprehensive collection of Boucher's speculative fiction, The Compleat Boucher see my review of that title. View all 5 comments. Feb 22, Morgan Dhu rated it really liked it. Boucher tends to write with a light, even comical touch, incorporating elements of the ridiculous into his fiction, but in such a way as to make them seem quite appropriate at the time.

Not that all of his stories are comedies. Several of the ones in this collection deal with very serious matters, from German spy rings in WWII, to murder. But Boucher unfolds even these dark plots with wit and just the right amount of detachment. He gets a gig as a dog in a major motion picture, and is then hired by the FBI when he exposes a major spy ring. But he makes friends with a talking cat. The Pink Caterpillar, Mr. Lupescu and They Bite are all about the lengths someone will go to, to get rid of someone in their way.

And how their actions carry the seeds of their own destruction. Boucher tried his hand at some stories about a company that made robots, much as Asimov did. Two of them, Q. R and Robinc, are included in the collection. And Dugg Quimby is much more intriguing a character than Susan Calvin. The novelette We Print the Truth is a thoughtful modern-day variation on the fairy tale of the fateful wish - the wish granted by a magical being that ultimately dies far more harm than good - that examines issues of free will, consent, a d the value of something earned over something taken.

Many of the stories in this collection depend on the unexpected plot twist - The Ghost of Me being one if the clearest examples. One thing I quite enjoyed about these stories was the way that Boucher works philosophical considerations into so many of them. Boucher also tends to toss in casual notes of social criticism. In one story, he has a character comment that once it would have been unthinkable for the head of the government to be a black person. The white race is a sort of super-ogre, anyway. Jun 17, Norman Cook rated it really liked it Shelves: I read the title story as a finalist for the Retro Hugo Awards I did not read the other stories.

This is a lighthearted tale of a man, Wolfe Wolf, who accidentally discovers he is a werewolf from a mysterious magician. Wolf wants to use his newfound power to help him woo a beautiful young actress. But complications ensue, most with varying degrees of comedic results. As such, this is a nice take on what is usually a subject for horror. But I'm not sure it really reaches the level of a Hug I read the title story as a finalist for the Retro Hugo Awards But I'm not sure it really reaches the level of a Hugo winner, as it's pretty much just a romantic comedy without a lot of subtlety.

It's a fun, entertaining story, but Boucher's other novella, "Barrier," would probably have been a better choice as a Retro Hugo finalist. Oct 12, Michael rated it liked it. Jul 30, Kathryn Baron rated it liked it Shelves: Oct 25, Frederic Van Laere rated it it was ok. Don't judge this book by its cover.

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Or by its title, for that matter. However it must be said to his credit that the women are all feisty. Jun 29, Christopher Sutch rated it liked it. This is strictly B-grade pulp fiction from the s, entertaining as far as it goes, but not comparable to masters of the craft such as Bloch or Fredric Brown. The exceptions are the final two tales, "We Only Print the Truth," which gets into some nice juicy moral quandaries, and "My Own Ghost," which has a nice twist on the ghost story.

Oct 03, January Carroll rated it really liked it. This book was a lot of fun. It's a fast read, and I listened to it with my son, who agreed that we need to hunt up more stories by this guy. It's kind of Gaiman meets Chandler. This is a classic. It should be on every werewolf lover's bookshelf. It gives the story from the werewolf as both good guy and as uninformed were. Which seems to have only paper sources. Instead of thousands, future ages will kill millions.

It will go on, the figures will rise and the process will accelerate! Leading up to this revelation are numerous examples of human wickedness, each act of cruelty and violence leading to the next. The novel begins with a horrid story of Medieval sadism which serves as an origin story for the events that unfold later. And evil breeds evil. The horrors and cruelties of history link hands down the ages. One deed engenders another, nay, multiplies itself. One perpetrator of crime infects another. Their kind increases like flies. This book held numerous surprises for me, the first of which was the quality of the writing.

In the beginning of the novel, Aymar is firmly opposed to the Church. The priest speaks of astronomy and architecture and even socialism. When I read the rape scene, I expected the novel to go in an anti-Catholic direction, but it did not. Aymar brings up the subject of the afterlife and the notary, Le Pelletier, says something that Aymar, in his youth, would probably have said: I have nothing to do with superstitions.

