It’s been over a year since we last looked in on our favorite teenage werewolf, Jack Russell, so we have a bit of catching up to do before we get into our discussion of today’s main topic.  Following issue #3‘s conclusion of the extended plotline concerning the Darkhold — the mystical bound volume that had acted as a MacGuffin for most of the series’ early run — subsequent installments had seen Jack involved in a succession of one or two-part adventures that usually involved his younger sister Lissa (who learned Jack’s lycanthropic secret in issue #4) and/or his best friend Jack Cowan (who had to wait until issue #12 to get clued in regarding that vital info).  On the creative end, the feature’s original writer-artist team of Gerry Conway and Mike Ploog, who’d been on board ever since the Werewolf’s three-issue tryout in Marvel Spotlight, came to an end with #4; while Ploog remained the book’s penciller for three more issues, Conway was succeeded by Len Wein, who served as writer through #8.  That last issue was drawn by Werner Roth as his one and only effort on the title; the next saw the arrival of a new artist — Tom Sutton — who was joined by an “old” writer — Gerry Conway.  (As a side note, the same month that Werewolf by Night #8 came out saw the Werewolf meet Spider-Man in Marvel Team-Up #12 — a Conway-Wein collaboration that firmly established Jack Russell’s adventures as taking place in the main Marvel Comics continuity.)  Read More