To further complicate matter, the Man-Wolf is the former astronaut son of Peter's boss, J. We see Peter Parker trying to come to terms with Gwen Stacy's death while forced to cope with a berserk werewolf. The early Man-Wolf vs Spider-Man stories came out in the early 70's, a time when the Spider-Man comic was really coming out with some excellent stories. So…not for fans without a little bit of Marvel history knowledge at the very least. While the other stories have their moments (Spider-man meets Frankenstein’s monster!) This is the main story and you still need to know Man-Wolf’s history in Marvel comics to not get lost. Then the series takes a truly wild twist as the Man-wolf finds himself playing John Carter/Conan on an alien fantasy world.

These issues are probably why this collection exists in the first place, as we start off with a standard werewolf story that happens to be well drawn and star various characters from Spider-man. The exception is the series of issues in the middle of the collection written by David Kraft and with incredible art by George Perez. Comics are amazing.īy nature, the stories as a whole feel disjointed from each other as they cover Man-Wolf’s appearances over several issues at various points in Spider-man and other characters’ ongoing books.

The book is a collected volume of stories about the Man-Wolf, aka John Jameson, aka the son of the Daily Bugle’ anti Spider-man editor-in-chief J Jonah Jameson, an astronaut that found a magic stone on the moon that turned him into a werewolf. I cant recall why I ended up reading this, I think after hearing about this run with a Marvel werewolf on another world after remembering a different story with a similar premise, I looked it up and found this. Vampires, Frankensteins & Man-Wolfs, indeed! But the end result, even with some magnificent early work from George Pérez, is still a disjointed mess. Unfortunately, these last few story arcs do nothing to help clear up the crazy disjointed storylines, but they do at least wrap up those same narratives. Next up is the material from Amazing Spider-Man #189-190, Savage She-Hulk #13-14 and finishing off with Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #3. And, thankfully, even though Marvel Team-Up #36-37 were published before Marvel Premiere #45-46, these stories are printed in the correct order. This is where and when a lot of the inconsistencies begin to seep into the characters. Next up the narrative moves into the material from Creatures on the Loose #30-37. Unfortunately, this is probably the peak of the volume.

Amazing Spider-Man #124-125 are very promising, but Giant-Size Super-Heroes #1 is an instant classic with art from legendary Gil Kane. The only real problem is that there is a lot of disjointed narratives going on. I absolutely delighted that Marvel decided to compile these appearances of John Jameson, the Man-Wolf, into a single volume. Vampires, Frankensteins & Man-Wolfs, oh my!

Manwolf by Gloria Skurzynski