The atheistic worldview is also treated in this ambitious novel. The preposterous accusations made against the priests and nuns of the Sacred Heart of Picpus demonstrate that irrationality and fanaticism are as abundant in the secular world as anywhere else. The persecution begins with a search of the church that turns up items that reveal what appear to paranoid minds as evidence of sexual depravity and murder: Orthopedic leg braces used by the disabled children cared for by the nuns become Inquisitional torture devices.

Endore reproduces the interrogation of a priest by the anti-Catholic Raoul Rigault, a conversation so farcical that one wishes it were fiction. And the most hideous display of cruelty in the name of science over superstition comes from Dr. Dumas, the director of the private mental hospital where Bertrand will spend his final days. Dumas regards lycanthropy as a mental illness and denounces the Medieval Church for burning werewolves even as he viciously abuses his patients and defrauds their relatives.

In a conversation between Aymar and Dumas, Aymar describes the complete reversal of his thought from the atheistic days of his youth: Meat-Eating If I was surprised at the vindication of religion and the critique of atheistic science in this novel, I was many times more surprised at its commentary on meat-eating. The horror of werewolves is not merely that they kill people. It is that they eat people. Whether they should be considered people while in wolf form is a question not addressed in this book, but I think it is an interesting question nonetheless.

Aymar encounters a group of wealthy entrepreneurs who conceive of a plan to avoid starvation during the famine. He is invited to a dinner with a menu that turns my stomach to even read. Menus with cow, pig, and chicken on them turn my stomach. These are not animals people are accustomed to eat. Seeing them on the menu must, I imagine, arouse as much disgust in the average non-vegetarian as it does in vegetarians. And this should be food for thought. If it is horrible to eat a dog, is it not equally horrible to eat a pig? Why are cows on the menu and not horses and cats?

The vegetarian sees death where the omnivore sees only dinner. But can anyone still eat a leg of lamb or a chicken breast and not see a dismembered corpse after following the werewolf on his nightly dinner-run in the cemetery? It concerns two beloved elephants who lived in the zoo.

They were sold to a butcher who catered to the wealthy. This footnote affected me more profoundly than anything else in the novel. Human beings should be what these elephants thought we were.

But the reality of our species is nothing like that. Man is a wolf to man. And to every other creature on Earth. It is no coincidence that, walking past a butcher shop one day, Aymar sees the butcher and thinks he is Father Pitamont, the priest who raped Josephine and sired Bertrand. What could be more apropos? A brutal profession for a brutal man. He perverted the act of love by making it an act of violence and now, instead of leading his flock to eternal life, he leads innocent beasts to their deaths.

The blood he sheds is a hideous parody of the blood of Christ. One of those unfortunates is Jean Robert. The scene would be comic if it were not so cruel. The law, as practiced by this judge, is a twisted thing designed to confound the average man with mind games and circular reasoning. Robert does not need to he held in jail awaiting his trial. He appeals to the judge, saying he has to work to support his family, to which the judge replies: Elsewhere people seek out ways to circumvent the law. Then he is advised by the priest how to circumvent the prohibition on disabled priests. Money cannot fail to make its appearance in this story which features so many avenues of human corruption.

For the wealthy, war is an opportunity to become even more wealthy. For the poor, it is merely an opportunity to suffer stoically. Dumas, charged with the care of vulnerable mental patients, sees them, not as human beings to be treated with compassion and dignity, but as a source of francs to line his pockets.

And he is ever ready to swindle their families to increase his own wealth. Even the Madame of a house of prostitution is concerned, not with the well-being of the prostitute Bertrand mutilated, but with how much money she can extort from his uncle. Sex and Death With all the surprises this book held for me, was I surprised by any of the sex and death?

Naturally I expected sex and death in a book about a werewolf. I hoped not to be surprised by too much violence and I doubted that a book published in could surprise me with sex, but I ended up being surprised by both. With the violence, the death, I was surprised, not by the werewolf himself, but by nearly everyone else. I knew next to nothing about the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune when I started reading this book, so it was with true horror that I read about the atrocities committed by men and women against their fellow human beings.

