Originally released in 2017, Namwolf is about Marty Spencer, a young man who goes off to fight in Vietnam and finds out he's a werewolf, although Faerber draws him less as a conventional combo of man and wolf, and more like a giant koala with bat ears. Or maybe a Chewbacca. Either way, turns out this is a curse passed down from generation to generation, and also each generation seems drawn into a war. Both those bits are revealed to Marty via a letter his father had given him before he shipped out, but that he didn't read until he woke up in a prison cell.
Marty's attempts to come to grips with this information are complicated by the interference of the U.S government, which quickly whisks him away to a location where they can drug him, steal his blood, and subject him to mind-bending psychological treatment designed to turn him into a super-patriotic furry guided missile, essentially.
The two people Marty "interacts" with during that stretch are either an anonymous doctor, face hidden behind glasses and a surgeon's mask, or some mustachioed general whose eyes Faerber draws as these blank white dots set in big dark sockets. They don't regard Marty as anything but a tool, but any humanity of their own is obscured or hidden. All men have monsters within them, some are just more obvious on the surface.
There's also the squad Marty was originally part of when arriving in 'Nam, who are drawn in broad strokes. A guy called "Doc", a gruff but kind sergeant, one guy who is always brandishing his combat knife and seems a little unhinged. They're distinguished mostly by the fact that they, or at least the sergeant, care about Marty. Or at least respect that he saved their butts. It's not so much that we see them joking around with Marty before everything goes wrong as it is that Marty clearly feels some loyalty or compassion to them, which ultimately enables him to fight off the drugs and embrace his curse, rather than fear it.
Rangel also has the Vietcong (they don't seem to be wearing any standardized uniform, so I'm guessing they aren't convention North Vietnamese Army) have a potion that can turn people into bat-winged, spider-eyed monsters of their own. Curiously, they don't unleash them until Namwolf makes his first appearance. I guess the idea is they felt confident enough about how things were going there was no need for such a drastic step prior to that. They also keep at least one of their former comrades that drank the potion in a pit, into which they throw captured American soldiers. Which the creature, who used to be a guy named Hung, though we never learn anything about what type of person he was before he drank the potion, then eats, to the raucous cheers of his buddies.
I think it's less about making the Vietcong look worse than the U.S., and more about that notion of humanity being capable of monstrous things. Humans are depicted as physically frail in this, puny figures scrambling around the monsters, their bodies easily turned into red chunks by bullets. That doesn't make them helpless. Because they can be cold-blooded enough to use those monsters, prey on their weakness of fanaticism.
Also, I think the people-turned-bat creatures are meant to contrast with Namwolf. They drank it, knowing what would happen and what they'd do. They thought it was necessary, so they did it. The unhinged U.S. soldier is willingly injected with something made from Marty's blood so he can become a monster. (That's a part where I paused, because the general just walks out of the
jungle with some idiot in a sweater to make the offer. How'd he get
there?) He mostly doesn't like feeling helpless, or maybe it bugs him to get his butt pulled from the fire by the wet behind the ears rookie he picked on.
Marty went into war unaware what lurked inside him, and by the end of the mini-series, has concluded he needs to get out. That his presence is an escalation this war doesn't need. I'd say it's a little late to put that genie back in the bottle, but oh well.
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