WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Werewolf by Night #2 by Taboo & Benjamin Earl, Scot Eaton, Scott Hanna, Miroslav Mrva, and VC’s Joe Sabino.
The second issue of Werewolf by Night picks up where the first left off with Jake Gomez is squaring off with three monsters. Before the new Werewolf by Night attacks, he stops to make a reference to John Carpenter’s classic 1988 horror movie, They Live.
Gomez’s first appearance came last month. The young man is a Native American reimagining of the classic Marvel horror character, Werewolf by Night. Gomez caught the scent of something strange going on in the lab where he works as a janitor by day. He and his friend Molly suspect there’s a connection between what he smelled and Native people going missing. They decide to investigate, where they meet the three monsters after discovering a van full of kidnapped people.
Before his fight with three monsters, Werewolf by Night says, "I gotta chew some bubblegum and kick some ass. And like Rowdy Roddy Piper says... I'm all outta bubblegum." The reference is taken straight from a scene in They Live, when Piper’s character John Nada says nearly the same line before killing a group of aliens in a bank.
They Live is about Nada finding a pair of sunglasses that allow him to see through the disguises of aliens that have disguised themselves as the 1%. Nada and his friend Frank Armitage (played by the legendary Keith David) bring down the alien’s conspiracy. The film is a perfect reference to make in this particular comment for a number of reasons. The first is that Werewolf by Night is tracking down the Native people who’ve disappeared, which is likely part of a conspiracy that he and Molly will bring down.
The reference also adds a layer of class commentary. The comic, which is hinting that Native people are being taken for experiments, is explicitly addressing race. The They Live allusion helps it to be more intersectional, implying that both race and class are in play when this secret organization is choosing who to kidnap.
Finally, the reference works by highlighting the dual nature of everyone in the fight. In They Live, the glasses enable Nada to see through alien disguises, making each alien he sees a double -- both the fleshless skull and the disguise over it. Werewolf by Night has a similar double nature, being both Jake Gomez the human boy and Jake Gomez the Werewolf by Night, and the monsters Jake is pitted against also have their own dual nature.
Roddy Piper, who was a star in the WWE before his classic performance in They Live, isn’t the only wrestling legend the comic references. While it’s not as illuminating to the theme or the direction of the story, Gomez casually mentions that he “feel[s] like the Ultimate Warrior suplexed me onto a barbed wire table during a ladder match” as he recovers. Fingers crossed for a quote from Hulk Hogan’s No Holds Barred next issue.