With the sex, I was far more surprised than I thought I could be. Promiscuity and prostitution are one thing, but rape and incest are quite another. Later, in a moment of weakness, Bertrand will seduce his mother and she will conceive. But the greatest shock for me concerned his romance with Sophie. With two such unusual origins, the union of Bertrand and Sophie was bound to be a strange one. What surprised me the most was the parody their union made of love, and not just romantic love, but maternal love and Christian love as well.

He is gradually killing her by drinking her blood. In a parody of sexual penetration, a knife, supplied by Sophie herself, becomes a phallic symbol.

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To Sophie, who fantasizes about a double suicide, this is romantic, but there is nothing romantic about it. There is no beauty, only ugliness. There was scarcely a portion of her body that had not one or more cuts on it.

The older ones had healed to scars that traversed her dark skin with lines that were visibly lighter than the surrounding area. The newer ones were angry welts of red, or hard ridges of scab. She plays with his hair and murmurs: It is Sophie who insists that Bertrand feed from her. She takes on the protective maternal role, giving herself to Bertrand as a mother gives herself to her child Finally, there is the parody of Christian love, of agape.

The men in the canteen lust for Sophie and she, in her love for Bertrand, loves them all. She loves all of mankind and wants to give herself to all of mankind—literally, not metaphorically. To the whole battalion that looked at her with lusting, hungry eyes. All those bearded and unshaven faces that wanted the smoothness of her cheeks.

All those hard arms that craved to crush her soft body. All those calloused, dirty hands that wanted to touch her with intimate caresses. Each type of love is perverted into a horrid travesty of itself. This book has given me a lot to think about and the werewolf is the least of it. As a werewolf novel, it is thoroughly satisfying, but as a historical novel, a philosophical novel, and a social commentary it is more than satisfying.

If I had to sum it all up in one sentence I would say it has de-romanticized death. And that is a good thing. In reality, death is not beautiful.

This novel overflows with death and not one of them is beautiful. Violence and bloodshed are ugly. But there is one thing that the werewolf, and perhaps only the werewolf, can do: What we do with this revelation is up to us. Apr 17, Terry rated it liked it Shelves: The Werewolf of Paris is an interesting book. Part horror story and part historical fiction, it follows the travails of the titular werewolf of Paris from his birth to his death, as well as his place in the blood-drenched moment of history known as the Franco-Prussian War that was followed by the ill-fated Paris Commune.

Interestingly the werewolf in question, Bertrand Caillet, is actually something of a secondary character in his own tale, as it is told from the perspective of his adoptive fath The Werewolf of Paris is an interesting book. Interestingly the werewolf in question, Bertrand Caillet, is actually something of a secondary character in his own tale, as it is told from the perspective of his adoptive father Aymar Galliez. We never see the wolf itself in action, and despite some tantalizing clues built upon separate pieces of evidence, the actual lycanthropy of Bertrand could as easily be interpreted as a purely psychological affliction as opposed to a supernatural one.

It is a sordid tale of feuding nobility wherein the Pitamonts and Pitavals, after having waged generations of warfare against each other, finally end their feud in mutual impoverishment and one of the last of the Pitamonts is held captive for years by the last of the Pitavals.

His imprisonment is an inhuman one, and he is left to suffer in a literal hole in the ground, fed nothing save raw meat. This apparently triggers his transformation into the wolf-man of legend. Our tale truly begins, however, when Josephine, a young peasant girl newly arrived in Paris, is raped by a priest, a descendant of the last of the Pitamonts, and bears Bertrand, a child destined to bring forth the family curse.

We follow Bertrand in his young life, at first so full of promise and then slowly brought to near ruin by his ever-increasing taste for blood. What could be happening? At first he tries to slake the thirst of the monster inside Bertrand by feeding the boy raw meat and keeping him confined to the house. This only has limited efficacy and soon more drastic measures need to be taken. Ultimately the boy is able to escape his well-meant prison and, starving to appease his lusts, goes on a spree of murder and terror that takes him to Paris.

Here, amidst the confusion of the end of the Franco-Prussian war and the rise of the Commune Bertrand is able to satisfy most of his hungers free from persecution or discovery. But his Uncle Aymar is spurred on by regret and remorse.

