Werewolf by Night #11 - Comes the Hangman!

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the arcane sorcery of Patreon.

***

As very long-term readers will know, I always view Werewolf by Night as being the most consistently forgettable book I've ever encountered. Many issues did I own. Zero stories do I recall.

And here's another issue, from my salad days, whose contents I've totally forgotten.

Granted, its battle against forgettability isn't helped by having, possibly, the most generic cover any werewolf comic could ever fear to have.

But that's just the outside. What happens when I plunge inside?

This is what happens.

Some people called The Committee are electrocuting Phillip Russell's nipples.

Phillip Russell is the father of our hero, and they want info out of him about his son.

Meanwhile, his son Jack's in the process of moving into a new home in an apartment block where every female inhabitant lusts after him, upon sight.

Unfortunately, Jack's clearly the absent-minded type because so wrapped up is he in making his flat a desirable place to live that he forgets he's going to turn into a werewolf the moment the sun sets and, with no plan in place as to what to do when that happens, he heads down to the beach to get away from people.

This turns out to be a mistake because no sooner has he completed his transformation than a bunch of beach-partying body-builders decide he's trying to crash their fun and set out to beat him up.

At last, after eleven issues, the werewolf has finally encountered someone he can win a fight against - a group of people from a walk of life that's notoriously terrified of getting bruises - and only the arrival of the police saves the partyers from a fate no better or worse than death, which is death.

But, if things are bad for body-builders, things are even worse for the criminal under-dregs of Los Angeles, as there's a madman on the loose.

He's the Hangman - and he makes the Punisher look well-balanced.

His mind warped from watching too many movies, he's in the habit of rescuing females from street criminals and then locking those females in his dungeon, for their own good.

Inevitably, it's only a matter of pages before werewolf and psychopath bump into each other and, thus, begin a fight that's not exactly epic but does climax with the villain hanging the werewolf from a street lamp

To Be Continued!

If Werewolf by Night tales are always forgettable, I do tend to find them strangely enjoyable.

The protagonist's never impressive, being, as I've said before, the Hulk without the strength and vocabulary and this issue he's even less impressive than normal.

Thanks to a clear urge to portray him sympathetically, writer Marv Wolfman goes to great pains, via both thought balloons and captions, to point out the werewolf doesn't want to fight or hurt anyone and is only ever acting in self-defence, even though Gil Kane and Tom Sutton are drawing him to look the most savage and sinister I've ever seen him.

For instance, at the climax of his battle with body-builders, we're informed by Wolfman that the werewolf's only attacking a cop in order to snatch his gun from him, when the pictures show no sign of him snatching the gun and depict the policeman, at the end of it all, clearly dead, on the ground, with his gun still in his hand. I can't help feeling this is the equivalent of a parent telling their child that their suddenly disappeared pet has gone away to live on a farm.

But it could be argued that it's probably best to read this issue without reading the words and just concentrate on the pictures, which are great.

They're great because Gil Kane's always a reliable story-teller and Tom Sutton was born to do horror.

Thus, we get a visual depiction of the beast as a creature that could readily tear men's throats out.

The bad guy's also appealing. He may have those hints of the Punisher about him but even that character would view him as a lunatic cursed with a totally delusional take on the world. Why is his main method of killing people the use of a scythe, when he's called the Hangman? I've no idea but it does, at least, lend him an air of menace.

So, a werewolf vs a madman with a gardening implement, what more could you want of a comic?

Nothing. That's what.

It's just a shame that a werewolf is such a terrible protagonist for a comic because he can't actually do the things a werewolf is meant to do.

Like murdering people.