Issue(s): Marvel Spotlight #4, Werewolf By Night #1
Cover Date: Jun-Sep 72
Title: "Island of the damned!" / "Eye of the beholder!"
Credits:
Gerry Conway - Writer
Mike Ploog - Penciler
Mike Ploog / Frank Chiaramonte - Inker

Review/plot:
The Darkhold continues to be at the forefront of the Werewolf By Night storyline. Part of the reason this surprises me is that i didn't think we actually saw the Darkhold until Jack Russell goes to visit his father's castle in Transylvania in Werewolf By Night #15 but that's apparently not the case, as both the castle and the book conveniently come to California for Jack in these issues!

This arc also introduces Buck Cowan, a regular supporting character in this book. From the few appearances i had seen of him before, i thought he was around the same age as Jack, but it turns out he's old enough to need dentures. Buck is a writer investigating occult topics like the Darkhold. Jack catches him snooping around his house...

...but lets him hang around so that he can also find out more about his father's book. Cowan describes Jack's father as a warlock.

But the big news is that Jack's step-father Philip has sold Jack's father's castle to a man named Miles Blackgar, and Blackgar has had the castle transferred to an Island off the Monterey coast, "stone by stone". Jack goes to investigate the island, and is captured immediately. In addition to Miles Blackgar, we meet Miles' daughter, Marlene, who is always seen wearing sunglasses.

Jack is imprisoned but manages to escape and explore the castle. He finds the Blackgars engaged in classic mad scientist experiments....

...and then he locates the Darkhold. The Russoff castle was apparently moved not just brick by brick but book by book.

One thing about being a werewolf as opposed to, say, the Hulk, is that you should know exactly when your transformations will take place (ok, at some points in the Hulk's history that was true for him too, but you get my point). It works out fine for him, of course, but you'd think Jack might have considered holding off for a few days before going exploring if he knew it was "that time of the month" so to speak.

But as i said, it works out for Jack, since as the Werewolf he's better suited to explore a castle that turns out to be full of monsters from the Blackgars' experiments.

The Werewolf actually helps the monsters rebel against the Blackgars' guard, and then confronts Miles Blackgar himself, tossing him out a window.

He's then faced with Marlene, who it turns out was wearing those sunglasses for a reason. She's a "mutant freak" (next issue will describe her as a "mutant Gorgon"), and her gaze turns Werewolf By Night to stone.

It turns out that the experiments the Blackgars were performing were in search of a cure for Marlene.

Amazingly to my modern sensibilities, that ends the Werewolf By Night feature in Marvel Spotlight. Next issue will be the debut of Ghost Rider. This story is continued directly in Werewolf By Night #1, which, as you can see from the publication dates, didn't come out for a couple of months after this issue. I'm primed to think of a #1 to be a jumping on point, but the cliffhanger ending in Spotlight #4 seems to suggest that the concern in 1972 was more about hanging on to the existing audience than adding to it. To me it's very weird to open Werewolf By Night #1 and find the main character already having been turned to stone by a mutant Gorgon.

Mike Ploog had been inking himself on the Marvel Spotlight books, but Frank Chiaramonte is added with the launch of the Werewolf By Night series. Ploog and Chiaramonte will later collaborate on Man-Thing as well.

Jack gets out of his living statue state when the moon goes down. Buck Cowan finds him (although Cowan is unaware that Jack turns into a werewolf) and the two go back into the castle to steal the Darkhold.

They discover that Miles Blackgar has survived his fall, barely.

Jack and Buck manage to escape the island without being seen, and they go back to Buck's place.

Maybe it's just me, but Buck and Jack look very... domestic together to me. Maybe it's all the unbuttoned and/or tight shirts. By the way, Buck is wearing a short sleeved turtleneck, which is definitive proof that the 70s were insane.

Oh right, the story. Umm, Jack realizes he hasn't spoken to his sister since his disappearance, so he calls his step-father's house and it turns out that the Blackgars have made their way there, and Philip Russell is totally on board with them teaching his step-son a lesson.

But luckily Jack turns into a werewolf again...

...fights the Blackgars' remaining monster...

...and then inadvertently causes Marlene to turn herself and her father to stone.

The story ends with the the Darkhold safely in the hands of the good guys, and Buck being a real jerk (not that there was much else he could do, but the way Marlene's powers work, her victims remain eternally conscious while in their stone form, so subjecting them to public humiliation is a real form of torture).

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first Darkhold. First Buck Cowan.

Chronological Placement Considerations: Next issue actually begins on the third night of the same full moon as seen here, but then takes place over the course of "weeks", so i'll place it in its own entry with space to represent those weeks.

References:

• Werewolf By Night still has confused thoughts while he's in werewolf form. When he runs into Miles Blackgar, he first wonders, "Is he the one who killed that woman...?", referring to his mother from Marvel Spotlight #2, and no, it wasn't Blackgar that killed her.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Essential Werewolf By Night vol. 1

Jack forgetting when his transformations take place becomes a regular occurence in this book. This website does a good job of summing up what most readers think about Jack Russell:
http://prismcomics.org/display_print.php?id=1811
"Werewolf by Night, Idiot by Day"

That link is lol!

Thankfully Chiaramonte doesn't mess up Ploog's art here nearly as badly as he did on Ghost Rider(or on a bunch of other artists in the MU).

Wow, she stoned his wheelchair too. I guess it's convention now for victims' clothes to turn to stone with them, but affecting the wheelchair seems odd.

The Miles and Marlene Blackgar concept seems a little bit like the French horror film Eyes without a Face, but with a few inversions: instead of a woman whose face is disfigured and wears a mask concealing everything but her eyes, we have a woman who conceals only her yes; and while the daughter int he film was unsympathetic to her father's experiments with innocent victims, Marlene is fully on board. Eyes without a Face might also have been Archie Goodwin's inspiration for turning Whitney Frost into Madame Masque.

Buck seems like an ever more declasse version of Carl Kolchak.

Ploog's art loses some of its charm for me when he stops doing his own inks. Chiaramonte's style on WWBN #1 is more like Saturday morning cartoons.