Review: Episode 8.9 - Wolf's Bane
by: 41 Cyg

I'm giving this episode a 7.2 (1 to 10 scale). There's nothing wrong with it, but there is nothing that really stands out, either (You'll notice how scanty my comments are).

After their battle against the Romans in Hibernia (Ireland), Xena and Gabrielle are headed home via Gaul (France) and come upon a village where an unseen animal is decimating the livestock - every full moon! There's no Maria Ouspenskaya character here (She played the old gypsy woman in the classic movie, The Wolfman), but soon our heroes are tracking the beast.

As I said, I don't have many comments here. The story flows well enough and keeps your attention, but nothing really stands out.

The one thing I do want to comment on is the art work. The illustrator, Slash, has worked on VS episodes before but I don't remember anything good or bad particularly about it.

In this episode his animals, especially the wolf's face, and scenery shots are good, but when he draws Xena and Gabrielle (and other characters) - for some reason, his proportions are off just enough to keep them from feeling like they were drawn from reality (Not that Xena and Gabrielle have stopped to have their portraits done - at least not yet - but there are plenty of photos of Lucy and Renee out there, not to mention the series episodes which are as close as we're going to get to real life for our heroes.)

One exception to the mediocre portrayal of people is, in Act IV, the head of Bisclavet, a recluse who knows something about what is destroying the animals and is suspected by the villagers. When the artwork was previewed, one of the team mentioned that Bisclavet bore a striking resemblance to a well known film actor. I wouldn't have caught it, but when it was pointed out I could easily see the resemblance. I'm not going to mention the name, but look at the portrait, see if you recognize him. Maybe this should be considered an uncredited cameo appearance for the actor.