Werewolf By Night

Continuing to follow the monster craze of the 70’s, Marvel again decided to put it’s stamp on another iconic character by re-imagining him as an anti-hero/superhero, which was their bread-and-butter. The result : WEREWOLF BY NIGHT!

To be fair, this version is not “The Wolfman”, really, as he was not connected to previous cinematic incarnations of the character.

The series name was suggested by Stan Lee and the initial creative team was Gerry Conway and Mike Ploog, who worked from a plot by Roy and Jean Thomas for the first issue.

Making his debut in Marvel Spotlight  #2 - #4 in 1971, and, proving popular, then moved to his own title in 1972, this werewolf was in fact Jacob “Jack” Russell (yup, a dog breed - coincidence?) Russell came from a lineage of werewolves, his father Gregor Russoff relocated his family to Los Angeles from Transylvania, giving his son an anglicised last name Russell, and giving his alias, Werewolf By Night a decidedly modern, American bent.

During the night of the full moon and the two nights surrounding it he is forced to mutate into a werewolf, a large, powerful form which is a hybrid of human and wolf, and loses his human intellect. Through a series of events, he is also capable of mutating voluntarily outside of the full moon, at which time he remains in control of himself.

As a werewolf, Jack gains the proportionate physical advantages of a nearly 7-foot-tall (2.1 m) wolf. In this form, he possesses superhuman strength, speed, stamina, durability, agility and reflexes. He possesses a superhuman sense of smell, which carries over to his human form. He has razor-sharp teeth and claws that are able to render light metals. The Werewolf is resistant to many forms of conventional injury and very difficult to kill by conventional means. Though he can be severely wounded, he recovers from non-fatal wounds much faster than a human would. He is vulnerable to magical attacks and, like all werewolves, he can be killed by weapons made of silver, due to its inherent mystical "purity".

Conway described working on the series as "a lot of fun" because the horror genre made a refreshing change from the superhero stories that had been the staple of mainstream comics for years.

Werewolf by Night was published for 43 issues and ran through March 1977. There are very collectible key issues within this run - in particular issues #32 and #33, which are the introduction and first 2 appearances by the wildly popular hero MOON KNIGHT!