Werewolf Icons: From Villain to Superhero

Werewolves, like many monster icons, have changed over the centuries. Originally an evil being of dread, the lycanthrope has become something of a superhero in our day and age. Why the change? This short history will look at that question.

Ancient Times

The werewolf begins as a product of rural life. The farmer, in the fields, fears the predator that threatens his livelihood. But what if such beasts had a man’s cunning as well as fangs and claws? People who can become animals while retaining their human intellect would be a terrible enemy indeed.

The ancient werewolf is an all-animal form. Once transformed, the werewolf is a wolf, usually large and blood-thirsty, but killable as any other wolf is, as in Petronius’ “Niceros’ Story” from The Satyricon. The soldier who becomes a wolf and attacks Melissa’s livestock is stabbed in the throat with a spear. The man returned to his human form is also wounded. The wolf is interested in sheep, not human flesh. His wounds are not supernaturally erased. These conventions will be created in a more modern age. This image of the werewolf persists into Medieval times. And why shouldn’t it? The farmers of ancient Greece and the yeomen of Norman England aren’t really all that different. Their concerns haven’t really changed.

Medieval Times

It is in Medieval times that the first sympathetic werewolves come along, but not in stories told by farmers. These new werewolves are not people who change to do evil but are cursed as a penance for some other act of wrong-doing or by the betrayal of another. The Topographia Hibernica (1188) by Giraldus Cambrensis features a man who is changed into a wolf for ungodliness. In Marie de France’s “Bisclavet” (12^th Century) the werewolf is tricked into wolf form by his unfaithful wife and must convince a neighboring king to save him. Both werewolves are transformed to their human form after a lengthy trial. These tales may have been inspired by Ovid’s The Metamorphosis which was rediscovered as an after-effect of the Crusades. Cambrensis might also have been influenced by the Celtic mythology of Britain’s people that included maidens turned into swans.

This begins a new way of looking at were-creatures. No longer the bane of farmers choosing to terrorize, but an object of pity. Ultimately they win back their humanity. The fact that they are turned into wolves specifically is irrelevant. They could be bears or rabbits or dung beetles. The animal curse is a wall that stops communication, like a prison cell that can’t be fled. Their inner nature has not been changed. This new werewolf serves a new agenda, that of a growing middle class, a priestly one as in Cambrensis’ case, or a bourgeois one in Marie de France’s.

The Renaissance

The Renaissance changes things again. The werewolf and the vampire figures in John Webster’s play, The Duchess of Malfi, aren’t actual supernatural creatures but merely nasty people. The comparison to lycanthropes and the undead are euphemisms for a certain kind of evil. The idea of the werewolf has transcended actual physical monsterness and become strictly figurative.

(This isn’t to say all people in Shakespearean times or any time period believed that werewolves were merely literary devices. One of the oldest werewolf stories comes from Ovid’s The Metamorphosis but the author has a thoroughly modern disbelief in the myths and miracles of his story. By the same token Sabine Baring-Gould encountered French peasants who still believed in loup-garous in 1865 according to his introduction to The Book of Werewolves. It is easy to mistake one individual’s opinion as the meter stick for all people living at that time. Ovid belonged to a privileged class who was no more familiar with sheep than it was with werewolves. )

The Victorian Age

The werewolf falls on hard times during the Age of Enlightenment. The lycanthrope would experience a slight revival in the Gothics of the followers of Horace Walpole, but even that school of ghastly thrills had a tendency to explain away its monsters. The next really good werewolves appears in the ghost and horror stories of the Victorians. Why a society obsessed with respectability would have such a penchant for monsters has often been a topic discussed by critics. Was it the growing mental pressure of the Industrial Revolution? Whatever it was the Victorians would bring back the personal style of horror story telling (which the Gothics did not use), making the werewolf a creature that could find its way into any private home.

Bram Stoker would wed the werewolf and vampire myths by having his Count Dracula able to become a wolf. Gerald Biss would build a mystery around the evil doings of werewolves in The Door of the Unreal. Many other authors would thrill us with tales of lycanthropy (from Sir Walter Scott’s “The Wer-Bear” to Algernon Blackwood’s “The Camp of the Dog”). The bottom line is the Victorians gave the werewolves back their supernatural flavor and in most cases, its evil demeanor. (There are always exceptions like Algernon Blackwood’s “Running Wolf” which harkens back to Cambrensis with its Indian ghost inhabiting a real wolf.) The Victorians restored the werewolf to the station it enjoyed in ancient times, but with the added value of it being not only a rural monster but now an urban one as well. The late Pulp writers of the 20^th Century would push them even farther, since the Victorian werewolf tended to reside in semi-rural areas like the acreages of the well-to-do. Fritz Leiber would create an entirely urban werewolf in “The Hound” (Weird Tales, November 1942), just as he brought the ghost to the city streets in “Smoke Ghost”.

Enter the Wolf Man

So when does the werewolf change into a superhero? We’ve seen it go from farm menace to cursed to allegory then back to supernatural killer. The big change came in 1933 with the film version of Guy Endore’s The Werewolf of Paris. Henry Hull and The Werewolf of London began the final phase of the modern werewolf. Here Hollywood and special effects create a major shift. Working with real wolves is difficult and expensive. So to make the werewolf both the actor and cheap the ‘man wolf’ is born. Hairy make-up to the face and hands and Henry Hull plays his own wolf. The only author I have found to pre-date this idea in fiction was Robert E. Howard in “Wolfshead” (Weird Tales, April 1926) and its prequel “In the Forest of Villefere” (Weird Tales, August 1925). Howard has a wolf-ghost that attaches itself to the victim’s head.

Comic Books

So now our werewolf is no longer on all fours but a very human-shaped guy with a wolf’s head. This is the humanizing process that will make the werewolf no longer an animal but a supped-up version of a man, a superhero. Several comics of the 1960s and 1970s feature werewolf characters but in 1971 Marvel Comics would create the first werewolf-star comic book in Marvel Spotlight #2. Werewolf By Night (February 1972-March 1977) featured the anti-hero character, Jack Russell (No, he’s not a were-terrier!), who engages in muscular battles with other characters.

Hollywood

The movies started by emulating the Gothic trappings of castles in the country but the B-Movies soon had werewolves running through high schools in I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), in the mean streets in Werewolves on Wheels (1971) and metropolitan areas in The Werewolf of Washington (1975). Werewolves were everywhere. By the 1980s the advances in special effects make-up in The Howling (1980) and An American Werewolf in London (1981) and other films helped the werewolf to shed the fuzz for more realistic transformations. Twenty year later the comic-book images of The Werewolf By Night are entirely possible with CGI effects. Van Helsing (2004) starring Hugh Jackman sees the old Universal monsters reborn. Underworld (2003) and its many sequels has werewolves and vampires paired again in eternal combat. The idea of making a film with a simple werewolf such as Petronius’ soldier is laughable today. Werewolves are testosterone-charged, body-building supermen.

Conclusion

Werewolf icons are a product of the society that created it. The farmer needed a monster to solidify his fears. The modern person, living in an age of atom bombs and genetically engineered plagues, seeks escapism through a re-invented hero for our post-modernist times. No matter the age, the werewolf is adaptable, ever ready to seek the moonlight and come howling…