Tuesday, August 19, 2025

Street Wolf - a Blackthorne Publishing comic mini-series

The year was 1986, and I had been reading and collecting comics for just seven years.  I had only discovered the joy of comic book stores a few years prior, having spent my early years of collecting buying comics off the spinner racks at local convenience stores or on the magazine shelves in Waldenbooks and B. Dalton in the mall.  My fascination with direct market books (those comics marketed solely to comic stores and not sold in regular stores, by independent companies such as Pacific Comics, Eclipse Comics, First Comics, and countless others) was growing, and I was picking up any number of books from these companies that caught my eye.  I can remember seeing this particular book on the shelf, but as it did not have a female lead (of which nearly all the books I was buying had), I passed on it.  Besides, at the time, I had never heard of Blackthorne Publishing, and I was nor sure about the quality of their books.
 
Fast-forward nearly 40 years later (I cannot believe I'm actually writing that!!!!), and while on vacation recently, I happened across all three issues of the Street Wolf mini-series for just fifty cents each - so I said, what the heck. By this time, I was aware that Blackthorne Publishing was a small company that tried to fill the gap when Pacific Comics went under; however, Blackthorne was known more for their newspaper strip reprints, as well as their countless licensed 3-D books moreso than any original material.  Street Wolf is one of their few original series published, and after reading it now, I have to wonder if they might have survived had they published more quality work such as this.
 
Street Wolf is the name given to Nathan Blackhorse, who is a vigilante of sorts, waging a one-man war against crime in a "violent city" (unnamed in the three-issue series).  Writer Mark Wayne Harris does not open up with any origin story, and in fact, over the course of the three issues, readers learn very little about Blackhorse.  We see that he is an expert in martial arts and that he is well-versed in hand-to-hand combat.  We also discover that his mother passed away, but he refuses to talk about his father.  Other than that, Blackhorse is a mystery, which gives the character and the stories a certain mystique that leaves you wanting for more.  In the first two pages of the first issues, we are not only introduced to Street Wolf himself, but also to Joyce Prescott, a newspaper reporter intent on writing a story about the famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) local hero.  Prescott quickly learns that Blackhorse has no interest in glory or fame, and he does what he does for the sole purpose of helping others.  In fact, she learns this first hand by the end of page five after he rescues her from being attacked by some thugs.  
 
The story follows Prescott as she pursues Blackhorse, her goal changing from getting a story to simply getting to know the man.  This is where we learn about his mother dying while he was just a young child, and he reveals to her (and the readers) that he was adopted by a woman named "Rose Tyler."  Now, I have to stop for a moment here, because when I read that name, I chuckled, since "Rose Tyler" was the name of the first companion Doctor Who encountered when the British television series started up again back in 2005 (nearly 20 years after this book was published!).  That's a funny coincidence - unless Russell T. Davies happened to read this comic and was inspired to name his first companion after Street Wolf's adopted mother!  (Yeah, I know, the likelihood of that are ... well, next to nothing!)
 
Harris did not shy away from writing about very controversial and sensitive topics when he wrote this series.  The stories address child prostitution, drugs, street gangs, and corrupt men who will kill to keep their power.  There are some horrific moments in the series (such as when a young boy who witnesses a crime is murdered by one of the gang members in order to prevent him from going to the police!), and there are no punches pulled.  In this aspect, the series reminds me a lot of Max Allan Collins' Ms. Tree series, which ran from 1981 to 1993 through four different publishers - but which was never afraid to tackle some of the most topical issues of that day.  Thus, Street Wolf could easily be considered a contemporary of Ms. Tree, addressing a lot of the same issues and not shying away from the gruesome nature of the real world.
 
The villains in these stories are true nasty pieces of work, and with the exception of one, they all get their just desserts in the end (although not always by Blackhorse's hand).  The one villain who does not face justice is one that has a direct connection to one of the main character - a rather shocking connection, I might add, that sadly never gets a follow-up.  Perhaps if the series had come back for a second run, we might have gotten to see how the characters would have reacted when faced with this villain's true identity - but, alas, we never got that chance.
 
The art and cover for the books are provided by Dennis Francis.  Francis seems to have had much more of a career in comics than Harris, having worked at Continuity Comics, DC Comics, Eclipse Comics, Valiant Comics, and, of course, Blackthorne Publishing.  Francis' work on Street Wolf is outstanding - the black and white art in the book is not extremely detailed, such as George Perez' or Phil Jimenez' work, but it is gritty and fits the mood of the book perfectly.  Francis also did work on a number of 3-D books for Blackthorne, as well as his own created comic, Starlight Squadron.  
 
It's a shame Harris and Francis were never able to continue this series.  I think it gave readers a nice break from all the typical super-hero fare of the day, and it provided engaging stories with characters who felt real and for whom you immediately developed an affinity.  But, as with so many comics from the '80s and '90s, Street Wolf had its five minutes of fame and is now relegated to the fifty-cent and dollar back issue bins at comic shops and comic conventions.
 
RATING:  8 bouncing basketballs out of 10 for a comic filled with hard-hitting stories and heart-wrenching moments, and a lead character that outshines the likes of Marvel's Punisher and DC's Vigilante.

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