Cavalcade of Awesome

Archive for 2010

AWESOME-tober-fest 2010: The Wolf’s Hour by Robert McCammon

Posted in books, Halloween, holiday, monsters, werewolf, werewolves with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2010, books, holiday. Halloween, monsters, pop culture, reviews, werewolf, werewolves on October 12, 2010 by Paxton

Welcome to Day 10 of AWESOME-tober-fest. We are in the middle of werewolf book week. Yesterday I looked at Howling Mad by Peter David. Today, I will review The Wolf’s Hour by Robert McCammon.

(Via RobertMcCammon.com)

This is an interesting novel. I originally read it back in high school. My dad used to take my brother and I to the “big” library in downtown Birmingham at least once a month for a special treat. It offered a wider choice of books than our local library. I’d pick out a bunch of books about comic books or werewolves or gunfighters and we could return them at any of our local libraries (or back to the original downtown location if we went back in time). It was pretty awesome. During one of my trips I was looking for werewolf fiction and stumbled across this book. It seemed a little long for me at the time at nearly 500 pages, plus it took place during World War II, which doesn’t interest me very much, but the lure of a new werewolf novel was too much to resist. So I checked it out.

(Via RobertMcCammon.com)

The story is definitely interesting. It combines two very different genres; the World War II spy adventure and the werewolf adventure. The main character, Michael Gallatin, was born into a wealthy Russian family. At an early age Michael was changed and then taken in by a pack of werewolves. He was taught by the pack how to live as a man and a wolf and properly use his newly discovered supernatural abilities. After years of learning and maturing with the pack of werewolves, Michael leaves them to see the world and create a life of his own. He offers his “skills” to the Allies during World War II and becomes a secret weapon in the fight against Hitler and his Third Reich. Michael goes on several missions and uncovers a secret conspiracy called Iron Fist that threatens to derail the Allies’ invasion of Europe and turn the tides of the war in favor of the Axis powers.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2010: Howling Mad by Peter David

Posted in books, Halloween, holiday, monsters, werewolf, werewolves with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2010, books, Halloween, holiday, monsters, review, werewolf, werewolves on October 11, 2010 by Paxton

Welcome to the first day of werewolf book week. I am continuing with my theme of werewolves by talking about werewolf novels all week. The first book I want to talk about is Howling Mad by Peter David.

Peter David is one of my favorite authors. David is a sometime novel author, sometime comic book author and has written volumes of books and comic books throughout the years. His most famous comic book work is with The Incredible Hulk and his most famous novel work is with Star Trek. Some of my favorite Peter David books include Sir Apropos of Nothing, Incredible Hulk: What Savage Beast, Star Trek: Q-Squared and Star Trek: Q-in-law. David is also busy writing movie novelizations, including the ones for Spider-man 1-3, Fantastic Four 1-2, Iron Man, both Hulk movies and Batman Forever (don’t judge, it’s great). David has also written several original novels like his King Arthur trilogy. And yes, I read every single book I just listed above.

So naturally, in the late ’90s, while digging around the Internet, when I found out that David wrote a werewolf story in 1988 called Howling Mad, I was thrust into a quest. I decided I must have that book as I loved both werewolves and Peter David. At this time, finding old books wasn’t as easy as logging onto Amazon or eBay and just buying it. If your local bookstore didn’t have it, odds are, Amazon would list it, but not have it in stock and eBay was still hit or miss for most things. So I went looking for it by pounding the pavement. For several years. Luckily, around 1999, the book was re-published along with another older David book, Knight Life, the first in his Arthur trilogy. I bought both books and read them. And loved them. Howling Mad, especially.

David’s take on the classic werewolf story is intriguing. A werewolf hunts in the Canadian woods. During one of his hunts, a regular gray wolf stumbles upon the werewolf and his kill. The werewolf attacks and nearly kills the wolf. The regular wolf barely escapes after being scratched and bitten. During the next full moon, the wolf turns into a man. The book follows this “man-wolf” on his adventures into an insane asylum, getting shipped to a NY city zoo, being found by a single woman who tries to ignore her feelings towards the mysterious man and helps him find the werewolf that originally turned him. Through all this the wolf tries to adjust to his changing into a human man and interacting with the human world.

