How about a Strange Northern with a werewolf, and all of it wrapped up Jack Kirby Style? “A Silver Bullet For Your
Heart” appeared in Prize’s Black Magic #3 (February-March 1951). The comic was probably written and drawn by Jack with inking by Joe Simon. The first panel says “Produced by Simon and Kirby”. The story is an unusual length, eleven pages. The length is needed to build up the scenario, though later comics would repeat this trope in less space.
What makes this piece interesting to me, besides “…superstition in the backwoods of Canada…” is the fact that the plot is pretty much copped from Manly Banister’s “Lupa” in Weird Tales, September 1947. It is also like another earlier WT piece, “The Law of the Hills” by Grace M. Campbell from Weird Tales, August 1930. Both of these tales have women living in the rough woods of Canada, who turn into werewolves, and end up tragically slain.
We begin with the solitude of the Canadian backwoods, where Jacques Bayard and Steve Rice are trapping fur for the winter.
Checking their traps, the two men see a wolf was almost caught. Steve decides to see if he can find and shoot the animal. He is excited and the older man, Jacques thinks him too eager and careless.
What Steve finds is not a wolf but a naked young woman! Jacques recognizes her for a loup garou, a werewolf, and wants to shoot her. Steve calls him a superstitious fool and protects the girl. Jacques calls her “a cursed creature of evil”. Steve takes her to their cabin.
She awakens. Her name is Runi. Jacques is still angry and afraid. He points out that her index finger and middle finger are the same length, and that she has pointed ears. Steve defends her, punching Jacques. The older trapper warns him to sleep with his pistol under his pillow.
When the men wake, Runi is gone. They see a silver wolf outside the cabin window.
Steve does not believe Runi is the wolf with the silver hair. Jacques points out the girl’s hair was the same color. Steve leaves with his gun, thinking he must protect the missing woman.
The wolves are waiting. They ambush Steve. The silver wolf stops her kind from killing him. Steve has the chance to shoot the wolf but it shows him affection. He follows it back to his cabin.
When he arrives he sees Runi sleeping quietly inside. Steve saw the wolf head for the cabin but he still does not believe Runi is a werewolf.
Steve questions the girl the next morning. Runi talks of her people living in the woods. She is in love with the young trapper, and promises always to return to him. Things look calm for now…
…until Jacques and Steve discover two trappers killed by wolves. A dying man points the finger at the silver wolf. All the trappers gather to hunt down the beast. It is Steve who fires the final shot…
Entering his cabin, Steve finds Runi dying from a gun shot wound. Jacques tells him it was a wolf he shot. Only at the end does Steve realize the talk of werewolves is true.
“A Silver Bullet For Your Heart” may seem pretty tame to the gigantic struggles Jack Kirby would draw in the Silver and Bronze Age. The final question Steve begs “What am I to believe?” is dramatically done as only Jack “King” Kirby can do. This grasping at sanity and rational belief is ultimately Steve’s downfall. Jacques is presented much like a Pulp cliche of a French Canadien. “By Gar!” Still, in the context of this tale, he works. His talk of Loup Garou builds the necessary background for a good werewolf tale. His examination of Runi’s unusual fingers and ears can be seen in stories of the past like “The Middle Toe of the Right Foot” by Ambrose Bierce.
Runi’s silver hair reminds me of perhaps the mot famous female werewolf story of old, “The Werewolf” by Clemence Housman. White Fell, in that story, seems much more evil than Runi does. Perhaps we would not feel so much for her if Kirby had shown her tearing out some trapper’s throat. We only see Runi when she is weak, sleeping or behaving. Like Lupa in Banister’s tale, Runi is tragic figure, who we cheer for, but justice requires she die for her sins.
This comic is available free at DCM.