Our Werewolves Are Different / Comic Books

• Age of the Wolf: The werewolves that show up to herald the end of humanity are initially fairly standard lycanthropes for the most part, turning at the sight of the full moon into bestial predators and spreading their infection through bites. Then over the course of a few decades the werewolves evolve from purely feral creatures to sapient Wolf Man people with their own civilization that aims to hunt down and replace the remaining humans. At one point the female Alpha also resurrects several buried werewolf corpses to lay a trap for the heroine.
• The Astounding Wolf-Man focuses on a man who, after being infected with lycanthropy on a family vacation, uses it as a means by which he can become a superhero. His werewolf powers give him super strength and healing, but only work at night. Also, on the night of the full moon he enters a feral state and can no longer control his actions.
• In Beasts of Burden, it's a demon possessing someone's body, doesn't seem to be restricted by moon cycle when taking over the body, and it gives the person the ability to talk to animals. Silver bullets are still the way to go though.
• In "'X'-tra 'X'" in Creepy Magazine #34, a mutated form of Klinefelter syndrome causes the extra X chromosome to be affected by the full moon's gravity and produce a certain fluid which is responsible for lycanthropic transformations.
• Werewolves in Crimson were descendants of Cain after he murdered Abel under the influence of an angelic sword that made him kill his brother. Their condition is seemingly hereditary rather than transmitted through bites like vampirism. They are capable of transforming at will and retain some sense of control and speech in transformed form.
• DC Comics has several examples:
  • Batman: Anthony Lupus is an Olympic athlete who is given a serum by Dr. Milo that transforms him into a werewolf on every full moon. The first appearance of Lupus was loosely adapted into the Batman: The Animated Series episode "Moon of the Wolf", in which Lupus' name is changed into the slightly less obvious^note although remember who the mythical founders of Rome were raised by Anthony Romulus.
  • Lar-On is a Kryptonian werewolf fought by Superman and Batman in World's Finest (1941) #256 (way back in the Bronze Age) and by Supergirl in Supergirl (Rebirth). His lycanthropy is a sickness caused by Red Kryptonite poisoning (Red-K does weird things to Kryptonians as opposite to the lethal and most famous green type). He turns into a muscled, huge, purple-red, humanoid wolf with fiery Eye Beams.
  • In Adventure Comics #387, Supergirl is accidentally turned into a wolf-girl◊, while a wolf-girl Supergirl from a lupine alternate universe is turned into a human.
  • Young All-Stars, a companion book to All-Star Squadron, has the rather unusual Sea Wolf in Axis Amerika, in that he's an aquatic werewolf who acts as an Evil Counterpart of Aquaman. His transformations seem willful, as he reverts back to human form when knocked unconscious.
  • Hellblazer: Brother Donatus Chalice is a Hound of God variant, seeing as he's a monk in his human form. The only thing keeping his transformations during the full moon in check is the crucifix that he wears at all times. If provoked into anger in his human form, elements of his wolf form may push through, like his nails turning into claws and his incisor teeth lengthening.
  • Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!: One storyline features a wolf who, thanks to a magical artifact, transforms under a full moon into a "wuz-wolf", a feral-looking human being. The Zoo Crew's Earth having no humans, who are considered only to be fictional creatures, is noted at several points during the story.
  • House of Mystery: In the very allegorical story "Maidenhead", the Children of the Blue Gray's lycanthropy is sexual (it's unclear whether arousal leads to the change or vice versa, because as far as they're concerned it's the same thing), but also seems to be tied into their Crystal Dragon Mohammad religion.
  • The Warlord: Mikola Rostov is a Russian fencing instructor cursed to become a werewolf every full moon. Rostov followed his lover Mariah to the other-dimensional realm of Skartaris, hoping the perpetual sunlight would free him of his curse. He eventually went back in time to the age when the land was called Wizard World. There Jennifer Morgan cast a spell that cured him of his werewolf curse. However, he can still use his "wolf spirit" in battle.
  • Creature Commandos: Warren Griffith isn't a mythic werewolf, but rather one created by science. He lacks any of your typical werewolf weaknesses, and be can usually transform at will, but he'll also occasionally change at random due to flaws in the procedure that have him his powers. His wolf form also has a markedly different personality than his human form — a berserk Blood Knight versus a meek, stuttering Farm Boy with an inferiority complex.
  • Green Arrow: Dolph Marrock, a.k.a. Big Bad Wolf, suffers from Lukos, a sexually transmitted form of lycanthropy. The disease causes deformation of the frontal lobe and swelling of the adrenal and pituitary glands, increasing anger, hunger, and impulsivity. When the infected is excited or enraged, they bleed from their eyes, nose, fingernails, and gums, thereby spreading the disease to those they hurt. The longer the infection, the more extreme the change, to the point of appearing akin to werewolves.
