Comic Book Resources

Only in this comic book could a werewolf end up oh-so-ironically “leashed” by a Jack Russell.

Beat me to it. I was just trying to put something together about ‘Jack Russell terror’.

Had never heard of this series until a couple of months ago when I got it out of the library. It was quite fun for a while (with a couple of really nasty villains) but the whole “forgetting what day it is every. single. month.” soon got a bit tiresome.

It needed the kind of non-linear storytelling that’s common today, but wasn’t going to happen in a Marvel superhero/horror title of the time.

I remember as a kid wanting Jack to be able to change at will so the stories could be more superhero-like. That’s the opposite of how I’d do it today. The dramatic tension of man turning into monster has been done plenty, but the tension of Jack wanting or needing to turn and being unable to, because it’s the wrong time of the month, is more dramatic.

My pitch for Werewolf by Night would be that Jack changes only with the moon, but he has a tenuous control of his monsterous urges. This way Jack can plot and plan and be more proactive against his foes, but as the days get closer to full moon, he gradually grows more hairy, strong and violent.

Oh, and her name is Jacqueline Russell.

But you called her a ‘he’ only a sentence before..

“because it’s the wrong time of the month”

reminds me of how Alan Moore had a werewolf whose transformations were connected to her menstral cycle in Swampthing.

Another interesting aspect of “WBN” to me was that at a time when most Marvels were still using 3rd person narration, that book was usually in the 1st person. It doesn’t seem like much of a big deal nowadays as it is the norm, but reading the Essential after reading several other Essentials from the same era, it stands out.

The Werewolf being his own character added suspense in a lot of those tales as well. If he was just a crazy monster, there’s no doubt he would hurt Lissa, for example, but given his ambiguity, we were never sure just how the Werewolf would react to her. And even the way he responded to villains — typically rage, anger, and aggression — fit with the animalistic nature of the character. “WBN” works better as an ongoing series than it has any right to.

Great post!

One thing I’m a little curious about: was the sudden boom in monster comics in the ’70s just due to the Comics Code loosening up and creators wanting to play with the new toys, or was there a more general monster boomlet in the wider culture (as there had been 10-15ish years earlier, when the old Universal movies started showing up on TV?)

BTW, I believe the Marvel “Zuvembie” was part of an attempt to push the envelope on what the Code would allow that took place *before* the Code was changed to permit “classic monsters.”

EDIT after looking stuff up: No, I’m apparently wrong – “zombies” were ruled out as they didn’t have the requisite “literary” imprimatur of Dracula, Frankenstein, et al. Marvel’s “Simon Garth, the Living Zombie” apparently only showed up in Marvel’s non-Code magazine line (at least until long after the ’70s.)

This is all pretty apocryphal, but I heard the Marvel Monster books of the early seventies were an attempt to manufacture a fad (in comics, if not in culture in general.)

I’d always assumed it was mostly due to the Code loosening up, with a little dash of “a few old monster-movie fans in the Marvel Bullpen who’d been waiting for their chance.” But I’ll admit, I’m woefully under-researched on the topic.

If I ever get a gig writing for Marvel, BTW, I’m going to do a story about someone resurrecting the living dead using a technique so horrifying, practicioners of magic banded together to forbid it. “They’re making zombies?” “Worse. They’re making…zuvembies.”

“Worse. They’re making…zuvembies.”

Who, the Maggia?

It seems DC didn’t do a whole lot (if anything?) to take advantage of the “monster liberation” allowed by the changes to the Code. Which would suggest it probably was a pro-active attempt by Marvel, not so much taking advantage of some broader monster boomlet. (Actually, come to think of it, this would’ve been going on during the time Hammer’s monster movie series was *dying out*, to take one example.)

Seems like it worked out surprisingly well for Marvel, though!

The monster trend at Marvel wasn’t just limited to using classic monsters; there was also the trend toward monsterizing existing characters (the Beast and Tigra being the most prominent). DC did have some titles that could be seen as a response to this trend, although some of the most obvious didn’t come out until the early ’80s (such as “I…Vampire” in House of Secrets, and Night Force; “American Gothic” in Moore’s Swamp Thing also used take on classic monsters that wouldn’t have been allowed under the older Code).

Then again, a number of Marvel’s characters have their roots in monster/horror comic tropes (the Hulk, Ant-Man, Spider-Man, even the Fantastic Four and Iron Man if you look at them right), while DC’s characters drew more from science fiction, so it may just have been a better fit in the Marvel universe.

That’s an interesting point – also, Marvel had a wealth of “monster” comics from the ’50s that could be profitably re-exploited as part of a monster/horror line (also largely science-fictional in nature, but still probably a better fit than DC’s similar library material.)