The Universal Monsters built out a cinematic universe decades before that term even really existed. One of the crown jewels of that universe was director George Waggner’s 1941 masterpiece The Wolf Man. Starring Lon Chaney Jr., it remains one of the werewolf movies by which all other werewolf movies are measured. Now, writer Joshua Williamson is delivering a sequel to that horror classic, in comic book form. One that focuses on family trauma, with horrific results.
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Blood of the Wolf Man, out now wherever comics are sold, tells the story of Adam Jaeger, a young man who thought he could become someone new at college…but not like this. One moment he was partying, the next he’s recovering from a massacre that left almost no survivors. The worst part? He might be responsible. As the monster within tries to claw loose, Adam will do anything he can to stop from becoming the Wolf Man.
“You can strip away all of the supernatural stuff and this story still works,” Williamson said in an exclusive interview with FANGORIA. “I like when people take a very real thing and then they run it through the horror blender.”
The majority of the series is a “family psychological drama,” as Williamson put it, but it kicks off with a bloody bang. Issue #1, which features artwork by Leomacs (Rogues) is indeed a violent affair. The kind of violence that would have never been allowed on the silver screen 85 years ago. In 2026 on the page of a comic book though? Anything goes. Well, almost anything.
“When you’re thinking about someone who is a wolf man or a werewolf, you really want to say they did something bad, you’ve gotta show them doing something bad,” Williamson said. “I needed a couple of moments of just violent horror.”
Blood of the Wolf Man continues Universal’s ongoing partnership with Skybound and Image comics to revive the Universal Monsters on the page. It all started with Dracula in 2023, continuing with other titles and characters from throughout the universe, often connecting directly to the classic films.
In the first issue of this series, the connections aren’t immediately apparent, but Williamson assures that they will come into focus. “As you go, you’ll learn how it connects to the original movie,” he said. As for the book’s title? “It has a double meaning with how bloody the book is, but also, you’ll learn as the book goes, some of the bloodline connections,” he noted.
“There’s some thematic elements that were influenced by the original 1941 movie,” Williamson added, but he also said that 1994’s Wolf starring Jack Nicholson was an influence. “The Wolf Man is a slower burn of a movie, but [Wolf] was one that influenced my thinking in this.” Particularly the pacing, which he suggests is more rapid in the four-issue series.
“I remember really liking the idea of werewolves when I was a kid,” Williamson said. “The whole mythology of werewolves I found to be so interesting.” He had seen the original movie when he was a kid but when he had the idea for this book a few years ago, he went back and watched it with a more critical eye saying…
“It was like I was watching it for the first time in a lot of ways. I started picking up on stuff I had never noticed before. I had misremembered things. It gave me a different perspective on Larry Talbot and his family. I totally forgot the stuff with his brother having died and all of that.”
That rewatch really informed the writing of the book. In terms of his own journey with werewolves, he name-checked the cult classic Monster Squad as a personal favorite, and one that helped get him into the creatures in the first place. “That movie is very interesting because it’s very much a movie of its time but in terms of a werewolf story, it’s actually pretty solid,” Williamson mused. “That character really has an arc in that story.”
When it came to working with Universal on the book, the company is naturally protective of the Universal Monsters brand and titles like The Wolf Man. “When you go into an experience like this, you know there’s going to be guardrails,” Williamson acknowledged. But he also revealed that the company didn’t make his life needlessly hard.
“They just had questions that were story questions. I feel like it was a good working relationship. It never got challenging or difficult. They allowed me to push the boundaries of the age rating a little bit,” Williamson said. “They allowed me to push that boundary to the breaking point without going over the line.”
In writing the series, he was influenced by A24, arguably the king of modern trauma horror movies. “I thought a lot about Midsommar,” Williamson said. “I thought a lot about A24 horror movies that are really grounded and are really about family trauma. Hereditary, you look at these movies where they feel very human.”
Even for those who haven’t seen The Wolf Man or know a lot about the character’s legacy within the Universal Monsters canon, there’s a very universal story at the heart of this book that doesn’t require any homework to understand.
“It’s a story about a dad whose son comes to him and says, ‘Dad, I am a werewolf, I am the Wolf Man and I killed a bunch of people, and I don’t know what to do.’ And that dad is trying to figure out, how does he protect his son? Does he even believe his son?” Williamson said. “How far are you willing to go to protect someone you love if you know they’ve done something bad?”
Blood of the Wolf Man #1 is out now.
