A look back at Capwolf in "Captain America: Man and Wolf"
Midweek update: Guest-starring on the Unspoken Issues Podcast
I was invited to guest-star on an “Unspoken Issues” episode recently, focusing on the Captain America story “Man and Wolf,” often called “Capwolf.”
You can listen to that episode at this link. (For any younger readers, this does contain adult language that you shouldn’t repeat at school.)
Thanks to Jesse Starcher and Dean Compton for inviting me on!
Back in 2016, I wrote about the storyline:
Mark Gruenwald, the longtime Captain America writer, pushes Cap into a B-movie plot here as a supervillain is creating an army of werewolves. As you can tell from the cover, Cap eventually gets turned into a werewolf himself, and must try to figure out a cure, even though his thoughts are in broken doglike meter for about a third of the book. Guest starring Wolverine, Cable, Wolfsbane, Feral, Doctor Druid and more.
I liked this better in 2023 than 2016… it’s just silly fun. Rik Levins provides varied character looks that never sacrifice storytelling, and there’s a mix of 1990s tropes with almost a Hammer films-style horror.
Proving that nothing goes out of style forever: The day after we recorded this episode, Marvel announced a new miniseries, “Capwolf and the Howling Commandos,” would be released in October 2023.
From Marvel:
In the early 90s, Steve Rogers transformed into CAPWOLF in writer Mark Gruenwald and artist Rik Levins’ unforgettable “Man and Wolf” story arc. Now over 30 years later, CAPWOLF is back in his own limited series, CAPWOLF & THE HOWLING COMMANDOS!
Written by Stephanie Phillips and drawn by Carlos Magno, this four-issue limited series will tell an all-new story where Steve becomes a terrifying werewolf during an early World War II mission. Luckily, his fiercest allies are by his side--Nick Fury and the Howling Commandos! After years of combat, this elite squad of soldiers thought they’ve seen it all but this might be their wildest adventure yet as the series captures the spirit of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s classic wartime storytelling with a modern mystical twist!
Maybe I’ll get a chance to talk about this series in a future podcast episode somewhere!
Matthew Price, matthew@matthewlprice.com, has written about the comics industry for more than two decades. He is the co-owner of Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman.