By Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Roy & Jean Thomas, Mike Ploog, Werner Roth, Ross Andru, Tom Sutton, Gil Kane, Gene Colan & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-1-30290-839-3
Inspiration isn’t everything. In 1970, as Marvel consolidated its position of market dominance – even after losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators, Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby – they did so with a wave of new young talent but less by experimentation and more by expanding proven concepts and properties.
The only real exception to this was the mass creation of horror titles in response to the industry down-turn in superhero sales – a move expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.
Almost overnight nasty monsters (and narcotics – but that’s another story and a different review) became acceptable fare within four-colour pages and whilst a parade of 1950s pre-code reprints made sound business sense (so they repackaged a bunch of those too) the creative aspect of the contemporary fascination in supernatural themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public.
As always, the watchword was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics was to be incorporated into the print mix and shared universe mix as readily as possible. When proto-monster Morbius, the Living Vampire debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (October 1971) and the sky failed to fall in, Marvel moved ahead with a line of scary superstars – beginning with a werewolf and a vampire – before chancing something new in a haunted biker who could tap into both Easy Rider’s freewheeling motorcycling chic and the supernatural zeitgeist.
Werewolf By Night debuted in Marvel Spotlight #2 (preceded by western masked hero Red Wolf in #1, and followed by the afore-hinted Ghost Rider) although the series title, if not the actual star character, was cribbed from a classic pre-Comics Code short suspense-thriller from Marvel Tales #116, July 1953.
Marvel always favoured a long-time tradition of using old (presumably already copyrighted) names and titles when creating new series and characters. Hulk, Thor, Magneto, Doctor Strange and many others all got nominal starts as throwaways in some anthology or other…
This copious compendium collects – in paperback or eBook formats – the early adventures of a young West Coast lycanthrope and comprises the contents of Marvel Spotlight #2-4, Werewolf by Night volume 1 #1-15; a guest-shot in Marvel Team-Up #12 and material from the appropriate half of a horror crossover with Tomb of Dracula #18, cumulatively spanning February 1972 through 1974.
Following an informative, scene-setting Introduction by long-term Marvel Editor Ralph Macchio, the moonlit madness begins with the landmark first appearance, introducing teenager Jack Russell, who is suffering some sleepless nights…
‘Werewolf by Night!’ (Marvel Spotlight #2, February 1972), was written by Gerry Conway and moodily illustrated by Mike Ploog from an outline by Roy & Jeanie Thomas, describing the worst day of Jack’s life – his 18th birthday – which begins with nightmares and ends in something far worse.
Jack’s mother and little sister Lissa are everything a fatherless boy could hope for but new stepfather Philip and creepy chauffeur Grant are another matter…
That night at his party Jack has a painful seizure and flees into the Malibu night to transform for the first time into a ravening vulpine man-beast. The next morning, he awakes wasted on the beach to discover that his mother has been gravely injured in a car crash. Something had happened to her brakes…
Creeping into her hospital room he is astonished as she relates the story of his blood-father; an Eastern European noble who loved her deeply but locked himself away three nights every month…
The Russoff line was cursed by the taint of Lycanthropy: every child doomed to become a wolf-thing under the full-moon from the moment they reach eighteen years of age. Jack was horrified and then realised how soon his sister would reach her own majority…
With her dying breath Laura Russell made her son promise never to harm his stepfather, no matter what…
Scenario set, with the traumatised wolf-boy transforming for three nights every month, the weird, wild wonderment began in earnest with the beast attacking Grant the chauffeur – who had doctored those car-brakes – but refraining, even in vulpine form, from attacking Philip Russell…
The second instalment sees the reluctant nocturnal predator rescue Lissa from a sick and rowdy biker gang (they were everywhere back then) and narrowly escape the police only to be abducted by a sinister dowager seeking knowledge of a magical tome called the Darkhold. The eldritch spell-book is the apparent basis of the Russoff curse, but when Jack can’t produce the goods he’s left to the mercies of ‘The Thing in the Cellar!’…
Surviving more by luck than power, Jack’s third try-out issue fetches him up on an ‘Island of the Damned!’: introducing aging writer Buck Cowan, who became Jack’s best friend as they jointly investigate the wolf-boy’s stepfather.
The elder Russell had apparently sold off Jack’s inheritance, leaving the boy nothing but an old book. Following a paper trail to find proof Philip had had Laura Russell killed leads the pair to an offshore fortress, a dungeon full of horrors and a ruthless mutant seductress…
That episode ended on a cliffhanger, presumably as added incentive to buy Werewolf by Night #1 (September 1972), wherein Frank Chiaramonte took over inking with ‘Eye of the Beholder!’
As ruthless freak Marlene Blackgar and her monstrous posse capture the entire Russell family looking for the Book of Sins, once more a fearsome force of supernature awakes to accidentally save the day as night falls…
With ‘The Hunter… and the Hunted!’ Jack and Buck deposit the trouble-attracting grimoire with Father Joquez, a Christian monk and scholar of ancient texts, but are still hunted because of it. Jack quits the rural wastes of Malibu for a new home in Los Angeles, trading concrete for forests but life is no easier.
