Billed as a "painted novel," one might mistake Tom Neely's recently released The Wolf as one of those comics that's too proud to consider itself a part of the medium. Fortunately, the complete opposite is true, and the medium couldn't have asked for a more virile addition. A 9x9" square tome containing one "silent" painting on each of its 228 pages, The Wolf bypasses typical panel convention for a more pure art presentation that only enhances its spooky narrative. Peer into a surreal scene that pits the book's titular ravaging wolf against a glowing red foe stripped of skin in all its painted glory in our preview below.

From Neely's official press release:

The book tells a simple love story, but one woven with surrealist horror, werewolf lore and its own brand of nightmare logic. With The Wolf, Neely progresses from the traditional cartooning style he showed off in his previous books, The Blot and Brilliantly Ham-Fisted, to a form that blends comics-style storytelling with a fine arts approach to imagery. The ultimate effect is equal parts touching and chilling.

Rather than sum up what The Wolf is "about," critics have stuck to describing how the book makes them feel. The Comics Journal and Robot 6 contributor Sean T. Collins gave the book perhaps its highest praise, describing each of his page-turning experiences as "...an encounter with raw feeling, made physical by cartooning."

You can order The Wolf directly from Neely's website.

See select pages from Tom Neeley's The Wolf below: