Today, worlds collide! I’m about to get ridiculously niche, to the point that hardly anyone will care about what I’m writing here. Look, I love Michelle Pfeiffer, and I love comic books. So when I was looking at old issues of Marvel’s 1970s horror series Werewolf by Night, I had an epiphany: one of the book’s supporting characters, the mysterious and alluring mystic named Topaz reminds me a lot of late-seventies, early-eighties Baby Pfeiffer, especially as originally drawn by her co-creator, artist Mike Ploog.
Clearly, it’s the blonde, feathered hair, the sensual lips, and the overall hotness factor that Michelle and Topaz share.
What I’m saying here is if Werewolf by Night had been adapted for the screen circa 1979 or 1980–I’m thinking maybe a telefilm, done in the style of Kolchak: The Night Stalker—Michelle would have been perfect casting as Topaz. She could have fit the shoot it in between her work on Delta House and B.A.D. Cats!
A good but very different version of WBN was produced in 2022 for television as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But, man, if we’d gotten an adaptation closer to those wild and wooly 1970s horror comics back in the day, young Michelle would’ve made one helluva Topaz. And, let’s take it a step further and cast Kurt Russell as the werewolf himself, Jack Russell. He already has the last name! And this would be a fun precursor to Michelle’s and Kurt’s 1988 classic, Tequila Sunrise, and also their recent television work together on The Madison.
It’s all a dream, of course, but sometimes it’s just fun to look back and wonder what if?
