“The Lone One: A Tale Every Vampire Knows”

This entry covers the “Lone One” series of back-up stories from “Wetworks” volume one issues 7, 9, 10 and 11 by Tom Harrington, Jeff Rebner, Mark Pennington and John Lowe.

To be honest you can pretty much read these back-up stories as they happen. I just wanted to single the stories out just a bit to talk about them without interrupting the narrative of “Wetworks.” Mainly because there was a lot going on in the last several issues of “Wetworks” and also because “the Lone One” is pretty unrelated to what is going on in the rest of the book.

The story starts off with a bunch of vampires messing with a very hurt werewolf in the Alps. They’re just screwing with it a bit before they kill it, you know, being dicks, mostly. One of them fires off some crazy powerful weapon into the ground at the werewolf which opens up a crack in the ice and unearths the Lone One. Yes, the Lone One is the WildStorm Universe’s answer to Frankenstein’s Monster. He then proceeds to get angry at the vampires and starts kicking their asses. Here’s the point where the vampires are poo-ing themselves as they’ve all heard of the Lone One, he’s bad news. The Lone One mentions being so alone in this world, and one vampire says “Well, why don’t you reproduce? You can do that you know. You just need to find your mate.” At this the Lone One finishes the job on the vampires and sallies forth towards Castle Frankenstein to have words with his creator.

The Lone One is in for a bit of a shock when he arrives at the castle. You see, the Lone One has been frozen in that ice for some time, and the world has moved on. Castle Frankenstein is now a tourist attraction! A peeved Lone One eventually finds the last living Frankenstein in the area, Justine, and elects her to create his female counterpart. He takes her through a secret entrance to Victor’s old lab and they find the body of the Lone One’s would-be mate. The Lone One tells Justine to get to work, but she doesn’t know any of this stuff. She’s just a normal modern every-person, how the hell is she supposed to know what to do? As luck would have it, help is soon to arrive, but it may not be what she wants at all.

The Lone One leaves the lab to let Justine work in peace, then, out of the shadows appears a squat gray skinned man named Conrad. Conrad reveals two things. First, he was there the whole time, hiding from the Lone One, second, that it was actually he that created the Lone One’s body as a new housing for his soul, but his assistant, Victor Frankenstein finished up the Lone One’s body and put a different soul in it, leaving Conrad pretty miffed. While Conrad is telling Justine all this information, the Lone One is being attacked by werewolves. The Lone One and the werewolves end up back inside the lab where eventually the wolves go after Conrad as the greater evil.

Suddenly an explosion happens. The Lone One is knocked clean out of the castle. He later awakens and walks along the Rhine river. He finds the hand of his would-be mate. Thinking aloud, he comments that he found that hand too far away from Castle Frankenstein for the blast to have thrown the hand, and surmises that someone must’ve been hastily carrying her away. He is sure she is still out there and with either Justine, Conrad or some werewolves. It gives him hope. And with that, we never see him or any of these characters ever again.

Continuity Corner:

• Conrad is said to have worked for the Blood Queen by the werewolves. He’s described as a sort of evil mad scientist.
• The werewolves mention that they don’t need a third Night Tribe in relation to the Lone One, them and vampires. Are they forgetting about the dwarves and the little hippo dudes?
• We’ll see Castle Frankenstein again when Elijah Snow visits it in 1919 during “Planetary” issue 13. I figure that the reason the monsters that Elisha encounters are so unlike the Lone One is because, as we see in this story, the Lone One was mostly created by Conrad and Victor just finished it and added a soul to that body. The monsters that Elisha finds are probably Victor trying to duplicate the Lone One without the help of Conrad.

NEXT: “Gen13” volume 2 issues 3 – 5 by J. Scott Campbell, Brandon Choi, Jim Lee, Alex Garner and Scott Williams.