A Motherfucker is a Werewolf / The Myth Killer

[New York]: RAT Subterranean News, [1969]. A 4-page newsprint section featuring manifestos/articles and a poster from the International Werewolf Conspiracy (IWWC) - an offshoot of Up Against the Wall Motherfucker - that originally appeared in a 1969 issue of the underground newspaper RAT Subterranean News. In late 1968, following increased repression from NYC authorities, the Motherfuckers’ members and activities became dispersed and its iconography more grotesque. As scholar David AJ Murrieta Flores states, “The shadows from which the IWWC operated promoted a Gothic shift in self-representation, enacting a new identity anchored to haunting places in which it attempts to spread like a contagion” (p. 168).

The first page features the manifesto A Motherfucker is a Werewolf and features a snarling werewolf and a wolf-man. As Flores interprets, “the pop Gothicism of the image, its messy textures, and its darkened photographs of a nude hairy man in tow subvert the clarity and wild colorfulness of the American radical” (p. 170). The manifesto begins with a reappropriated quote by the French social thinker, Georges Sorel, that states, “Hip Revolutionaries have the Power to inspire FEAR.” The group then announces itself as “the ultimate Horror Show...Hideous Hair & Dangerous Drugs...Armed Love striking terror into the vacant hearts of the plastic Mother & pig-faced Father.” The rest of the manifesto describes the predatory behavior of the werewolf and its ability to strike fear and is signed in print by the IWWC and Up Against the Wall Motherfucker. The two inside pages feature an IWWC poster of a skeleton printed in black, orange and yellow. The rear page is titled “The Myth Killer,” a short article that explains the role of the IWWC as the “Hip Revolutionary Community in Action.” The essay concludes, “We must create the hip revolutionary community. We must destroy Amerika because it has nothing to offer us but death.” Other conspirators in the IWWC are listed at the bottom, and include: Up Against the Wall/MOTHERFUCKERS, Al Paredon Hijo de Puta, Berkeley Commune, Boston Freemen, Church of the New Reality (Southwest), October 15 Movement, Flower Cong, and You.

Tabloid format printed in color on newsprint, 4 p., illus. Browning to newsprint; a few small closed tears and creases along the top edge, center fold.

See, Flores, David A J Murrieta. “‘A Motherfucker Is a Werewolf’: Gang Identity and Avant-Garde Rebellion in Up Against the Wall Motherfucker and the International Werewolf Conspiracy (1968–1970).” Under Construction: Performing Critical Identity, 2021. doi:10.3390/books978-3-03897-500-7-8. Item #10775

Price: $250.00