Werewolf by Night

Jack Russell and his sister Lissa grew up in Los Angeles where their parents settled after having emigrated from Eastern Europe. When Jack turned 18 he began to transform into a Hollywood-style werewolf on the nights of the full moon. This was due to a blood curse that affected all of the males in his family once they reached adulthood, the result of one of his ancestors, a Baron Russoff, having read a portion of the Darkhold. His parents had hoped that moving to the U.S. would prevent Jack from falling under the curse but it wasn't to be.

Later, a troika of mystical and extradimensional beings called "The Three who are All" granted Jack the ability to change into a werewolf at will, no matter what portion of the month it was, and allowed him to keep his human intellect while doing so. However, on the nights of a full moon, his mind would still regress to that of a savage beast.

In hopes of being able to retain control of himself during the nights of a full moon, Jack sought out Dr. Karl Malus. Unknown to Jack, Malus was a criminal almost to the point of insanity and hoped to use Jack's Werewolf form as a tool to further his criminal ends. Malus connected Jack to a machine which was supposed to subvert his will and allow Malus to control him when the werewolf manifested itself. However, Jack escaped with the help of the original Spider-Woman, someone who he had met during an earlier escapade.

However, now when the full moon arose, Jack found out the hard way that the Doctor's "treatments" had a strange side-effect. As usual, he lost control of the change but the creature he transformed into was an even more wolf-like beast. This more savage werewolf creature was larger than his normal werewolf by at least half again as much, it also had a longer wolf-or fox-like snout and ears, and a curved spine, canine double-jointed legs and a small tail.

After this, Jack joined the Night-Shift, a gang of criminally-bent individuals who were being manipulated by the Shroud into performing heroic acts in and around the Los Angeles area.