• Early in the chronology of ElfQuest, Timmain, one of a group of elfin space travelers stranded on the Earth-like World of Two Moons, shapeshifted into various forms in order to understand the planet's ecology, finally turning herself into a fully fertile she-wolf so that she could mate with the alpha male of a wild pack and have offspring. She didn't just do that on impulse, but so that her descendants would be a part of the planet. In more recent issues (set about 20,000 years later) the elf Kimo has learned from Timmain how to shapeshift into a wolf.
• Bigby Wolf of Fables is a sort of inversion. He was a giant wolf great enough to eat entire armies at one go (indeed, he was the Big Bad Wolf), but he allowed Snow White to cut him with a lycanthropy-cursed knife so that he could take a human form at will in order to live peacefully in our world. In addition to allowing him to pass as human, this gives him the ability to transform into a Wolf Man form as well as a hybrid form, which he uses to keep the peace in Fabletown, but also makes him vulnerable to silver, which several villains have used against him in the comic and in the game The Wolf Among Us.
• Ferals focuses on a breed of very violent and strong werewolves that do not appear to have any restrictions on when they can transform. While they are certainly not mindless, they do seem prone to unquenchable bloodlust and cruelty while they are in wolf form. They fall closest to the dire wolf flavor of lycanthropy, except perhaps with a gallon of steroids thrown in for good measure.
• In the Blood is a limited series, currently held up in production due to the artist suffering from cancer, which centers on a teenager struggling with his burgeoning lycanthropy. He seems to be unable to control when his transformations occur and is styled after the classic Lon Chaney wolfman style. It's been implied in interviews that this is a family affliction.
• Last Man Standing: Ronin is a Ragin' Cajun salesman who had his life turned around under a Blue Moon...
• In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992), Link periodically turns into a bipedal grey wolf in the Dark World.
• Little Gloomy takes place in Spooksville, Frightsylvania, where the moon is always out, and always full. Accordingly, the sizable werewolf population is a constant danger to the average citizen, with one of the only civilized werewolves being Gloomy's friend Larry.
• The Italian comic Lupo Alberto, set in a World of Funny Animals, has tackled the idea of the wereman, a wolf who transforms into a human, on three different occasions through the wolfish protagonist Alberto. The first time, back when the comic was a strip, he just reads a horror story about it — in the two other stories, Alberto himself turns out to be one, though with different flavors to the transformation each time:
  • In the first transformation, he turns into a bureaucrat who goes to the McKenzie farm and informs Moses (the Angry Guard Dog working as farm leader) that in the morning, the whole place will be razed to allow the construction of a new highway. Unable to make him change his mind, Moses considers killing the bureaucrat... but when dawn comes, Alberto goes back to normal, leading Moses to think that it was just a prank.
  • By the second time, everyone knows that Alberto is a wereman and that the transformation now changes him into a neo-Nazi who spouts racist insults — thus, hours before every full moon, Alberto has Moses tie him up to a tree and muzzle him so that he won't terrorize everyone around. When Moses forgets to muzzle him, Enrico decides to do the deed himself, but when he sees that he's arrived too late, he sells tickets to watch the amazing wereman in complete safety.
• Marvel Comics:
  • Captain America: The infamous Man and Wolf story arc from 1992 brought pretty much anything wolf related in the Marvel Universe into play as Cap had to deal with a whole town of werewolves created by Nightshade via scientific means. This included Captain America himself becoming a werewolf, called "Capwolf" in the series. Eventually, even Nightshade herself was infected, motivating her to actually cure the problem she started.
  • In Runaways, the heroes have to go up against a group of "cowboy werewoofs". One character is surprised at this because "there isn't even a full moon tonight". This prompts another character to point out that the "moon is always full."
  • Spider-Man:
    • Similarly to Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane (see below), the Lobo Brothers are mutants who can transform into wolf-men.
    • John Jameson (J. Jonah's son) was an astronaut who was transformed into the Man-Wolf by a ruby called the Godstone he found on the moon into one. He was later transported to the dimension where the ruby originated in, where he became Stargod.
  • Jack Russell from Werewolf by Night inherited the werewolf curse from his father, coming into effect on his 18th birthday. He transforms into a Wolf Man three times a month, and eventually gains some control over his form, being able to shift whenever he wants while retaining his human mind.
  • X-Men:
    • Wolfsbane debuted in New Mutants and is a mutant shapeshifter who originally could become a red-furred wolf, or a 'werewolfgirl' intermediate form. These forms continued to change as she grew, influenced by emotional crises, mind control, drugs, mutant energy influxes, whatever the writers could dream up. She's been stuck in her intermediate form before, too. Twice (at least) depowered and restored, she has served on more teams (and in more different comic books) than most any character. Wolfsbane's Love at First Sight is the Asgardian wolf prince Hrimhari, who is a regular wolf with the power to turn into a wolf-man. She also befriended Catseye of the Hellions, who was a werecat who also changed shape voluntarily. However, she had to be coaxed into human form by her teammates and had a strange way of speaking that suggests that like Hrimhari, she's an animal who can turn into a human and not the other way around.
