Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Captain America (Werewolf Transformations)

Werewolves have appeared at least twice in Captain America, first in issue 164 from 1973.


The Captain's sidekick Falcon (aka Steve Wilson) gets captured by the villainess Nightshade and is injected with werewolf serum:



As you can see, he's more of a hairy hulk than a wolf monster, but I'm not complaining. Later on he reverts back to his old self:



The Captain's next run-in with werewolves occurred in 1992 and became notorious. Take a look at the cover of issue 405:



Once again, there's a villainess with a werewolf serum:





Fleeing from the hypnotic gaze of the villain, Capwolf runs outside, so the villains create more werewolves to catch him. I like that kind of logic:


Incidentally, an issue earlier the villains tried the werewolf serum on Wolverine, but it didn't work:

In issues 406 and 407, the main villain, called Druid, undergoes a very silly transformation of his own:



The baddie is of course defeated, but in order to keep up the craziness, Captain America's reversion to humanity is interrupted by the arrival of his evil clone!


You can see why "Capwolf" remains one of the most infamous comics of the 1990s. The plot and dialogue are sheer corn and Capwolf looks like an anthromorphic Golden Retriever. The whole thing was so terrible that people grew to like it. So in 2015 Capwolf was revived for the second Spider Island miniseries.

Like the first miniseries, the premise is that Manhattan's inhabitants have become mindless spider-people. In Spider Island 1, we first encounter see Jack Russell, aka Werewolf By Night, go from man-spider drone to werewolf:




In werewolf form he is no longer mind-controlled, which gives the normal heroes the idea of transforming Captain America and the Hulk (who've both been spiderized).





This wasn't the last of Capwolf either. Earlier this year, the Captain, who is now Steve Wilson, transformed yet again. Unfortunately, the story didn't have any transformation scenes and was played for smarmy laughs. But if you're curious you can read it here.

4 comments:

Ogrebear said...

Nice round up of Werewolves in Capt America.

Personally, I thought he should keep the Capwolf look...

Apuleius said...

Thanks Ogrebear! I quite liked the Capwolf design in the 2016 storyline--that was the only good thing in it. 80s Capwolf seems to have suffered from the dull yellow coloring and mediocre art.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of werewolves in the Marvel universe, does anyone remember this dream sequence where J. Jonah Jameson turned into Man-Wolf Sr.?

http://legacy.shadowlordinc.com/comic/1-MANWLF14.jpg

Been curious to which issue had that.

Anonymous said...

holy shit!!
rawr is op!