Outside of his own titles, Jack has weaved his way through a number of other Marvel comic books over the years, such as Spider-Woman, Moon Knight, West Coast Avengers, X-Factor, Marvel Zombies and Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme. In 2009 there was the the four-part Dead of Night Featuring Werewolf by Night as part of Marvel's MAX imprint, providing an alternate and mature take on the character.
On his eighteenth birthday Jack Russell finds he has inherited the curse of the werewolf, and has to battle an array of villains, ranging from vampires to gorgons to circus folk, most of which need him in some way or another for the execution of their Evil Plan. During The Dark Age of Comic Books, he turned into a bit of an anti-hero, Walking the Earth and fighting rogue supernatural creatures who give the rest of them a bad name. As of the 2010s Jack mainly serves as a member of the Legion of Monsters, protecting other monsters from being killed and providing a safe haven for them.
See this page
for a full list of Werewolf by Night's comic book appearances in chronological order, up to 2008.
The werewolf appears in the Super Hero Squad universe: in The Superhero Squad Show season 2 episode "This Man-Thing, This Monster", and as a playable character in Super Hero Squad Online. He is also seen in Jill Valentine's ending in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and appears in the Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) TV-show voiced by Ross Lynch as the leader of the Howling Commandos. A film adaptation was in the works in 2005 with cast and crew to be announced "shortly" and filming to start somewhere in 2006, but for reasons unknown nothing was heard from it again. Until 2022, when Marvel announced a “Special Presentation” for October 7 exclusively on Disney+ where he was potrayed by Gael Garcia Bernal.
Werewolf by Night provides examples of:
- Aborted Arc: WbN vol.1 ends with Buck being attacked and his house burning down, setting up for a new storyline. After the book was cancelled, this was hastily resolved in Marvel Team-Up #93.
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer:
- Sarnak's base of operations in vol. 1.
- In WbN vol.2 Jack uses them to lock himself up during the full moon. May be justified in that Jack works as a sanitation engineer and thus has knowledge of where to go, along with the access to it. Still, it means he stands knee-deep in Grimy Water for three nights a month but doesn't experience any drawbacks. Not even with that nose of his.
- Alien Sky: Biphasia has two moons.
- And I Must Scream: Being turned into a stone statue for all eternity, but still being able to think. "The agony of life was over… the nightmare of hell was just begun!"
- Artifact Title: It's been quite a while since Jack was restricted to transforming at night.
- Badass Longcoat: Most prominently seen in volume 2. In Wolverine First Class #11 Jack pulls one out of a dumpster.
- Badass Normal: Even though he's regularly tied up and/or knocked unconscious, Buck Cowan deserves credit for willingly going head to head against super-powered beings for Jack's sake.
- Bears Are Bad News: Jack had to once battle a bear that had silver claws on its front paws.
- Beneath the Earth: Crawl down through the mist near Devil's Grotto and you'll end up in space.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Off-screen in Legion of Monsters: Werewolf by Night.
- Blasphemous Boast: It got Aelfric burned at the stake as seen in WbN vol.1 #3.
- Boom, Headshot!: Deadpool blows apart Jack's head with a shotgun for sleeping with his wife Shiklah.
- Breaking the Bonds: Jack is tied down regularly, but easily breaks free when the moon rises.
- Breakout Character: Moon Knight was originally a villain who appeared in a mere two issues of the series. He proved so popular with the fans that Marvel began giving him guest appearances in other titles, and eventually, his own ongoing series.
- The Bro Code: Averted. Jack sleeps with his best friend Morbius' ex but nothing is made of it.
- By the Lights of Their Eyes: In Shadows & Light #3 Jack's face gets obscured by shadows; his eyes are glowy white dots.
- Character Title
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Jack's girlfriend Terri last appears in WbN vol.1 #2, and is then never seen again. Most characters from volume 1 are never mentioned after the series' end, like Buck, Philip and Raymond Coker.
- Comic-Book Time: Lissa and her daughter have aged much quicker than Jack. Lissa, about a year younger than her brother, has an 18-year-old daughter. Yet Jack still looks like he is somewhere in his early/mid thirties.
- Cool Bike: Jack rides one.
- Cool Old Guy: Buck, although he is only 'old' in comparison to the other characters.
- Couldn't Find a Lighter: Downplayed in volume 2 #6. Jack asks Ghost Rider if he's got a light and it looks like he's going to use the other's flaming head — but then lights his cigarette with the candle on the bar table.
