Artie and the Wolf Moon Review: Top-Notch Art

The concept of Werewolves have been around for centuries. People have come up with thousands of stories about werewolves with some adding their personal touch. Comic artist Olivia Stephens puts her spin on the genre with “Artie and the Wolf Moon” which seems unneeded.   

Artie is just a normal girl who’s a bit quiet and loves photography. One night she catches her mom shifting from a wolf to a human and discovers that she may be a werewolf even though she has yet to awaken her powers. A “late bloomer” as her mom says.

Now she spends time with her mom discovering her real family and what happened to her dead dad. It has an interesting premise and even does some things with the werewolf lore. Sadly, the comic does tend to be a bit mundane. While there is a danger out there waiting for Artie and her family, the majority of the comic just spends the majority of the time focusing on Artie’s newfound family and getting to know about this new lifestyle. This isn’t a terrible thing but since this story has werewolves it seems like Stephens added werewolves to make her story more interesting. Without the werewolf motif, this story would be fine on its own but adding werewolves seems to be calling for harsh criticisms from werewolf fans. Again, this doesn’t mean the story doesn’t have any merits.

Artie is an interesting character and the whole family theme is nice and well-told through the family having fun together. Artie and her mom even have a few heartfelt talks with, according to the story, is rare for Artie and her mom. 

The artwork is top-notch. The character designs seem to fit with the tone of the story, the backgrounds, even the panels that take place in the woods, look nice. The wolves look like generic wolves. Granted, this does make sense in-universe but there are few times where the characters do look like the typical werewolf but the design just seems so basic that, again, this story would’ve been better without the werewolf motif. “Artie and the Wolf Moon” has a nice story with nice art, but making the characters werewolves comes off as a cheap gimmick that ruins an otherwise nice, heartwarming story. Stephens did try to go with something different but the story in reality didn’t need it.