JOSHUA KANEJOSHUA KANE
Real Name: Joshua Kane
Identity/Class: Human, conventional weapon user
Occupation: Hunter, collector of occult artifacts, former movie star(?)
Group Membership: None
Affiliations: Mr. Gabriel, Lt. Lou Hackett, Geraldo Kabal
Enemies: Jack Russell, Lissa Russell
Known Relatives: Luther Kane (brother)
Aliases: None
Base of Operations: His home in Tugunga Canyon, California
First Appearance: Werewolf by Night I#4 (March, 1973)
Powers/Abilities: Joshua Kane had no superhuman abilities but, judging by his muscular appearance, he presumably possessed the strength of a man of his height, age and build who engaged in intensive regular exercise. Additionally, when Kane felt fear, a berserker reaction was triggered in him which appeared to temporarily increase his strength.
Kane normally exhibited a cool and aloof demeanor but he became a raging madman when confronted by something that made him feel too much fear, an emotion he hated himself for ever feeling. It was this resentment of his own fear which drove him to constantly test his own courage by facing danger.
Kane was apparently a skilled horseman and a skilled marksman with both rifle and pistol.
History:
(Werewolf by Night I#4 (fb)) - Joshua Kane was always a
hunter, always looking for any kind of danger to face. Over the
years he had hunted elephants, apes, lions and African tribesmen,
and he had felt "the thrill of giving death to creatures
stronger than (he)." However, after twenty years, the thrill
was gone because there was no more danger or excitement so Kane
decided to stalk a werewolf.
(Werewolf by Night I#17 (fb) - BTS) - At some point in his life, Joshua Kane became associated with Mallet Studios. His movies were produced by Mr. Gabriel.
(Werewolf by Night i#21 (fb) - BTS) - At some point in his life, Kane and Lou Hackett hunted together a lot. Hackett came to consider himself to be Joshua's best friend.
(Werewolf by Night I#21 (fb)
- BTS) - At some point in his life, Kane acquired an ancient
trunk filled with sorcerous artifacts which had supposedly once
belonged to the mad monk Aelfric who had lived in the abbey of
San Michel until he was burned at the stake for worshipping Satan
himself (actually Chthon). Kane tried to locate the
Darkhold, the book into which Aelfric's scrolls had eventually
been bound, but he never learned what had happened to the volume.
(Werewolf by Night I#21 (fb)) - In order to make certain that his lawyer (Geraldo Kabal) understood the irregularities of his last testament and to facilitate the disposition of his inheritance, Kane showed Aelfric's ancient trunk filled with arcane paraphernalia to Kabal. Kane picked out two identical werewolf rings and told Kabal that Lou Hackett should be given one of them because "it would suit (his) nature."
(Werewolf by Night I#4 (fb) - BTS) - When the Werewolf's activities in the Los Angeles area began to be reported as wolf attacks, Kane followed the reports but realized that there was more to them than that. Kane then tracked and stalked the Werewolf until he'd learned its human identity of Jack Russell.
(Werewolf by Night I#5 (fb) - BTS) - Kane kept a detailed journal in which he wrote down his plan to hunt a werewolf and what he had learned about Jack Russell and his family.
(Werewolf by Night I#3 - BTS) - On a first night of the full moon, Kane presumably tracked Jack Russell to Father Joquez's rectory in Tugunga Canyon. Later, Kane must have followed when the Werewolf carried an unconscious Lissa Russell from the rectory into the hills.
(Werewolf by Night I#4 (fb)) - In the hills, Kane confronted Lissa as she knelt by a stream and made some threatening comments, provoking her to call Jack for help. As Kane had planned, her cry for help lured the Werewolf closer, so Kane then threatened Lissa with a gun to her head. This ploy kept the Werewolf at bay long enough for the moon to go down which in turn caused the Werewolf to transform into Jack (who then blacked out).
(Werewolf by Night I#4 (fb) - BTS) - Kane brought Lissa and the unconscious Jack to his nearby home where he put Lissa in a glass cage filled with a gas that kept her unconscious. Kane put Jack on a sofa in his den and waited nearby for him to revive.
(Werewolf by Night I#4 (fb)) - When Jack did
regain consciousness hours later, Kane introduced himself and let
Jack see that Lissa was in a cage but was otherwise "okay -
- for the time bein' - - if you catch what I'm trying to say."
When Kane implied that he might use Lissa to complete a matched
set of "his and hers" cups made from human skulls, Jack
attacked him and tried to strangle him but Kane easily threw him
off and onto the floor. Kane then revealed his twenty years of
hunting the big game, how the only animal he'd never stalked was
a werewolf and made it clear that Lissa would only live if Jack
cooperated and let him hunt the Werewolf.
As night approached, Kane tied Jack's wrists
together and, using the rope as a tether, compelled Jack to
follow him as he rode to a nearby abandoned movie lot. Once there,
Kane cut the rope binding Jack's wrists and gave him ten minutes
to run before coming after him.
(Werewolf
by Night I#4) - Hunting the Werewolf through an Old West town set,
Kane toyed with his prey, allowing him to "play hard to
get" before shooting him in his left shoulder with a silver
bullet. An hour into the hunt, the Werewolf decided to hunt Kane
and attacked him but only managed knock him off his horse and
shred his shirt. However, the fear Kane felt during
the attack triggered a berserker reaction in him and he threw the
Werewolf away from him and then drew a silver sword and attacked.