- Crossover: Many, most frequently with Morbius, Spider-Woman, Moon Knight and Ghost Rider. The werewolf has fought the Hulk on at least two occasions.
- Cursed with Awesome: Zig Zagged. At their creation, werewolves weren't "cursed" but merely given a useful ability; it later became a curse when humans got out of touch with nature and the way to control those abilities got lost over time. So when Jack becomes a werewolf on his eighteenth birthday, it really is a curse: forced to painfully transform three times a month with no control. But when he finally does learn how to control it, he starts to enjoy the abilities it gives him, seeing it as being given the best of both worlds: "Your curse can be a blessing." Unfortunately, the curse seems to have a way of striking back. You can transform any time you want? Your uncontrolled werewolf form during the full moons will become stronger and more violent. You're happy you won't have to change at all anymore, not even during the full moon? You'll lose the ability, and from now on you'll be forced to have visions of hell when you transform.
- Cut Short: WbN vol. 2 was canceled due to poor sales; the story was continued in Strange Tales, which was canceled as well after two issues. This leaves many plot threads that are never resolved, most notably the ramifications of the cure gone wrong.
- Damsel in Distress: Lissa, Jack's sister whom he often has to save.
- Dangerous Eighteenth Birthday: The werewolf curse present in the Russoff bloodline comes into effect on the bearer's eighteenth birthday.
- Deathbed Confession: Jack's mother tells him the truth about his father right before she dies.
- Death Is Cheap: Jack dies in Morbius #12; by #13, he's already been resurrected.
- The Deep South: The setting of Legion of Monsters: Werewolf by Night.
- Deface of the Moon: Jack dreams about several large companies using the moon as the world's biggest billboard; it upsets him tremendously that someone would deface "his love" like that. He is glad when he wakes up because he's sure such a thing could never happen in real life, apparently oblivious to the newspaper with a headline reading "NASA says ads on moon a possibility" lying on his bed.
- Depending on the Artist:
- Jack's hair is stated to be a light red, but it's frequently shown as blond, dark red, auburn, brown or even black. Likewise, his eyes are blue in writing, but frequently green or brown in print.
- How good-looking Jack is varies wildly as well. In Legion of Monsters: Werewolf by Night he could pass for a male model, while in Marvel Zombies 4 he looks like a ragged bum you wouldn't want to run in to after dark. Put them together and they're hardly recognizable as the same character, even though the issues are only two years apart.
- Depending on the Writer:
- Two storylines published near-simultaneously feature two very different versions of Jack: in Punisher v7 #11-14 and Legion of Monsters #1-4 he's a hotheaded Jerkass who's usually in for a fight; in X-Factor #222-224 he's a mildly funny, well-mannered guy protecting others.
- Jack speaks without an accent up until Morbius the Living Vampire #12, where he suddenly start using colloquialisms like the contraction "ain't" and dropping g's at the end of words. From there on out his accent fluctuates between 'school book' and 'street thug'.
- How werewolves act, think and function can vary from issue to issue. Are they creatures that just want to find a forest to run in and be left alone by everyone? Killing machines with an insatiable lust for blood? Predators simply looking for something to eat? Or wild humans with certain primal traits amplified? Can they think or not, talk or not, and do they remember their full moon actions the following morning or not? How much control does Jack have over his actions when transformed, with or without a full moon?
- For the first several years of the title, there was a fundamental uncertainty about Jack's mental relationship to the werewolf. Was it a dark side of his own character or a completely separate entity? Different writers came down on different sides of this question, and one of the most visible signs of this confusion was inconsistent narration. Jack frequently handled his own narration in the first person. Sometimes this would include the werewolf's actions; at other times he would speak of the wolf strictly in the third person. And sometimes the entire comic would be thrown into third-person omniscient narration, muddying the waters further.
- Destination Defenestration / Super Window Jump: "Window smashing is [the werewolf's] specialty."
- Disabled Snarker: Freddie in WbN v2.
- Disappeared Dad: Jack grew up without his biological father, who died when he was a child.
- Dream Within a Dream: Midnight Sons Unlimited #7 is this.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Leading up to his 18th birthday, Jack has dreams of himself as a werewolf that get increasingly worse.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Jack has a habit of this in WbN v2, often seen with a bottle of bourbon. Apparently he has promised his girlfriend Roxanna many times he'd stop drinking, but doesn't.
- Eldritch Abomination: Topaz' soul; the creature near Devil's Grotto.
- Every Car Is a Pinto: Many cars featured throughout the series blow up upon crashing. One even explodes upon hitting a couple of trashcans.
- Fainting: All women in volume 1 are prone to this.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: The original 1970s run of had plenty of these moments. In the Giant-Size Werewolf #5 tale "The Plunder of Paingloss", at the climax of one of the darker and more surreal stories in this series (which, for its era, was saying something), furry Jack Russel gets his claws into Sardanus, a gigantic demigod who's revealed to be in reality a skinny dude in tighty-whitey briefs. The enraged werewolf "ripped him to shreds anyway" in a red-washed panel that featured the near-naked dude straddled by the werewolf, whose bloody claws were ripping the dude's belly open. The ribbons of gore and screaming look of horror on the face of Sardanus were in no way mitigated by the EC Comics device of single-hue coloring. The next panel featured a triumphant Paingloss and the werewolf standing over Sardanus' literally gutted body, as seen from a foreground view over the dead man's shredded abdomen. For 1975, this was about as terrifying as Code-approved comics could get. Someone at the editorial office was asleep at the switch when that issue went through!
- A Friend in Need: Jack toward Morbius, and vice versa. Very notably in Morbius the Living Vampire #12-15, when Morbius is resurrected without his soul.Jacob: I—I have to separate myself from this madness.Jack: Coward! I guess we see who Morbius's real friends are now. I'm going after him. He needs help.
- Friend-or-Idol Decision: In WbN vol.1 #5 Jack is promised a cure that may prevent his sister from becoming a werewolf too – but he'll have to kill a senile old man for it.
- Fully-Embraced Fiend: Jack is this to Morbius in Morbius v1 #12, going so far as to say the vampire should just go with the hunger, not against it. Morbius shoots back Jack is the one who needs help, not he. Several years later, it seems Morbius was right.
- Funetik Aksent: Many characters have them in volume 1, most notably Joshua Kane, who speaks with a Southern drawl. Jack develops one after Morbius the Living Vampire v1 #12.
- Fur Against Fang: Played straight with his battle against Dracula in The Tomb of Dracula. Otherwise mostly averted: while Jack does occasionally fight them, his best friend is a vampire(-ish), and his niece is a half-vampire.
- Gentle Giant: Elmo, who was part of the circus sideshow that kidnapped Jack.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: The werewolf's eyes are usually a glowy red or yellow, but sometimes a combination of the two or pure white as well. (According to the Marvel Handbook they should red.)
- Hereditary Curse: The werewolf curse affects every descendant of Gregory Russoff, Jack's father. In reality, the curse is even more widespread: every descendant of the 18th century Grigori Russoff carries it in their blood, but with them it remains dormant.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Buck nearly dies protecting Buttons from Jack during a full moon, shielding her body with his own and taking all the blows.
- Humans Are Morons: For a while Jack sees normal people as monkeys and going to places as bars as going to the zoo. At least he admits it sounds egotistical.
- Hybrid Monster: Lissa is transformed into a were-demon after being simultaneously hit by the light of the full moon and Glitternight's light.
- Hybrid-Overkill Avoidance: Jack gets infected with the zombie virus, but because his biochemistry changes when he transforms it remains limited to his human form. So hitting the human zombie with magically created moonlight gives back a healthy (but feral) werewolf.
- I Am What I AmRhona: How do you live with it? With—being what you are? How can you stand it?Jack: What's the other option? Trying to be something I'm not?
- I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Averted. Jack loves his father, even if he passed the curse onto him.
- I Kiss Your Foot: Jack kisses Martine Bancroft's foot after a romp. It's definitely meant as erotic.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Buck tries this occasionally, to little avail.
- I'm Having Soul Pains: Part of the transformation; see Painful Transformation below.
- Inconsistent Spelling: The spelling of Jack's father's first name alternates between Philip and Phillip. Buck Cowan's last name is misspelled as Cohen in one issue.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Played with in that Jack doesn't die but turns into an undead instead, in Marvel Zombies.
- Intergenerational Friendship: 19-year-old Jack and 40-something Buck.
- Interspecies Romance: Almost all of Jack's longer-term girlfriends are human. He's also slept with a succubus (Deadpool's wife Shiklah); it's implied he's had threesomes with her and a gorgon.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Raymond Coker seems like an antisocial loner with a personal vendetta against Jack, but it turns out he has a good reason for it: he’s a werewolf as well. After he has been cured, the very first thing he thinks is wanting to be turned into a werewolf again, just so Jack would be able to kill him and be cured as well.
