All this month I'll be reviewing different comic books by female creators, based on submissions from the actual creators of the comic books themselves. Here's a list of all the books featured so far this month.

We continue with The Wolf at Weston Court by Alena Harrold...

First off, how awesome is that book cover? I think more webcomics should come up with a book cover before they begin their webcomic. It makes it a lot easier for me to use a basic image to stand in for the strip, ya know? And I love the idea of how Harrold presents her tale as an old fashioned novel. Cool stuff.

In any event, The Wolf at Weston Court is about a young faerie named Nova who has to sneak into a ball for some unknown reason (well, currently unknown). But to do so, she needs a ballroom gown and she is not the type who can just throw such a thing together herself, so she accosts a tailor to do so for her (the tailor is a wolfman-like being named Loup). After he agrees (at gunpoint, naturally) one of his human customers comes in and things take a turn for the screwball...

The Earl (you can call him Elgin) is an absolute blast. He is thrilled to just be involved in some excitement, so he gladly goes along with Nova's flee from justice and he helps hide her as she escapes.

However, even after they go on the run, she still needs the help of Loup, so even though he's been thrown in jail and seen his home and store destroyed (read the comic to find out how!), he doesn't realize that until Nova's done with him, there is no hope of peace and quiet for him...

Harrold has fashioned a trio of compelling characters who bounce off of each other really well. Imagine a sort of action-packed fantasy version of It Happened One Night. You know, a fantasy action screwball comedy. That's what The Wolf at Weston Court is like and it is a really interesting combination.

Artistically, Harrold has designed her characters well, although there definitely is a certain lack of fluidity to her work. Luckily, you can see that as the strip goes on, she is improving quickly. At one point on her site she also showed some of her work with the characters from a year earlier and she has improved leaps and bounds since then, so I expect her to improve even more as the series goes on. The main thing she has going for her is that she has her sequentials down. That is often the hardest thing to learn when it comes to comic book art - making your characters less stiff and the movements more fluid you can always work on, but if you don't know the basics of comic storytelling, you're likely just never going to put the pieces together. Harrold has strong storytelling skills, so I think the rest will catch up as time goes by. Again, the bomb sequence above already clearly shows a significant stride for her.

You can read The Wolf of Weston Court here.