Rowlf And Other Fantasy Stories!

Rich Corben was a fantastic artist who fashioned images which linger in the mind decades after first encountered. Corben had a style unlike any other artist, one which weirdly created heft and weight in a way that proved particularly effective when presenting women gifted with bountiful bosoms. Several such dames can be found in the pages of Rowlf and other Fantasy Stories from Dark Horse. 
 

Rowlf is the story of a girl and her dog. In the fanciful kingdom of Canis there is a princess named Maryara who possesses a loyal pooch named Rowlf. Her father rules a poor land but nonetheless there are suitors for Maryara's hand. One such is Raymon who is less than a scrupulous fellow, and one Rowlf distrusts immediately. 

Raymon takes Maryara and Rowlf to a sorcerer named Sortrum who is able to turn one animal into another. But Rowlf is suspicious, and he and Maryara soon leave so that she can bathe in a cool pool. But she is spied upon by a demon, part of a military unit on a mission of destruction and plunder. 

She is kidnapped and Rowlf in desperation returns to the tower of Sortrum where in order to get the truth from him he is transformed into a creature both dog and man. Rowlf uses this new form to pursue Maryara's captors. 

Rowlf catches up to the demon army and we are treated to the naive man-dog hero using their own tanks against them as he fights doggedly to save his mistress. 

Rowlf originally appeared in the fanzine Voice of Comicdom and later was collected by the underground Rip Off Press. 

It was in a Rip Off's Grim Wit that The Beast of Wolfton first appeared. This is a two-part story which is more firmly rooted in classic werewolf tradition, and it is the second of three proposed stories about werewolves that Corben planned. In this tale a knight and his wife, who hates him ferociously, travel to a remote region to rid it of a predatory creature. This creature turns out to be a man-beast named Wulv who is among the last of a tribe called the "Krind". This story is wildly violent and has a bizarre ending. 

To complete the trilogy Corben gave us The Spirit of the Beast, in which we encounter the son of the previous werewolf named John Wulv. He finds a woman being assaulted by three men and drives them off. Then she agrees to lock him up because of his dangerous change in the full moon's light. What happens then is quite a surprise. Both of these stories were reprinted in Heavy Metal in, though we get them in the original black and white format in this collection. 

Oteg is the third tale in this collection and is based on a Japanese folk tale. In this tale a man schemes to wait for his dead wife's resurrection, while thieves attempt to steal the riches he has accumulated over the years of his vigil. 

Rip Off