    • The minor character Wolfcub is stuck in a "wolfman" form. A couple of plots have tried to explain that all mutants with regenerative powers, claws, and heightened senses are a subspecies of mutant (Homo superior lupus) that is the origin of werewolves. The same is said for demonic mutants (like Nightcrawler), angelic mutants (like Angel), and cat-like mutants (Feral, Thornn, and Catseye).
    • Myles "Vivisector" Alfred from X-Statix is similarly a mutant whose power is to transform into a Wolf Man.
• Menace #1 features several American tourists who find a man being chased by wolves during a full moon. They keep the wolves at bay until dawn, only to discover that the man they were protecting is a type of werewolf who only turns human when the full moon is shining. Once the sun rises, he reverts to his wolfman form and attacks them.
• Played for Laughs in a Mickey Mouse comic that's centered around a "novel" written by Goofy. It involves various supernatural happenings, but Goofy insists that everything has a natural explanation in the end. At one point, Mickey calls him out for having a blatantly real werewolf transformation. Goofy insists that lycanthropy is perfectly natural — a severe allergic reaction to the full moon. Furthermore, the werewolf transforms back to normal when a character claims it's not the full moon, and then back to werewolf form when another one corrects him that it actually is.
• In The Real Ghostbusters by NOW comic, the semi-recurring character Irena Cortez is a werewolf. Instead of a curse, it is a hereditary condition. She can transform at will; however, if she represses the wolf side, she involuntarily transforms on a full moon and gains a stir-crazy other self. You don't need a silver bullet to kill a werewolf: a bullet is a bullet. Also, Peter Venkman goes on a date with her in wolf form, apparently not the first woman who was hairier than him.
• Red Sonja Annual #4 has Lykaanus who sought immortality from the beast god Jhebbal Sag. Jhebbal Sag granted him this but because Lykaanus had insulted Jhebbal Sag by killing animals that were sacred to him, Lykaanus was cursed age in dog years and transform into a wolf creature during the night of a full moon. He bites Sonja, passing the curse onto her but she is able to undo it by killing him.
• Werewolves in Requiem Vampire Knight are what religious zealots who spread death in the name of faith become in the world of Resurrection; the most powerful of all is the infamous Inquisitor Torquemada.
• In "The Wolf Doctor" in Rulah, Jungle Goddess #17, a doctor infected with lycanthropy moves to the jungle where he immediately begins attacking the maidens of Rulah's tribe and converting them into werewolves. Peculiarities of this species of werewolves include a Missing Reflection, being repelled by foxglove (presumably the writer meant wolfsbane) and can be slain by wooden spears or broken branches.
• Thicker than Blood features two brothers, one of whom is a werewolf (of the manwolf variety) while the other turns out to be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, or at least something like him. The werewolf brother originally only transforms on the full moon nights after being bitten on a family trip, but after drinking his brother's serum he appears to change more frequently and is even stronger and more feral than usual.
• Tragg and the Sky Gods: In Tragg's first appearance (in Mystery Comics Digest #3), he and Lorn battle the world's first werewolf: created when the cowardly hunter Snark drinks from a lake contaminated by the fuel tanks of a crashed alien spaceship just after a dire wolf has been flung into the water by a stegosaurus. (And that may be the most awesome sentence ever written.) He becomes a rampaging Wolf Man (or dire wolf man to be strictly accurate) under the full moon.
• A plot point in the Vampirella story "Isle of the Huntress". Vivienne's lycanthropy is immune to silver, but Vampirella can still kill her by sucking her dry. Jean's, on the other hand, is not immune.
• Welcome to Hoxford had a pack of werewolves running a prison/mental asylum, in order to hunt the inmates. These werewolves are huge, skeletal and vicious, and have a propensity for eating human flesh, though notably they lack the invulnerability many werewolves had, and can be killed with physical weapons. They also transform very squickily, and seem functionally ageless.
• In the WildStorm title Wetworks, werewolves are a separate species (as are the vampires, with which the werewolves are secretly at war), which spend most of their time in human form, but have trouble controlling their rage when transformed into wolfmen. For the first two years of the title, the titular team was employed as vampire killers by the werewolf king (originally presenting himself merely as a human billionaire concerned about the vampire problem). An interesting twist is that most werewolves find it increasingly difficult to control their rage as they get older, so most of the governing in werewolf society is done by the children.
• The '90s WWE comic book series The Undertaker features Lootan, who was a well-dressed werewolf detective and right hand man to the titular character.

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