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He feels responsible for the release of this beast upon the world, a beast he is convinced is a supernatural terror, and decides to hunt him down. The rest of the tale details his attempts to find Bertrand and his slowly dawning discovery amidst the chaos and death that seems to permanently reside in Paris that perhaps mankind itself is the true monster.

Side by side with this runs the parallel story of Bertrand and his fortuitous discovery of a lover not only able, but willing to supply him with a conduit for the slaking of his varied lusts…it is an interesting picture of depravity, lust and mutual co-dependence. Of course things come to a head and the piper must be paid. Overall this was a good tale, though I would say it came across much more as historical fiction for me than as pure horror which in my opinion is fine.

Certainly it shares similarities with Dracula in its documentary format and is a well-written, and even seminal, version of the werewolf myth, but I am not widely enough read in werewolf stories to say whether or not it is the best of them. View all 7 comments. Suddenly, there was a piercing scream, a long drawn-out blood-curling yell that wound and wound, growing shriller and shriller, stopping suddenly with a deep dark gurgle as though all that vast sound were being sucked back and down into a waste-pipe. A good scare is refreshing from time to time, giving the old synapses a jolt.

The Werewolf of Paris is my Halloween pick. I had high expectations from the story, after glowing praise from a reliable reviewer on a different forum, and I was n Suddenly, there was a piercing scream, a long drawn-out blood-curling yell that wound and wound, growing shriller and shriller, stopping suddenly with a deep dark gurgle as though all that vast sound were being sucked back and down into a waste-pipe.

The Compleat Werewolf and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction by Anthony Boucher

I had high expectations from the story, after glowing praise from a reliable reviewer on a different forum, and I was not disappointed. I see the reaction of Goodreaders is more moderate. They probably expected something closer in style to modern paranormal romances. What we have here is a supernatural creature going on a rampage in an urban environment, with a sideline romance thrown in, but the novel comes closer in style to the 19 Century Gothic than to Millenial teenage angst.

I happen to greatly enjoy the classics and I like to trace their influence on more recent authors. Guy Endore's werewolf shares with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein the tragic destiny of the misunderstood victim of popular hysteria, condemning him for an affliction outside of his conscious control.

Most of the elements we have come to associate with the werewolf myth are present here: I haven't read enough to be able to declare Endore is the first writer to use the myth, but he is definitely one that made it popular. The horror elements of the story are carefuly graded in intensity, starting with sounds and smells and barely glimpsed images at the edge of vision, evolving later into more explicit blood splaterred scenes. The real focus though is on the mind games, on the psychological impact of fear on the scientific oriented man.

Early in the novel a sort of origin story is given, describing the long standing feud between two families in the Rhone-Alpes region of France, Pitaval and Pitamont, ruthlessly attacking each other generation after generation. The theme of man's inhumanity to man will return with a vengeance by the end of the novel, but for the moment the most memorable scene is of a man buried alive in an oubliette and slowly turned from rational human being into beast.

One of the pet theories of the author is that evil begets more evil, and acts of horror are inherited from one generation to another. The novel takes us next to Paris in the aftermath of the revolutionary year, and introduces the narrator - Aymar Galliez, a rationalist and a militant for social change, forced to deal with unexplained phenomena as a young servant girl in his household is raped by a renegade priest and later gives birth to a wild boy. You don't know everything? Why, that phrase was the beginning and the end of all mysticism.

Aymar takes the boy and the mother under his wing, to be raised in the country, away from the corrupting influence of the big city. Aymar also struggles with personal issues, mostly dealing with religion and the role of the church in dealing with spiritual matters. This is the second pet theory that I would counsel readers to attribute to Aymar Galliez rather than directly to the author.

This is how I coped with some hard to swallow statements about the limitations of science as a method of understanding the world and with other radical diatribes about the usefullness of burning witches and other undesirables at the stake. Anyway, to cut my synopsis short, the boy Bernard grows to become an unruly teenager while slain animals are starting to be found around his village.

Aymar locks the boy's door every night, but somehow the unusual killings go on. Soon, more than animals fall victim to the mysterious assailant, and the action moves to Paris on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War of , as Bertrand runs away from his tutor.

