Cycle of the Werewolf: This is IT

I have to say that I was not super excited to read The Cycle of the Werewolf.  This book had many features that do not appeal to me.  For instance, the plot felt very gimmacky: every month, during a full moon that has a great deal of artistic license regarding when it actually occurs, a werewolf attacks a person in a small Maine town.  Meh.  This project supposedly originated as a calendar, which was meant to have illustrations and a quick vignette from SK.  This is one of the weirdest projects I have ever heard of.  Who dreamed this up?

Another reason I was not excited about this: illustrated books.  I am not huge on illustrated books.  The whole graphic novel thing has passed me by.  Maybe someday I will find out what makes these so popular, but right now they are not my thing.  Yes, I am old.

(I want to point out that this is not the reason that I left Creepshow out of the blog.  I left it out because I could not find a reasonably priced copy of it.  If I ever do, then I will add it later.  And yes, I will add it out of sequence and we will just all have to live with that).

A third reason I was not excited about this: werewolves.  Meh.  I guess I don't find werewolves that scary.  Still better than haunted cars.

However, I liked it.  I liked it more than I thought I would.  Perhaps the fact that it was under 200 pages (with pictures!) helped.  But I also liked that this was very clearly the precursor for It.  There can't even be any debate on this point:

1) Small town terrorized by supernatural creature
2) Young boy places himself in danger and saves town
3) Young boy is somehow disabled--in this case, physically

That, in a nutshell, is the plot of It.  Just add six more kids to #2 and you're good to go.  And around 1000 more pages.

I also liked that SK came awfully close to admitting that his books would be much scarier without the supernatural element.  When the constable is talking about the fact that this probably isn't a werewolf but some kind of psychopath, that seemed very close to an admission of the fact that what is really terrifying about these books is the events that take place and the fact that such horrific events can take place without the supernatural.  In fact, the constable believes that Marty, the child who saves the town, interpreted his first encounter with the monster as a 'werewolf' to protect himself from the truth--that he saw a person from the town but was too traumatized to remember who it was.  Nope.  It was really a werewolf.

I will say that I did not like the name of our hero in this story: Marty Coslaw.  I kept reading it as 'Marty Coleslaw.'  And that sounded weird.  Perhaps if you crank out as much prose as SK, sometimes your choice of names suffers as a result (TAD.  That is all).