RED WOLF #1Unpublished MINI-SERIES cover

 

 
 
                                                

 

                       

 

 

Here's a real blast from the past--with an interesting history behind it. After I had finished the second Hercules: Prince of Power mini-series back in 1984, Jackson Guice and I (we were close buds in those days) were looking for a project we could work on together.  Butch was a fan of the Red Wolf character I had created and one night, over dinner at one of our favorite NYC eateries, we came up with a springboard for a mini-series (written on a blank receipt borrowed from our waitress). I worked up the premise and designed this cover for the first issue and pitched it to Jim Shooter.

J.S., with his usual intolerance, rejected it without hearing the full pitch, stating that, as successful Marvel creators, we should be thinking bigger than coming up with new premises for third-string heroes.  He suggested that we come up with a new pitch for the original X-Men instead--saying that a new X-Book would be something that Marvel (and Butch and I) could make buckets of money by doing.

Some months and a lot of brainstorming later--the end result was--X-Factor.

The rest, as they say, is history.

As a result, poor Rojohn Smythe never took up the mantle of the Red Wolf again and the cover (and premise) languished in one of my file boxes until this April, when I dusted it off and finished the drawing for my website regulars to behold. You may notice that the Red Wolf costume was somewhat redesigned for dramatic purposes.

 

The Basic Premise:

In the series, Rojohn Smythe (Red Wolf) hears of a planet called Terrazon, under Skrull occupation, where humans are systematically being slaughtered in vast numbers--akin to the concentration camps in WWII. He allows himself to be captured in order to infiltrate the camp and destroy it from within.

While incarcerated, he discovers two frightening facts: Skrull infiltrators have placed incredibly-lethal Cobalt bombs in various capital cities within the star system. And secondly, his own brother, Derol Smythe, has become an enemy collaborator who provided the Skrulls with the information necessary to accomplish that task. 

In order to defuse the combat devices, Red Wolf must locate the scientist who originally developed the bombs, who is now a prisoner on the equivalent of a Terrazon Devil's Island.

Once Rojohn succeeds in making the perilous way to the island fortress, he discovers that the facility is guarded by none-other than the mighty Super-Skrull.

The big twist in the mini-series was that Rojohn would perish in battle at the tale's conclusion. Ironically,  the mantle of the Red Wolf  was to pass onto his brother, Derol-- an outcast who is now hated by his fellow humans, yet possessed by a spirit dedicated to destroying mankind's most insidious enemy.

 

 

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