When the wounded Werewolf batted his sword away and then
retreated, Kane allowed him to go, admitting that the Werewolf
had won that round, and then drew his pistol and followed his
prey into a medieval castle set. While walking along a wooden
parapet, Kane was ambushed from below by the Werewolf but managed
to kick the Werewolf off of him and through a castle wall (made
of paper-mache). Chasing after the Werewolf, Kane's mind snapped
due to the strain of this most dangerous hunt. After sighting the
Werewolf, Kane followed him into another set without realizing
that the sun had already come up. Entering a room where he heard
his prey breathing, Kane heard a sound behind him and whirled to
see something moving towards him in the darkness. Crying out "I'm
NOT afraid of you! I'm not afraid of ANYONE! I'm JOSHUA KANE!",
Kane opened fire on what was attacking him but when the attacker
continued to advance towards him he felt so much terror that he
collapsed and died of an apparent heart attack without ever
realizing that his attacker was just a movie prop (or possibly a
bear he had slain and stuffed years earlier.)
(Werewolf by Night I#5 (fb) - BTS) - Before leaving the movie lot, Jack Russell called the police and told them where to find the body.
(Werewolf by Night I#5 (fb) - BTS) - During the night, Joshua's brother Luther (and his bodyguard Desmond) visited Joshua's home and let themselves in. While looking around, Luther found Joshua's diary and read all about his plan to hunt the Werewolf. He also found Lissa Russell unconscious in her glass cage. Seeing a way in which he could use the situation to his own benefit, Luther waited for the police to come to investigate (once they had identified Joshua's body) and then sent them away.
(Werewolf by Night I#5) - Less than 24 hours after Joshua's death, Luther Kane was accidentally killed when a knife thrown by Desmond at the Werewolf missed its target and impaled Luther instead (Desmond had died when his back was broken by the Werewolf seconds after throwing the knife).
(Werewolf by Night I#6) - The Los Angeles Police Department came to the conclusion that both Joshua and Luther Kane had been murdered. Lieutenant Lou Hackett found some references in Joshua's notes which led him to believe that there was a werewolf loose in the city.
(Werewolf by Night I#17 (fb) - BTS/Werewolf by Night I#20 (fb) - BTS) - Following Joshua Kane's death, Geraldo Kabal collected all of his possessions from Mallet Studios and had everything carted off but he may have misplaced a trunk (see comments).
(Werewolf by Night I#21 (fb) - BTS) - Acting as executor of Joshua Kane's estate, Kabal fulfilled the stipulations of his last request by seeing to it that Lou Hackett received a certain ring (but he kept an identical ring for himself until Jack Russell took it from him).
Comments: Created by Gerry Conway, Mike Ploog and Frank Bolle.
Joshua Kane's home in Tugunga Canyon was not actually called "Castle Kane." As he said to Jack, "They say a man's home is his castle, bo'! If that's the case - - then welcome to Castle Kane!"
While WBN#17 established that Joshua Kane was associated with Mallet Studios, some of the sets on the abandoned movie lot were labeled "Creative Pictures Inc." Maybe the movie lot had been owned by Mallet Studios and they had once rented it to Creative Pictures Inc?
While the room in which Kane died may have resembled his den at home, it actually was an old set from Creative Pictures Inc.'s production of "The Most Dangerous Game."
It's not quite clear, at
least in my mind, that Kane was solely responsible for his death.
Maybe it was his gunfire that caused the stuffed bear prop to
topple onto him (and trigger his fatal heart attack) but when I
look at that last page I see the bear moving before Kane opened
fire. To me, it looks like Jack may have been behind the bear,
using it as a shield while he pushed it forward in order to get
close enough to Kane to disarm him. Any other opinions?
The bear certainly seems to be some
distance away and moves closer while being shot before falling on
top of Kane, so I agree that Jack might have been hiding behind
it.
--Snood
In Werewolf by Night I#19, Clary Winters asked Jack to come Mallet Studios where she'd found a trunk full of dozens of weird, arcane artifacts in the prop room and with a name-plate (which we never saw) on the trunk that connected it to Geraldo Kabal. Since these artifacts were presumably the "odd paraphernalia" belonging to a former client that Kabal mentioned in WBN#20, they were probably the rest of the items from Aelfric's trunk. If so, it's unclear why they would be in a trunk with Kabal's name on it and why they would still be at Mallet Studios after Kabal had supposedly "carted off" everything belonging to Kane. It was in that trunk that Raymond Coker and Jack found the VERY rare tome entitled "Libro del Malditos" which revealed that the only cure for the curse of the wolf was for the cursed one to find another werewolf and kill him under the full moon.
Mallet Studios might have been founded as "Creative Pictures, Inc."
--Carycomic
Clarifications:
Joshua Kane has no known connections to
Mr. Gabriel produced Joshua Kane's movies. What those movies were about or how Kane was involved was never made clear. After Kane's death, Jack Russell asked Gabriel if Kane had left any notes or books (or anything to do with werewolves) at Mallet Studios and Mr. Gabriel revealed that a lawyer named Geraldo Kabel had handled all that by carting everything off.
- Werewolf by Night I#17
images:
Werewolf by Night I#4, page 2, panel 1 (full body)
Werewolf by Night I#4, page 3, panel 1 (head)
Werewolf by Night I#4, page 11, panel 1 (hunting)
Werewolf by Night I#4, page 20, panel 6 or 7 (dying)
Werewolf by Night I#17, page 11, panel 1 (Mr. Gabriel)
Werewolf by Night I#21, page 5, panel 5 (Kane with werewolf rings)
Werewolf by Night I#4 (March, 1973) - Gerry Conway (writer), Mike Ploog (pencils), Frank Bolle (inks), Roy Thomas (editor)
Werewolf by Night I#21 (September, 1974) - Doug Moench (writer), Don Perlin (pencils), Vince Colletta (inks), Roy Thomas (editor)
First Posted: 10/27/2005
Last updated: 07/18/2013
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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