The Ugly American's Comfortably Bloated Halloween, part 2: More Werewolves!

Werewolf By Night # 14
Script: Marv Wolfman (no, I'm not kidding..that's his name)
Art: Mike Ploog/Frank Chiarmonte

Last week the Ugly American tackled some modern mob-type werewolves, and they were pretty darned good. If you want to travel to the center of my heart, though, it resides in a magical land called the Bronze Age.

I think a lot of people forget - there was a significant chunk of time when you couldn't publish profitable comics without the Comics Code seal of approval, and they had pretty much outlawed all horror elements from the medium. So in the 1970s, monster books were a delicious forbidden pleasure, and Marvel eased back into the genre with a pile of creature books like Tomb of Dracula, Frankenstein, Man-Thing, Zombie Tales, and of course Werewolf By Night.

The Marvel monster books were tame in comparison to the pre-code EC material that drove the genre underground, but still great fun. In the case of Werewolf By Night, the protagonist Jack Russell uses the wolf as an unwitting tool against evil. That's how you got around the code, of course - you kept the blood to a minimum, and you made sure the bad guys were getting the worst of it.

While the code did limit some of the overt sex and violence, Werewolf by Night brought healthy dollops of both in a very attractive package. My favorite cover in the series is # 14, with a classic Mike Ploog werewolf facing off against the diabolical mage Taboo and his lovely assistant Topaz caught in the middle. Delicious!

How do I adore Mike Ploog's art?...let me count the ways. First of all, his wolf creature is BAD ASS, ready to rip, and a powerfully lithe figure. A lot of guys want to communicate power through size, (and that can work, of course) but what a great choice Ploog makes to eschew that in favor of a more natural figure. Look at the way he's posed the Wolf, especially with the right arm in a posture that human beings just don't take. Green pants aside, that's a beast you do NOT want to mess with, and you don't need the monster bulked out to convey it.

Ploog is communicating everything you need to know about the character through the eyes. The Wolf and Taboo have the narrow menacing eyes, and Taboo's overly-developed arched brows take him over the top. Topaz has the overly-large manga style eyes, partly because that character's heart is about to pound out of her chest, and partly because it's an old trick to establish a warm openness to the character.

A couple other items strike me about the art in general, and that cover in particular. LOVE the Kirby Crackle floating out of that cauldron in the back, classic 1970s! I like the accentuated chubby fingers on Taboo, as well. I guess I wouldn't describe Ploog's style as "cartoony", but some of the features are a little exaggerated (in the best ways) and it tends to soften things a bit.

Again, the publishers have the code to deal with. You don't necessarily want your art team to take a "John Buscema on Savage Sword of Conan" approach. It would be gorgeous, but it would feel too real...not safe enough. In my opinion Mike Ploog's pencils are perfect because he's revelling in the horror elements without skeeving you out in a Crossed sort of way. That's not a knock on Crossed, mind you, there's absolutely a place for that book. A 1974 spinner rack at a 7-11 is not one of those places, though.

The story is easy to grasp and recapped nicely on page one. The basics are these - Jack Russell is cursed to become a Werewolf By Night, and he's currently in possession of a book of dark sorcery called The Darkhold. Taboo wants it for nefarious purposes, Jack doesn't want him to have it. Jack is kind of swaying his assistant Topaz over to the side of angels, and Taboo has somehow transported the mind of Jack's hated stepfather into a monstrous golem.

Let the battle begin...ding! ding! To up the ante, sunrise hits the venue in the middle of round five, and now Jack has to battle Algon without the benefit of The Wolf to help.

That's the tip of the iceberg...there's a ton of story in this issue. I won't be handing out any spoilers here, but I can tell you that tension abounds in this issue. Neither Jack nor the Wolf like Taboo very much. Topaz is torn between the devil she knows and a possible life with Jack she may not fit into. Jack likes Topaz, but how in the world could he ever trust her? Jack is always at odds with the Wolf. (although sometimes he slips up and says "I" in the voice overs when the Wolf is acting) He can't stand his stepfather, because he killed his birth mother. But he can't just let the guy get stuck inside a monster, either, can he?

