Werewolf Vs. Vampire by Bryan Baugh.

This month’s New York magazine features a short article on werewolves by Jeff Vandam. While the “article” is only a page long, and while I would sooner expect The New Yorker to run a feature on Rambo, I was nevertheless happy to see some lycanthropic goodness in a mainstream magazine. Unfortunately, the article quickly becomes a classic werewolves vs. vampires retro-drama. Guess what? Count Chocula wins, and Edward Cullen wins the mark of cultural favor over David Naughton’s David Kessler and Jack Nicholson’s Will Randall. And while everyone is allowed to have a personal preference when it comes to monsters, I believe that the hairy-handed gents are made out of culturally richer and more enduring stuff than vampires are.
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If you’re the sort of person who knows why a t-shirt with some airbrushed wolves on it is hilarious, get ready. Just get ready. The Mountain, creators of the 3 Wolf Moon shirt, have added werewolves to their repertoire of epically airbrushed body coverings. For some reason it’s really difficult to find these shirts on their web site, but if you have patience (and Flash) you can browse the catalog (page 174) and find three new entries in their “Skulbone” imprint: 3 Werewolf Moon, Transformation and Werewolf Moon (all pictured below). Only 3 Werewolf Moon is available online, courtesy of Amazon, but the other two are undoubtedly waiting for you at an authorized The Mountain retailer near you. I would wear the Transformation shirt, and I would only be a little ironic about it. I can admit this.

Thanks to Goldenwolf for letting me know about all three shirts and providing the image!

NYTimes.com has posted a just-snarky-enough-for-the-Internet breakdown of eight canonical movie werewolves (well, seven plus that bland New Moon guy). The author (Dave Itzkoff) watched the films with enough attention to detail to produce some wry comments, but I think the best one of the lot comes early.

[1941's Wolf Man] Talbot meets his end at the wrong end of a silver walking stick wielded by his father who, while disappointed in his son’s lifestyle, probably never intended to club him to death.

OH SNAP.

There are more werewolf movies out there every year, and it’s getting tougher and tougher to keep track of them all. Which ones are good, and which ones are so bad that they’re good?  Which ones have actual werewolves in them, as  opposed to big dogs or guys in business suits? Terry over at Rouge Joker is here to help. He’s assembled The Evolution of the Movie  Werewolf, a great article that provides synopses, photos and video clips of 27 different werewolf films. Check it out!

Apparently ShockTillYouDrop.com has agents everywhere, including France, where werewolf fans are getting a slightly different view of The Wolfman promotional materials. There’s an alternate poster (thumbnail below) and a theatrical trailer with some scenes not shown in the North American versions. Check ‘em out!

Nerd news portal Slashdot has updated their site-wide poll to ask the question: If I Had To Choose, I’d Be A …

The options are:

• Zombie
• Vampire
• Werewolf
• Mummy
• Necromancer
• Ringwraith
• My Family Already Thinks I’m A Troll
• Demon Penguin

As of this minute, werewolves are in fourth place with 10% of the vote. We’re being beaten by Demon Penguin (har har, nerd joke), Necromancer (thanks a lot, roleplaying / WoW fans) and Vampire (sigh). Werewolf fans, do your thing !

J!NX is selling a World of Warcraft Three Worgen Moon t-shirt, which will be hilarious to werewolf-loving, meme-knowing geeks like me, and which will only mystify the uninitiated. Ladies, is it irresistible? Hat-tip to @electricdog and @tshirtmeme.

I was trying to save my effusive praise until I’d actually read a copy, but I would be lying if I said the mere title of this book didn’t make me giddy. Written by Ritch Duncan and Bob Powers and lovingly illustrated by Emily Flake, The Werewolf’s Guide To Life looks like the lycanthropic response to the Zombie Survival Guide. It’s packed with sensible advice, survival tips and illustrations like the one below. It hits shelves on September 15, and you can pre-order it from a number of online retailers (including the ubiquitous Amazon). I’m trying to arrange an interview with the authors, so stay tuned!

Okay, I’ve had enough. Every time I pick up a paper or a magazine, browse through blogs or read a news web site, someone is going on about the “werewolves” in Twilight. Aside from being boring, clichéd, visually uninteresting and a misappropriation of Native American culture, the werewolves in Twilight aren’t real werewolves. This fact is even printed in Breaking Dawn, the last book of the series (chapter 37, look it up). I was willing to let this go, but it’s getting so I can’t even walk down the street without hearing someone sighing dreamily over “those hot Quileute werewolves”. People are making their own Twilight-inspired werewolf stuff out of craft supplies and selling them to each other online. There are dozens of Twilight-based “OMG R U A WEREWOLF OR A VAMPIRE??” online quizzes designed to fill up your sister’s MySpace page and destroy the signal-to-noise ratio on Twitter. Don’t even get me started on the blog discussions.

So what can I do? Well, as an Internet-savvy werewolf fan, I can try to enlist your help in making a number get bigger:

http://werewolf-news.com/twilight/

It’s not much, but it’s something. If you feel the same way I do about this crazy business, please share the URL. Post it on your blog, spread it around on Twitter, and participate in the grim satisfaction of having complained about something on the Internet. You might feel a little bit better– I did.

The classic werewolf film An American Werewolf in London has been getting a lot of press lately, what with the Blu-ray edition on the way this September, and Dimension Films getting ready to shoot a remake. Today, Den of Geek is taking a look back at AWIL in the form of an article about the film’s groundbreaking status when it was released in the 80’s, and its status today as (some would say) the Holy Grail of werewolf films. Supplemented with some great still-frames and some interesting trivia, it’s well worth a read.