Jack Russell is the original Werewolf By Night from Marvel Comics. And with Marvel Studios' Special Presentation: Werewolf By Night, now streaming on Disney Plus, Jack Russell is the version of the character portrayed by actor Gael Garcia Bernal in the MCU - though his last name is never revealed in the special itself.
But who is Jack Russell in Marvel Comics, and how does his history connect the horror wing of the Marvel Universe to its main superhero continuity? And is his name really meant to be a pun on the Jack Russell Terrier dog breed?
OK, maybe that last question isn't so important, but it's on everyone's minds nonetheless - and there is an answer that might surprise you.
As for the rest, like the horror fables of old, the history of Jack Russell, the original Werewolf By Night, is fraught with curses, forbidden magic, and things that go bump in the night. But since this is Marvel Comics we're talking about, there's also a heaping helping of superhero concepts thrown in.
Who is Jack Russell, what are his powers, and what does it mean now that he's in the MCU? We've got the answers.
Who is Jack Russell?
First and foremost, Jack Russell is the original Werewolf By Night from Marvel Comics. Legendary Marvel Comics writer/editor Roy Thomas and his wife Jeannie came up with the idea to create a werewolf in the Marvel Universe in the early '70s after the loosening of the Comics Code Authority's rules around depicting characters like werewolves, vampires, and zombies in comics. Stan Lee himself came up with the name Werewolf By Night, and in 1972's Marvel Spotlight #2, writer Gerry Conway and artist Mike Ploog solidified the character and early backstory of Jack Russell.
Here's where the name comes in, by the way. You might expect that "Jack Russell" is meant to be a pun based on the Jack Russell Terrier dog breed since dogs and wolves are both canines. But in fact, Conway has stated that he didn't know of the dog breed at the time he named the character, meaning it's just a funny ... if a bit awkward ... coincidence.
Back in Marvel Universe terms, Jack Russell is the descendent of the Russoff family, whose name was anglicized to Russell during their emigration from Russia to the United States. The Russoff family became werewolves thanks to the actions of Jack Russell's ancestor, Grigori Russoff, who was stricken with lycanthropy after fighting with Dracula - as in Marvel's version of the classic literary vampire - and was bitten by a werewolf in the process.
In the '50s, Grigori's descendant Gregory Russoff reactivated the curse of lycanthropy that dwelled in his bloodline by tampering with the forbidden magic of the book known as the Darkhold, the very same accursed tome seen corrupting Wanda Maximoff in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (and first seen in WandaVision.
Gregory then passed the curse on to his son Jacob Russoff, who would eventually change his name to Jack Russell after moving to America as a child - becoming the original Werewolf By Night. Jack first became a werewolf under a full moon just around the time of his 18th birthday - leading him to murder his family's driver, Phillip Grant, and cause a car accident that greviously injured his mother.
And that's just the start of the horror.
Jack Russell in the Marvel Universe
In the years after his first transformation, Jack would have formative encounters with the magic of the Darkhold, the same book that cursed his family with lycanthropy, and those who wished to possess its power - as well as the power of lycanthropy.
Jack's first encounter with the Darkhold came in a chance meeting with a pair of married spellcasters named Andrea and Nathan Timlin who recognized Jack's connection to its magic - before succumbing to the terrible cost of using the Darkhold themselves and dying.
Then Jack discovered his ancestral family home, Russoff Castle, had been sold to a group of mad scientists known as the Blackgar family, a father/daughter team who were conducting gruesome experiments within the castle's walls. Teaming up with a journalist named Buck Cowan, Jack puts a stop to the Blackgars' experiments - though not before Cowan steals the Darkhold from them.
The discovery of the Darkhold led to Jack's next transformation, a mystical encounter with mysterious beings known as the 'Three Who Are All' who granted him the power to control his transformation at will - with the feral mind of the werewolf only taking hold under full moons, during which Jack could not control his change.
This led to a shift in Jack's status in the Marvel Universe. Now able to mostly control his werewolf change to harness his wolf form's strength, speed, and durability, Jack began teaming up with heroes such as Iron Man and the Avengers as a part-time superhero.
But he still wished to control the unchangeable portion of his curse, turning to Dr. Karl Malus, an evil geneticist who promised to help Jack but instead captured him and used his unique physiology to create man-beast hybrids.
That's the same Karl Malus whose experiments created Spider-Woman, and who turned Sam Wilson into a werewolf in one of his first adventures as Captain America, by the way.
Malus' manipulations led to Jack's transformation once again becoming uncontrollable, sending him back down a dark path before intervention from Morbius and his team of supernatural heroes the Midnight Sons (recently relaunched as the Midnight Suns).
Since then, Jack has had team-ups with everyone from monster hunter Elsa Bloodstone, who is seemingly also in the Werewolf By Night Halloween Special played by Laura Donnelly, to Deadpool, everyone's favorite Merc with a Mouth.
Jack Russell in the MCU
Jack Russell is the version of Werewolf By Night played by Gael Garcia Bernal in the Special Presentation, though only his first name is actually used onscreen.
But with promotional materials confirming his identity as Jack Russell, he makes perfect sense as a new introduction designed to act as something of a hub for the MCU's burgeoning horror wing, bringing together characters such as Blade and Moon Knight (who even debuted in Werewolf By Night's original title back in the '70s), and even forging an apparent friendship with Man-Thing.
There's also Jack Russell's comic book connection to the Darkhold, which has an important recent role in the MCU in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. If the MCU draws on that, that will add even more connective tissue between Werewolf By Night and the larger Avengers continuity.
Whatever the case, we won't have to wait long to find out, as Werewolf By Night is now officially part of the MCU.
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