Trash Day

Once upon a time, Captain America was a werewolf. Do you really need to know any more? Why, yes. You certainly do.

This here prime cut of absurdity, straight out of the day-glo 90s, marks my first post of a comic story that’s “so bad it’s good,” a phrase better applied to films. It hails from an era when Marvel used the sizzle of summer as an excuse to publish bi-weekly, and throw narrative caution to the wind (like so much rancid kibble? don’t push it, Hickey).

Amazing Spider-Man, for example, teamed its titular hero with a murderer’s row of chuckle-heads (Night Thrasher, Moon Knight, the Punisher, and Nova) to battle cyborg lovers in Round Robin: The Sidekick’s Revenge. Could the Avengers’ Sentinel of Liberty do any less?

Yes. Much less. This tale, by veteran Captain America writer Mark Gruenwald and artist Rik Levins, brings together Marvel’s handful of lycanthropes to fight the deranged mystic Dredmund Cromwell (did I really just type that?) The magic begins in Massachusetts, when sightings of a wolf-like humanoid coincide with the discovery of a mauled corpse. Cap wouldn’t care, except that he needs a vacation and John Jameson (Avengers pilot and sometime Man-Wolf) is missing.

Cut to a leather-clad man in a silver mask (and barbed-wire dreadlocks) in a dungeon full of werewolves, whipping them. “Yer never gonna be let out into polite society,” claims the villainous Moonhunter, “less you learn some manners.” Thankfully, Cap is already snug on his sky cycle, jazzing in Dr. Strange’s direction–he’ll do the heavy lifting if shit hits the cosmic fan.

Not so fast, Wing-Head! Strange’s manservant Wong has told Peggy to tell Cap that he’s “unavailable for the indefinite future.” Yowza. Our hero and his ever versatile shield are forced to scrape up Strange’s D-List counterpart, former Avenger Doctor Druid.

Druid, who’s new ponytail and goatee make him look like a studio keyboardist, is useless against Moonhunter and his furry platoon. But he can follow psychic auras, which helps him and Cap stumble into the heart of Starkesboro, an entire town of werewolves.

Wolverine himself shows up to raise this ass-clownery to a fever pitch. He’s mind-controlled, however, by the woman performing the mass-mutations, Doctor Nightshade. When he and Cap thump their seventy inch chests together, one is stupidly feral and the other holds back. This allows a paralytic dart into our hero’s throat.

Cap-Wolf, after shredding his bindings and making for the woods, looks more like the family German Shepard than something to lead a “WOLFPACK ATTACK” (as issue 406 brags). Adorably, he evens thinks in German Shepard: “Need to make her change me back… back to what? Human! Not wolf. How make her down here? Shouldn’t have come here. So hard to keep thoughts straight!”

“Down here” is Moonhunter’s slave pen, full of surprise characters like Feral (from X-Force), Wolfsbane (from X-Factor), and John Jameson, the alpha himself. Cap trounces him, then gets the werewolves to form a cheerleader-style pyramid to escape. Sadly, they’re not in time to stop Dredmund from mutilating Druid with a blade: “I relieve you of this annoying lock of hair. Your vanity appears to be another thing you have not mastered.”

And because this is 1992, everyone at Marvel has been told to draw like rock star illustrators Jim Lee (X-Men) and Rob Liefeld (X-Force). Levins and competent inker Danny Bulanadi combine the worst of each, resulting in: faces crosshatched into stony blankness and male figures so woodenly posed (and pornographically muscled) they could pass for Transformers.

I know, I know. By now, this story sounds good enough to last five seasons on HBO (did I forget to mention Starwolf?). But if wonderfully goofy comics like this can, twenty years later, cause Rick Remender and Tony Moore to merge Frankenstein with the Punisher, I can’t really complain. If you ever come across Captain America: Man & Wolf, jump on it. My copy only cost five bucks. The hair left on the couch–priceless.