In my previous Comic Speculation Sunday article on Children of the Vault, I talked about investing in concepts, rather than characters. In this week’s article, I am going to apply this to Marvel’s supernatural genre.

I stumbled upon this concept when I was looking for supernatural characters that are still currently used in Marvel comics, I look up characters from these 4 series and see who are actively being used.

• Nick Fury’s Howling Commandos
• Howling Commandos of SHIELD
• Marvel Zombies Vol 4
• Mrs Deadpool and the Howling Commandos

Once I started reading these, it surprised me in terms of how this concept of Howling Commands is being used regularly. This can be a direction which the MCU can used.

The concept is about a military unit comprised of supernatural characters investing paranormal activities i.e. SHIELD + Supernatural

Nick Fury’s Howling Commando #1 is the first Marvel book to introduce such a concept. Most of the other supernatural gatherings have been like traditional team ensemble (such as Midnight sons, Legion of Monsters etc) and has nothing to do with being military.

MCU has shown a history of doing such military units. We first saw them in the form of SHIELD and now S.W.O.R.D for the cosmic side of Marvel. Extending to the supernatural isn’t too far fetch.

For this alone, this book is a nice little lottery book to pick up.

Another big plus for this book is the relatively low sales number.

Sales number for this book falls just down 25,000. This number is pretty low when you compare against other modern books which tend to have sales higher than 30k, 40k or even 50k. Low supply makes the book easier to spike when there are news.

If you want even lower numbers, there is a director’s cut version for this book, with a slightly fading cover. I do not have the numbers but it should be lower than the regular version.

As a bonus, it also introduces 3 other supernatural characters: War Wolf, Frank and Zombie. None has really struck a chord with the readers but they do fall nicely into this genre.

As a final bonus, this book also contains the first appearance of Gorilla-Man after the golden age. There is a version that appears in What If #9 but that is an alternate reality version. My gut feel is folks will rush for the What if version but who knows.

 

Going down the ladder, this less significant book introduces the Abominable Snowman, who unfortunately only made 3 appearances.

The only saving grace for this book is its low supply and also the second appearance of the Howling Commandos.

Look for clues within this book

On top of speculating on this book, you can read the entire series to see what kind of supernatural characters are being used in the team. It is no secret that MCU often reference comics as source materials so some members might give you ideas on what other characters can be speculated on.

Here is a list what I can gather. Some of them appear in one series while others tend to be in every team.

• Vampire by Night (2 series)
• Living Mummy (3 series)
• Grogg (1 series)
• Gorilla-Man (1 series)
• Man-Thing (all series)
• Werewolf by Night (2 series)
• Jennifer Kale (1 series)
• Marcus the Centaur (1 series)
• Orrgo (2 series)
• Teen Abomination (1 series)
• Manphibian (2 series)
• Lilith Drake (1 series)
• Glob (1 series)
• Warwolf (2 series, 2 different characters)
• Zombie (2 series, 2 different characters)
• Glyph (1 series)
• Hit Monkey (1 series)

The shows us really how wide the Marvel supernatural circle is. A few such as Vampire by Night, Lilith, Werewolf by Night etc are already being speculated on. Most of them list are not.

If you like to collect Marvel supernatural, whether for speculation or personal collection, the above will a good list to start.