That's What's Up: Remember That Time Captain America Was A Werewolf?

Each week, comic book writer Chris Sims answers the burning questions you have about the world of comics and pop culture: what's up with that? If you'd like to ask Chris a question, please send it to @theisb on Twitter with the hashtag #WhatsUpChris, or email it to staff@looper.com with the subject line "That's What's Up."

Q: Why does Capwolf rule so hard? — @WC_WIT

Okay, first things first: in the interest of full disclosure, I've been working for Marvel Comics as a freelancer for the past few years. I try to always be honest with my opinions about Marvel books—and, for that matter, comics put out by the Distinguished Competition—but that's something you probably need to know before you listen to me talk about why that story where Captain America turns into a werewolf for six issues and fights Cable is actually awesome, if only so that you can add the requisite grain of salt.

Don't get me wrong, it's weird as all hell and it's certainly not the best Captain America story ever printed, but much like that story where Thor gets turned into a frog for a couple issues, it's often brought up as a goofy bit of silliness that probably shouldn't have happened—and much like that Thor story, that's a reputation it definitely doesn't deserve. So trust me on this one: that story where Captain America turns into a werewolf for six issues and fights Cable? It's actually awesome.

But even though he was once officially named as "The Patron Saint of Marveldom" in the pages of the comics, Gruenwald was also huge fan of DC, and even broke into the industry through a fanzine where he chronicled the adventures of the Martian Manhunter. That led to what might be his most enduring creation, outside of his contributions to the larger Cap mythos: 1985's Squadron Supreme, by Gruenwald and Bob Hall.

In the same way Roy Thomas created the Invaders as Marvel's equivalent to the Golden Age Justice Society of America, the Squadron was Gruenwald's take on the Justice League of America, with an exploration of what would happen if superheroes tried so solve all of the world's real problems rather than just focusing on supervillains and alien conquerors. It's often overshadowed by other "grown-up" superhero stories from the mid-'80s, but I'll tell you right now, that thing's every bit as good as Watchmen, and paved the way for countless modern stories.

That doesn't have a lot to do with Captain America's brief experimentation with lycanthropy, but it does illustrate one of Gruenwald's defining characteristics: that dude loved comic books. So much so, in fact, that when he died, his ashes were mixed into the ink for the first printing of the Squadron Supreme paperback. And you could see that love coming through all of his stories, especially when they got a little strange.

It's worth noting that Capwolf and "The Bloodstone Hunt" weren't the first times that Captain America went up against the supernatural, either. It might be a little unexpected, but Cap has always lent himself really well to the occasional stories of haints and spooky stuff. Roger Stern and John Byrne's "Blood on the Moors," for example, has Cap fighting a Nazi vampire called Baron Blood in a story that introduces a new version of Union Jack, and that's one of the best Cap stories ever. Throw in the fact that Gruenwald was already playing with a little bit of weirdness by having the Red Skull found a cult called the Sisters of Sin, and you've got a hero that doesn't shy away from getting into some ghostly weirdness.

Part of that comes down to Cap's adaptability as a character. He's someone who can work equally well punching out the Red Skull's neo-Nazis, going toe-to-toe with the sci-fi minions of Arnim Zola, or even standing up to Thanos in the depths of space. As long as those core ideals at the heart of his character are intact, as long as he's willing to stand up against tyranny and injustice in any form, it all works.

But there's another part that has to do with how the Marvel Universe is built with this weird little streak of horror that sneaks in among the superheroes. It's always been there, dating back to the way the earliest Spider-Man and Fantastic Four issues are structured like the monster comics that all those creators were working on in the late '50s, but by the time the Bronze Age rolled around, it was an indelible part of the universe. This is a world where a comic starring Dracula ran for 70 issues, but where it was also structured as a superhero comic. There's an idea within the fabric of the universe that stuff like Draculas and Wolfmen absolutely exist, just as long as they abide by the rules governing the larger superhero world around them.

Which brings us back around to Capwolf.

That's one of the things that makes it great. There's this weird connection there, rooted in the idea that the universe is so cohesive that Spider-Man's boss's son—who is incidentally a werewolf because he went to the moon and picked up a rock one time—can be Captain America's personal pilot, and that his own history can wind up getting Cap into the kind of adventure that you'd never expect.

Which is exactly what happens here. The whole thing winds up being a plot of Dredmund the Druid, who—in a tribute to Gruenwald's love of obscure bits of trivia—was a villain who'd made his debut in a story where he tried to use magic to kill Nick Fury, and hadn't been seen for 146 issues at this point. After teaming up with Dr. Nightshade, another relatively obscure villain, he decided it would be a good idea to turn an entire town in Massachusetts into werewolves, and use John Jameson's mystical Moonstone to become... the ultimate wolfman.

It is an amazing plan, for every definition of that word.

Fun fact: wolverines are not actually wolves. I've done some reading and it turns out they are an entirely different animal. Not that you'd know it from that one movie where someone insists that wolverines howl at the moon instead of, you know, just sort of grunting like a badger.

Anyway, while it's loaded up with guest stars—and while we haven't even talked about Zachary Moonhunter, the antagonist who looks like the Predator and introduces himself to Cap by shooting him in the chest with a shotgun, only to be rewarded at the end of the story by becoming Cap's new pilot—the main draw here is obviously the part where Captain America himself gets dosed up with wolfman juice and winds up becoming a werewolf. And here's the thing: it's goofy as hell. I know it, you know it, Mark Gruenwald and Rik Levins know it. Even Captain America knows it, and he's the guy in the story getting turned into a wolf.

But the thing that Gruenwald understood—the same thing that all the great comics storytellers understand—is that the silliest, goofiest thing in the world can work just fine in comics, as long as you treat it like it's serious. Not "serious" in that it's grim and cheerless, but "serious" in that you apply the same rules and laws to this story that you would to anything else.

While all that's going on in the main story, the last few pages of every issue are devoted to a story about Diamondback, Cap's former supervillain and mostly unrequited love interest whose hot pink undercut was literally decades ahead of its time.

At this point in the story, she, like John Jameson, had been missing for quite some time, but her side of the story wasn't a weird, goofy romp with mysticism and werewolves. Instead, she was kidnapped by Crossbones and held hostage, starved, and given brutal "combat training," all designed to break her so she'd become loyal to Crossbones and serve as a "gift" to get back into the Red Skull's good graces. At the same time, readers get to see the Skull's organization, and the unsurprising, but still upsetting, cruelty that he shows to his mistress, Mother Night.

It's a much more serious side to the story, and it's a lot more in line with the superheroic high drama readers might be expecting from their comics than Captain America rallying werewolf patriotism. But what makes this story so enjoyable is that none of it seems out of place alongside the other. There's a tonal shift, but the fact that we're seeing a plot for werewolf world domination doesn't make Diamondback's ordeal seem frivolous, and going back and forth between her story and Cap's doesn't feel like whiplash, either.

That's what makes this story work.