Jeff: Werewolves: The Hunger

Jeff: Werewolves: The Hunger Jeff took a veterinary internship. By the end of Werewolves: The Hunger, his supervisor has drugged him, deliberately had a werewolf bite him, and flown off with him strapped to a stretcher. Getting from one to the other takes most of the story, and I think he's worth talking about because he doesn't start out as the person who has everything figured out. At All Paws, he admires Dr. Rachel Campbell. He watches her handle the death of a pet and the conversation with its owners, and he sees someone who can stay composed when the job gets difficult. Alison is much more uncomfortable with the clinic. She leaves. Jeff stays. He needs the internship credit to graduate, and there's still some trust there. Rachel can barely be bothered to remember his name. She calls him Jack, then John, while he corrects her. It's a small detail early on, but it tells you quite a bit about the relationship before she takes him down to see Charlotte. Charlotte has been bitten by a werewolf. She's tied down in a hidden facility, and Rachel is delighted to have her. Jeff's reaction is much closer to what you'd hope somebody's reaction would be. There's a girl on that table. Why are they doing this to her? Why aren't they letting her go? Seeing the transformation doesn't make those questions disappear for him. Rachel acts like the discovery should settle the argument. Jeff has just watched a person convulse and change while strapped down. When Charlotte's silver necklace burns her, he wants it removed. When Rachel uses the artificial moonlight to put her through another transformation, he objects again. He doesn't immediately get her out. He's still there, still caught in what Rachel is doing, and the situation is getting beyond anything he expected from this placement. But once the other wolf breaks in, he does more than argue. He picks up a chair and hits it to protect Charlotte. That's a fairly desperate thing for an ordinary intern to try against something tearing through armed guards. Later, even after everything has gone wrong, he tries talking to Charlotte. He's hoping there's enough of the girl left that he can reach her. She snaps at him, and Rachel mocks the attempt. His compassion doesn't magically solve the curse. The comic doesn't reward him with some special ability to calm her down. It also doesn't make Rachel right. She uses the moment to prepare a syringe, sedates him, and forces his arm into Charlotte's mouth. The last we see of him in this story, he's restrained in the helicopter while Rachel congratulates herself on having what she needs. We don't see his first transformation or a rescue in these three issues. What we do see is somebody who keeps recognizing a victim while the person in charge keeps talking about a specimen. Then she makes him one too. He wasn't a trained monster hunter. He was a student who wanted to become a veterinarian, and that makes the ending pretty damn ugly. Source: Grimm Fairy Tales Presents Werewolves: The Hunger #1–3.