The key to the old (and also the new) Marvel books is that relentless wave of dramatic tension. Things rarely work out perfectly for these characters, there are always urgent and generally relatable problems to be solved. I feel like I'm out of control sometimes. I think the girl I like is really terrible for me and has daddy issues. My stepfather's mind is trapped in a magical killing machine. Nobody is building to an "event" here, where everything we know about Jack "changes forever". It's a story about a guy with interesting problems, and he tries to solve them.

And by the end of the issue, some of those problems have clean resolutions. Some of the problems have become more complicated. Then we're on to the next thing, which in this case is a trip to Transylvania to square off against Dracula himself. Stuff is moving, baby! That's Bronze age Marvel comics at work.

But wait...there's more. You'd be getting your 20 cents worth just with the Marv Wolfman story and Mike Ploog art. But what if I told you that the Record Club of America was offering 6 LPs or 5 cassette tapes for only 99 cents, with no further obligation to purchase anything else? The correct answer is: JACKPOT!!!

They weren't offering any musical dregs, either, my friend. We're talking about epic material like Helen Reddy, Donny Osmond, and Three Dog Night. Now those are treasures.

You don't see too much of that in today's comics. Mostly because nobody makes cassette tapes any more. You get a lot of house ads in today's comics, and you get some video game ads. I like the old books better with horrifyingly stupid Hostess comics, and Sea Monkeys, (never had the balls to order them) or 7,312 green plastic army men for $2.00 is always good as well. I definitely ordered several billion of the green plastic army men. Were they more likely to get caught in the blades of the lawnmower, or my trachea? Pretty much a coin flip. Why was I sucking on military men with telescopic rifles, any way? Best not to ponder that, I think.

Let's change the subject and check out this Mike Ploog splash page, huh? Look how he's got the story elements of the panel lined up perfectly in that classic "Z" pattern that your eye (unless you've been reading manga your whole life) naturally wants to follow. You almost don't need the captions to figure out what's going on.

Taboo has called on the spectral avatar of his assistant Topaz and shot her mystically into Algon, who already has a disturbed mind inside. Ploog went trippy with the psychological battle; I think Algon's pained expression in the bottom left corner is just priceless. I think that's the kind of panel that the old Marvel Method invited an artist experiment with.

A full script writer might attempt something similar, but I think they're going to get it wrong more often than not. Both styles have advantages, but the older I get the more I see the value in the give-take-give approach. The writer designs a solid blueprint, the artist constructs it with real trench know-how, and then the writer takes that solid structure, sees how beautiful the construction team makes it, and then adds a little koi pond or tasteful rug to really bring the room together at the end. Sometimes when the blueprint guy tries to do the drywall...the whole thing comes down. Or looks ugly.

I love pretty much everything about these Bronze age gems, if you can't tell already. I like the letters page and Stan's soapbox. And hey, you didn't think Stan would let a page go by without a little cross-promoting of other Marvel titles, did you? Well, he doesn't. My favorite in this issue is a Conan advert letting you know about an upcoming tussle with "Thusla" Doom. And if you think he's bad news, you should see his cousin Thulsa. That guy was so formidable they had to get the voice of Darth Vader to play him.

Anywho. Halloween is a good excuse to revisit these treasures. If you're not occasionally going back and diving into some older comics, you're doing yourself a disservice.


COMING UP NEXT:

Nothing in this life could possibly prepare you for how awesome Afterlife With Archie is going to be. The first issue hits stands this Wednesday, October 9th!!!! No mortal is worthy to review such a macabre masterpiece....but lucky for you The Ugly American is prepared to venture where angels fear to tread. I'll be back with a full review soon!