Like I said, it’s a fun and clever story that takes the werewolf tale and turns it on its ear. The book is short, just barely reaching 200 pages thanks to a page and a half epilogue at the end and it’s funny. While not being as uproariously good as I remember, it’s definitely worth a read.

However, as for David’s entire oeuvre, I would still recommend his original novel Sir Apropos of Nothing before this as well as his Star Trek books Q-Squared, Q-In-Law and Imzadi.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

AWESOME-tober-fest 2010: The Legion of Monsters plus The Creature Commandos

Posted in comic books, Frankenstein, monsters, werewolf, Wolf Man with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2010, comic books, Frankenstein, Halloween, holiday, pop culture, The Wolf Man, werewolf on October 8, 2010 by Paxton

In the ’70s, Marvel had several “monster” characters that were fairly popular. I talked yesterday about Werewolf by Night, but there was also Man-Thing, Morbius the Living Vampire and Ghost Rider. They decided to team these guys up to see if a super team of monsters would be popular with readers. The team up would happen in 1976.

In Marvel Premiere #28 (Feb 1976), Werewolf by Night would join forces with the aforementioned Morbius the Living Vampire, Man-Thing and Ghost Rider to form the first Legion of Monsters.

At the time, all four of these characters were very popular, so this was an interesting exercise by Marvel. However, the story, doesn’t really live up to the idea. In this horribly zany story a giant mountain appears in the middle of LA on the same day that Morbius, Werewolf, Man-Thing and Ghost Rider all happen to be passing through. Ghost Rider and Man-Thing are somehow drawn to the mountain while Morbius and Werewolf also make their way to the mountain, but not before they get into a fight because Morbius tries to drink Werewolf’s blood. While investigating the mountain, some giant golden guy on a horse shows up. This guy.

He calls himself StarSeed (I am not kidding, he seriously calls himself that) and in the middle of a long convoluted story about his origin, Morbius attacks and tries to drink his blood (you sense a pattern here?). Ghost Rider is hypnotized by the golden StarSeed’s beauty so he tries to fight off Morbius. Man-Thing tries to help but Ghost Rider thinks he’s also attacking. Goldie and all the monsters get in a fight, Ghost Rider freaks out at Man-Thing and totally runs away on his motorcycle and Werewolf is given a vicious back hand across the face. While trying to help, Man-Thing takes the giant dude down with his “touch of fear” and after conceding defeat, StarSeed uses his cosmic powers to transform everyone back to their alter egos thereby giving Morbius, Werewolf and Man-Thing a brief respite from their curses… only to change them back again 30 seconds later (what a dick). The monsters head out of town sad because they’ve killed their only chance at curing themselves and we never see anyone resolve the giant f’n mountain in the middle of LA. So, like I said, ZANY.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2010: Marvel’s Werewolf by Night

Posted in comic books, Halloween, holiday, monsters, werewolf, werewolves with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2010, comic books, Halloween, holiday, Marvel Comics, monsters, werewolf, werewolves on October 7, 2010 by Paxton

Werewolf by Night was Marvel’s werewolf anti-hero. In stories he was usually just referred to as Werewolf. He debuted in 1972 in Marvel Spotlight #2.

Werewolf by Night’s origin story goes something like this: Jack Russell (like the dog, get it?) begins having strange dreams the weekend of his 18th birthday. He storms out of the house the night of his birthday party when he begins feeling sick and a strange transformation starts to occur. Jack’s mother goes out in the car to look for him during a rain storm. Jack’s mother crashes and, on her deathbed, tells Jack that his real father was a Baron. The males in this Baron’s family happened to be cursed to turn into werewolves. The Baron’s curse was passed on to Jack and began to manifest itself when he turned 18. After dropping this bomb in his lap, Jack’s mother dies, but not before forcing Jack to promise not to harm his abusive stepfather. Jack, of course, says yes then later discovers that his stepfather orchestrated his mother’s car crash in order to inherit the Baron’s fortune. Jack goes out as the wolf and kills the goon his stepfather hired to rig the car’s brakes. When confronted with his stepfather and being unable to kill him because of his mother’s promise, the story ends with Jack having to run away howling in frustration because his werewolf form is so lame that it can’t kill someone his mom said not to.