- Kind Restraints: Buck locks up Jack on several occasions to keep both him and everyone else safe, but it's usually to little avail: either the werewolf breaks out or Buck opens the door to check on him. Later Jack takes to locking himself up, but sometimes still requests others' help — like Bruce Banner's.
- Let's You and Him Fight: When Jack runs into Iron Man, he is mistakes for a criminal and they start to fight.
- Like Father, Like Son: "Ah, Jacob—you're a big lad, eh? Big like your father—bright like your mother!"
- Love at First Punch: Martine burns Jack's hand with a cigarette; he transforms, ready to rip her apart. The scene cuts away and the next time we see them they've just had sex.
- Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Marlene, Miles Blackgar's daughter.
- Magical Land: Biphasia, an alternate time/world/dimension (even Jack isn't sure). It's split in two: on one side it's perpetually day, on the other perpetually night.
- Major Injury Underreaction: After being run through with several silver katanas in Punisher vol.7 #13: "Acupuncture. Tickles."
- Messy Hair: In volume 2 it's a good indicator of Jack's state of mind.
- Mirrors Reflect Everything: At the end of WbN vol.1 #1, Marlene and her father are turned to stone when she looks into the mirror.
- Monster Mash: The werewolf has fought vampires, the Hunchback of the Notre Dame, gorgons, zombies, golems, the monster of Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde and more. Jack is part of the Legion of Monsters; taken up to eleven when the Legion governs Monster Metropolis.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Maria utters these words almost exactly in Giant-Size Werewolf #3 after the insanity is cleared from her mind and realizes she nearly killed her grandson.
- Name of Cain: Joshua Kane, hunter of big game who decides it'll be fun to hunt Jack, and his brother Luther.
- Nebulous Evil Organisation: The Committee, which seeks to create an economic boom by causing incidents and fear.
- Nephewism: Jack's mother remarried her late husband's brother, meaning Jack's stepfather is also his uncle.
- New-Age Retro Hippie: Hippies pop up here and there in volume 1 as targets of mockery.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Many villains (accidentally or intentionally) kill their accomplices, leaving Jack with at least a little less blood on his hands.
- Nonhumans Lack Attributes: In the few occasions that the werewolf isn't wearing any pants he doesn't have any genitals. Averted in the Franken-Castle storyline, where the werewolf's nipples are visible even despite the fur.
- Not Using the "Z" Word: The zuvembies are very obviously zombies, but due to the Comic Code's restrictions, they couldn't be called that.Jack: "You mean they're zo—" SKRASH
- Odd Friendship: With Morbius.
- Off with His Head!: Werewolf Super-Strength enables Jack to rip off a mook's head with his bare hands, as seen in Punisher v7 #11
- Our Souls Are Different: Souls pop up regularly in the series. They can be transformed, for example into chains or Eldritch Abominations. Topaz lost part of her soul, but it doesn't seem to change her at all. Lissa loses her soul as well, but it is replaced with the soul of Taboo, again seemingly without consequences. In WbN vol.1 #42 it's implied Fire-Eyes now inhabits Jack's soul.
- Pædo Hunt: Jack goes after a pedophile in Shadows & Light #3.
- Parental Abandonment: Jack's biological father died when he was a child; his mother dies in the very first issue.
- People Jars: After being infected with the undead virus, Morbius keeps Jack in one, as seen in The Amazing Spider-Man #622.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: What the intended movie adaptation was going to be. Robert Nelson Jacobs' (writer of Chocolat) script was about Jack "falling in love with a beautiful but deadly Bounty Hunter".
- Precision F-Strike: Jack uses "stinking" for the longest time, and if he swears, it's mostly Symbol Swearing. So when he finally drops his first all-out F-bombs (albeit in the Alternate Universe of Dead of Night featuring Werewolf by Night), it's pretty significant: "You fuckers. You lousy, lousy fuckers."
- Psychic Powers: Topaz uses them to keep the werewolf in check.
- Purple Prose: Some of the descriptions in volume 1 are definitely… unique.
- Rape and Revenge: In Shadows & Light #3 it's revealed Jack was molested as a boy; he goes after a pedophile partly out of revenge.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: According to the Marvel handbook, this should be the case: the werewolf's eyes are yellow when Jack is transformed and fully in control of himself; when he transforms involuntarily and becomes a dangerous, wild animal, they are red. Unfortunately the colorists don't quite adhere to this and the two colors often get switched around.