In #2, dying scientist Cephalos tries to harness Jack’s feral life-force to extend his own and lives but briefly to regret it. Meanwhile Joquez succeeds in translating the Darkhold, but his accomplishment allows an ancient horror to possess him in WbN #3 during ‘The Mystery of the Mad Monk!‘ Whilst the werewolf is saddened to end such a noble life it feels far happier dealing with millionaire sportsman Joshua Kane, who desires a truly unique head mounted on the wall of his den in the Franke Bolle inked ‘The Danger Game’.
Half-naked, exhausted and soaked to his now hairless skin, Jack must next deal with Kane’s psychotic brother who wants the werewolf for his pet assassin in ‘A Life for a Death!’ (by Len Wein & Ploog) after which ‘Carnival of Fear!’ (Bolle inks again) finds the beast – and Jack, once the sun rises – a pitiful captive of the mystic Swami Calliope and his deadly circus of freaks.
The wolf was now the subject of an obsessive police detective too. “Old-school cop†Lou Hackett is an old buddy of trophy-hunter Joshua Kane and every bit as charming, but his off-the-books investigation has hardly begun when the Swami’s plans fall apart in the concluding ‘Ritual of Blood!’ (inked by Jim Mooney).
The beast is safely(?) roaming loose in the backwoods for #8’s quirky monster-mash just as an ancient demon possesses a cute little bunny in ‘The Lurker Behind the Door!‘ (Wein, Werner Roth & Paul Reinman), before neatly segueing to a slight but stirring engagement in Marvel Team-Up #12 wherein Wein, Conway, Ross Andru & Don Perlin expose a ‘Wolf at Bay!’
When webspinning wallcrawler meets the Werewolf they initially battle each other – and ultimately malevolent mage Moondark – in foggy, fearful San Francisco before Jack heads back to LA and ‘Terror Beneath the Earth!’
Here Conway, Tom Sutton & George Roussos delve into an impeding and thoroughly nefarious scheme by business cartel the Committee. These out-of-the-box commercial gurus somehow possess a full dossier on Jack Russell’s night-life and hire a maniac, sewer-dwelling sound engineer to execute their radical plan to use monsters and derelicts to boost sales in a down-turned economy.
However, the bold sales scheme to frighten folk into spending more is ended before it begins since the werewolf proves to be far from a team-player in the wrap up ‘The Sinister Secret of Sarnak!’
Werewolf by Night #11 revelled in the irony as Marv Wolfman signed on as writer for ‘Comes the Hangman’ – illustrated by the incredible Gil Kane & Sutton – in which we learn something interesting about Philip Russell and the Committee, whilst Jack’s attention is distracted by a new apartment, a very odd neighbour and a serial kidnapper abducting young women to keep them safe from “corruption.â€
When the self-deluded hooded hero snatches Lissa, he soon finds himself hunted by a monster beyond his wildest dreams…
Concluding chapter ‘Cry Werewolf!’ brings in the criminally underappreciated Don Perlin as inker. In a few short months he would become the strip’s penciller for the rest of the run, but before that Ploog & Chiaramonte returned for another session, introducing a manic mystic and a new love-interest (not the same person) in #13’s ‘His Name is Taboo’.
An aged sorcerer coveting the werewolf’s energies for his own arcane purposes, the magician is stunned when his adopted daughter Topaz finds her loyalties divided and her psionic abilities more help than hindrance to the ravening moon-beast.
‘Lo, the Monster Strikes!’ pits the wolf against Taboo’s undead – but getting better – son and sees revelation and reconciliation between Philip and Jack Russell. As a result, the young man and new girlfriend Topaz set off for Transylvania, the ancestral Russoff estate and a crossover confrontation with the Lord of Vampires.
Tomb of Dracula #18 (March 1974) begins the clash in ‘Enter: Werewolf by Night’ (Wolfman, Gene Colan & Tom Palmer) as Jack and Topaz investigate a potential cure for lycanthropy, only to be attacked by Dracula. Driven off by the girl’s psychic powers the Count realises the threat she poses to him and determined to slay her…
It concludes with Werewolf by Night #15 and the ‘Death of a Monster!’ (Wolfman, Ploog & Chiaramonte) as the battle of beasts resolves into a messy stalemate, but only after Jack learns of his family’s long connection to Dracula…
Supplemented with an unused Ploog cover for Marvel Spotlight#4, Gil Kane’s pre-corrections cover to ToD #18 and previous collection covers by Ploog & Dan Kemp, this first volume also includes a wealth of original art pages (20 in total) by Ploog, Sutton and Andru. A moody masterpiece of macabre menace and all-out animal action, this compilation covers some of the most under-appreciated magic moments in Marvel history: tense, suspenseful and solidly compelling. If you must have a mixed bag of lycanthropes, bloodsuckers and moody young misses, this is a far more entertaining mix than many modern movies, books or miscellaneous matter…
© 1972, 1973, 1974, 2017 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.