The character would prove popular and after several more appearances in Marvel Spotlight, Werewolf by Night would get his own self-titled book several months later in late 1972.

Issue #1 is very similar to his Marvel Spotlight stories. In this story, Jack encounters a sorceress who turns his wolf form into stone like Medusa. However, when the sun comes up Jack transforms back into human form which breaks the spell. The rest of the story is Jack tracking down the sorceress and stopping her. An inauspicious start to a VERY ’70s, but very fun, comic book series.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2010: Dell’s Werewolf (1966)

Posted in comic books, Halloween, holiday, monsters, pop culture, werewolf, werewolves, Wolf Man with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2010, comic books, Dell Monsters, Halloween, pop culture, The Wolf Man, werewolf, Wolf Man on October 6, 2010 by Paxton

Welcome to Day 4 of AWESOME-tober-fest 2010. I’ve been discussing werewolves in comic books this week. Today, I’m looking at Dell’s super spy, Werewolf. He isn’t literally a werewolf, but he is called Werewolf and he’s a somewhat reboot of the Universal Wolf Man into a crime fighting super hero. Let’s take a look.

In 1966, Dell would attempt to reboot the classic Universal Monsters into super hero comics. I talked about Dell’s ridiculous super hero Frankenstein last year during AWESOME-tober-fest. Dell also tried this with Dracula. Anyway, since The Wolf Man was a trademarked title, they had to go with the more generic “Werewolf”. And so they created their new super agent, code named Werewolf and his wolf companion, Thor.

In the first issue of Werewolf, pilot Wiley Wolf, while flying experimental aircraft in the Arctic Circle, crash lands in the Canadian wilderness. The crash causes Wiley to lose his memory. He even forgets he’s a man and thinks he’s a wolf (cause that’s how amnesia works). Of course, he is taken in and cared for by a pack of wolves, because that’s what they do. One of these wolves, Thor, becomes his constant companion because he feels he owes Wiley some sort of “life debt”. Eventually Wiley gets his memory back and is rescued, after which he immediately resigns from military duty. Literally five minutes after resigning from the military, he is “recruited” by a shady covert government agency (along with Thor) to become a super spy. I say “recruited” because he is not really given a choice. He is taken directly from the airport to the agency’s hidden headquarters and begun his training before he can even take a leak. And he goes right along with it. He is trained to physical perfection and given special hypnotic abilities to allow him to assume several different “facial configurations” to help facilitate his undercover work. He is given an all black suit (see pic below) that, while being only one molecule thick, is built with advanced technology making it virtually bulletproof and has boots that can change their tactile surface for sliding (slick) or climbing (gripped).

Properly trained and clothed, Wiley sets out to fight the enemies of democracy and freedom as a cross between Batman and James Bond. When not on assignment he lives in a hidden mountain retreat (of course it’s hidden) and has a beautiful CIA contact Judy Bowman (of course she’s beautiful).

Dell’s Werewolf only lasted two more issues before it was summarily canceled (see issues #2 and #3 above). A similar fate to it’s Frankenstein brother. However, as ridiculous as the Frankenstein super hero concept was, this one was actually good. The problem lies in the writing. This book is poorly written. It is hokey and ham fisted and makes little sense. Some examples? Of course.

Werewolf 1 underwater
Werewolf’s lair, as I said, is hidden. It has a secret entrance and exit, but instead of implementing some hidden tunnels underneath said lair like Batman, the “backdoor” is actually a man made pool/lake that he swims in and out of to get out. Yes, he has to SWIM out of his lair if he wants to sneak away. Logistics aside, that just seems like an overly complicated solution to a simple problem. Not only that, but his wolf companion, Thor, also has to swim out. Werewolf’s suit helps him breathe. What about Thor? That looks like a pretty long underwater tunnel in the last panel. How long can Thor hold his breath? Again, this solution seems needlessly complicated.