- Religion of Evil: The Brotherhood of Baal in Giant Size Werewolf #2, among others.
- Rescue Sex: Subverted in Midnight Sons Unlimited #7. Jack steps in during a robbery on a grocery store; afterwards the girl behind the register asks how she can ever repay him. He gets free groceries.
- Scenery Censor: On the rare occasion that Jack is naked before or after his transformations, he is covered by shadows or objects.
- Series Continuity Error: In Spider-Woman vol.1 #49, it's said six years have passed since Jack's inherited the curse, meaning he's 24. But in Marvel Comics Presents #57, which takes place later in the continuity, it's said Werewolf by Night vol. 1 #6 was only 2 years ago, which would make him 20.
- The '70s: As WbN vol.1 was published between 1972 and 1977, what did you expect?
- The Shadow Knows: In several panels in Shadows & Light #3 a human Jack casts a werewolf shadow right before nightfall.
- Shout-Out: To some of the Hollywood horror greats, like Lon Chaney Jr., Boris Karloff and Maria Ouspenskaya, as well as the Marx Brothers, Errol Flynn, Marlon Brando, Humphrey Bogart and The Rolling Stones. In Ghost Rider vol.2 #55 Jack wears a shirt of The Howling.
- Speech Bubbles: Occur in many variations, changing from series to series. For example, in WbN vol.1 #42-43, Jack's speech bubbles get thick, jagged edges when in werewolf form (a police officer describes it as "Mercedes McCambridge in The Exorcist"). In X-Factor his speech bubbles are black with white lettering.
- Stealth Pun: Jack is said to own a place on Landon Road. The late Michael Landon starred in I Was a Teenage Werewolf.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: Very common.
- Stock Shout-Outs: A poster reading "See you next Wednesday" appears in Jack's room in Midnight Sons Unlimited #7, which is director John Landis' Creator Thumbprint. Landis directed An American Werewolf in London.
- Suicide by Cop: Jack demands Morbius kill him during their Suicide Mission in Marvel Zombies 4 after he has been infected with the zombie virus. Morbius refuses.
- Suicide Mission: It's implied the risk was one of the reasons Jack joined Morbius' Midnight Sons mission in Marvel Zombies 4 in the first place.
- Taken for Granite: Everyone on the island is eventually turned into stone statues by Marlene.
- Taking the Bullet: Maria Russoff throws herself into the path of a silver knife meant for Jack.
- Tap on the Head: All. The. Time.
- These Hands Have Killed: After waking up next to a dead body in WbN v2 and telling his father he thinks he's killed someone.
- Threatening Shark: When Jack dives into the sea to hide from the cops in the earlier issues, he is attacked by a shark.
- Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Darkhold, originally Satanic scrolls that Jack's father had bound into a book. Reading it was the catalyst that awakened the werewolf curse in his blood.
- Transformation Sequence: It comes with the trade.
- Überwald: Transylvania, Jack's birthplace, visited on several occasions.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Jack can be rather harsh towards Morbius, yet Morbius still refers to Jack as his best friend. He even goes against direct orders and tries to save the werewolf after he has become infected with the zombie virus.
- Vampiric Werewolf: Nina Price is the niece of Jack Russell, the original Werewolf by Night. In her attempt to cure herself of her werewolf curse, Nina accidently caught the attention of a vampire, said vampire tried to turn her into one of his own. Instead he unintentionally altered the curse, so that Nina would turn into a Vampire by night. The only exceptions are the nights of the full moon, where she instead transforms into a white wolf.
- Voodoo Zombie: Although in volume 1 they're called Zuvembies due to the CCA's restrictions of that time.
- Weird Moon: The moon is full three times a month – on one occasion even four.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Sarnak has gathered an army of mind-controlled beings and has been after a werewolf for years... to fix the economy.
- Weirdness Censor: Averted for the most part. While a lot of people think the werewolf is a guy wearing a mask, they do catch on after they get a good look. And a lot of people suspect something weird is going on with Jack shortly after meeting him.
- Who Writes This Crap?! / Self-Deprecation: Jack takes a jab at Morbius, another comic book character owned by Marvel Comics: "Ha! You're such a cliché. So emo all the time about the tragedy of bloodlust like some bad Twilight fanfic."
- Writers Cannot Do Math: Going by the number of full moons that appear in WbN vol.1, several years must have passed, but Jack remains 19.
- You Killed My Mother: Jack suspects Philip Russell is responsible for his mother's death. He's not.