The Paris section of the book is extensive and slowly expands the scope of the novel from the individual fate of Bertrand to the struggle of millions to survive first the siege of the Prussians, then the chaotic rule of the Communards and finally the brutal repression by Government loyalists.

In a series of sketches we are aquiainted with the social injustice rampant at the times, with the creative ways the French always had of eating 'disgusting' things, with the mob rule that surpasses rational thought in times of great distress. There is such a thing as a drunkenness that comes from a surfeit of bloodshed. The mob of Paris, outraged by endless murders, howled, but only for more blood, like a man drunk with liquor who, while lying wretched and puking under the table, still craves another drink and yet another. The pacing of the novel may be found too slow by modern readers, and the horror elements relatively scarce in the economy of the plot, but I found the developing big canvas compelling, not quite as detailed and deep reaching as Les Miserables, but nothing to be ashamed of.

The social commentary Galliez likes to insert into his narrative tends sometimes to steal the focus from the main characters, but his observations are still relevant and should at least provoke a moment of reflection on how the more things change, the more they remain the same. One example deals with the manipulation of public opinion through the media, creating adversaries of freedom and society out of thin air: Of course, all Paris was not so stupid, but the unthinking mass, accustomed to playing the sounding board to the tune of the journalists, responding first to one sentiment and then to its opposite, was stirred profoundly by these romantic tales of horror.

On the subject of how good looking, rich people are getting a free ride in society, living their life in a sheltered rosy bubble, insulated from the sordid need to work for a living: One envies such people, but in the same breath one wishes heaped upon their heads all the joys that life can offer and yet so insistently refuses to most of us. For such people seem as if selected by nature to be showered with the best gifts. She, herself, wanted of life an endless succession of new wonders, new pleasures and surprises. The 'she' in the quote above is Mlle.

Sophie de Blumenberg, the ravishing daughter of a succesful Paris banker, slumming in a soldier cantina in a poor imitation of Florence Nightingale. She falls there under the animal magnetism of a tongue-tied Bertrand, a Civil Guard volunteer now, to the despair of the lady's beau, the spick Captain Barral de Montfort. This classic doomed love triangle gives a new dimension to the novel, another throwback to the 19 Century taste in melodrama and grand gestures Eugene Sue is mentioned at one point. I found the characters of Sophie and Barral well rounded, if a little predictable, and the resolution well suited to the larger drama enfolding in the city.

Sophie in particular is an apt illustration of the deep waters running under the surface of social grace and of the subconscious terrors and urges that can come to consume a person completely: And shadows among shadows. An a vast fear. It was like absolute nothingness. But within this nothingness a something more horrible than the mind can imagine. Lying underground in a coffin. Her imagination had already put her there a thousand times. The final scenes at the end of the Paris Commune and later in a mental facility mark a return to the initial theme of man preying on his fellow man and leave a bitter aftertaste of defeat, of helplessness in the face of evil, incarnated not in a supernatural being, but in the placid visage of fellow human beings.

Aymar Galliez turns to the Catholic Church for redemption. As a humanist without a clear religious affiliation I can neither condemn him nor condone his antisecular stance. I can only hope some lesson can be learned from the mistakes of the past: Why should this one wolf be shut up for an individual crime, when mass crimes go unpunished?

When all society can turn into wolf and be celebrated with fife and drum and with flags curling in the wind? Why then shouldn't this dog have his day too? View all 4 comments. Aug 11, Printable Tire rated it it was amazing. I would have gladly read the author's sardonic prose offered in the framing story for itself, but enter a werewolf story we must, however tenuously the excuse to do so.

And what a story it is! I don't know if Endore set out to write the "Dracula" of werewolf stories, but he certainly accomplished it, and very much outdoes that story in both epic scope and prosaic style. And shouldn't the wife have been the one turned into a werewolf? It was set up like that! Not sure what happened with the formatting and colors here on this post this afternoon, I'm glad I came back and double checked it.

Everything should be fixed now.

Let me know if anyone is having issues of how this post is displaying. The white faces -- especially page 2, panel 5, make everybody look like evil clowns! This is your most clever tie it yet, Karswell! What I am disappointed by is that you too have joined the forces destroying archiving of comics!

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