The Wolf with the Red Roses

 

I think the only time I didn't like Saturdays was when I worked Fixed Weekends on Directory Enquiries the last time I was a student, 11 years ago. Apart from being Doctor Who day, off and on for decades, it was a day for discovering old pop culture on tv, like  Down Among the Z-Men and Buster Crabbe's Flash Gordon, in 1975 and 76; the day of the summer Horror Double Bills on BBC2; the day UK Marvel Weeklies arrived at our local shop.

Today sees the first of a couple of posts on the monster-hero popularised by Marvel and inspired by the very Universal movies that frequently comprised half of those double bills.

The Thing and the Hulk, in particular, drew upon the pathos and power of Karloff's creature. By the very beginning of comics' Bronze Age, The Monster of Frankenstein, Dracula and a Werewolf By Night had escaped the moonlit moors of cheap tv packages. They joined Marvel's homegrown horrors, like Morbius and the Man-Thing in monthly and bi-monthly comics as headline stars.

A very few years later Marvel's biggest star of the early 70s, the Amazing Spider-Man, would share cover-space with Count Dracula and that monologuing Werewolf By Night. But just as he encountered his own vampiric villain, Spidey would gain a lycantrhopic antagonist too.

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The debut of the Man-Wolf and his continuing adventures in Creatures on the Loose can be found in an eponymous trade paperback. I bought in October last year for Hallowe'en reading but I'm finally posting about it today. 

A very young Gerry Conway had just taken over the writing duties on Spider-Man in 1972 and after ten issues, his most infamous coup was the nightmarish death of Gwen Stacy, a shocking storyline revisited most recently in the 2014 movie Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Artists Gil Kane and Ross Andru aided Conway by ushering in a paranoid and grotesque new era for Spidey; amongst their monstrous new menaces, was Col.John Jameson. Formerly infected by alien "spores" and transformed into a berserker, in an early John Romita story, a covert moon mission had led to a symbiotic relationship between Jameson and a mysterious moon rock.

I'm not clear why Marvel felt the need for an icy-blue, sci-fi werewolf when Spidey had already met the company's supernatural wolfman Jacob "Jack Russell" Russoff. 

The almost Wildean coincidence of alien body horror for Jameson can be overlooked given his familial relationship with Spidey's newspaper nemesis, J. Jonah Jameson.

I first read "The Mark of the Man-Wolf" and "Wolf at Bay" in the landscape format Super Spider -Man with The Super Heroes in June of 1976, just at the end of my first year in secondary school. Those issues were edited by future Pet Shop Boy, Neil Tennant; the landscape format allowed for several series, like Thor, and Iron Man, stablemates since 1973, and also Dr. Strange and the Marvel Two -in-One team-up series, starring the Thing (another huge Marvel monster-star). The drawback was the colour stories being reprinted in tiny, black and white frames or reproduced a bit crudely as widescreen spreads.

However, Kane's melodramatic and dynamic style depicts both a realistically grief-stricken Peter Parker, lashing out under rain-streaked skies and the crouching night beast in his tattered "special outfit", which failed to shield him from his lunar trigger. The art, finished in the first part by John Romita, has a gritty, urban quality where the cityscape confines Peter but is a hunting ground for the Man-Wolf.

The second part of the story is drawn by Ross Andru who depicted bizarre creatures in Wonder Woman and the Metal Men for DC. His version of Harry Osborn is slowly but clearly losing his mind and his torment is a clever counterpoint to the violent father-son struggle of Jameson pere et fils.

The pair try to communicate as John Jameson recounts some details of his secret mission and how the moon rock he stole and had made into a pendant has fused with his flesh. Conway makes clear that the toxic masculinity ( not a term used in the Bronze Age, natch) of their relationship prevents Jonah from getting the help he needs.

The story reaches a climax as Spider-Man tries to save damsel in distress Kristine Saunders from her werewolf fiance. The conflict ends when Spidey pulls off Jameson's moon-rock pendant, ripping away at the fur and skin of his throat. This comic was repackaged as a read-along lp audio adventure by Power Records and allegedly, the accompanying howl at that moment was gruesome.

The shock ending resembles similar climaxes for villains like the Kangaroo and the Grizzly in future Conway stories. Jump scares like these would continue in mainstream Marvels through '73 and '74 ( the dessication of Suwan in Captain America 167, for example.)

But unlike those stories, the ending is open enough to allow for a rematch. Kristine appears shocked, childlike and barely responsive as her fiance reverts to human form, presumably suffering significant blood loss. Spidey throws the moon rock in the East River and instructs JJJ to fetch a doctor.

The tone of the story, like its successors, is downbeat and somewhat cynical. While Parker was always depicted as one of life's schlubs by Stan Lee and Romita, Conway's version is angry and traumatised. It may be a bit pretentious but Peter Parker could be symbolic of middle-class youth in the America of Nixon and Viet Nam.

The rematch I spoke of was scheduled for a "special issue" and we'll look at that, next time. Tamam Shud!

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