There’s no doubt that Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin has his fingers in many pies, most of them terribly unsavory, but he’s probably the only comic book villain to fight a drug war against werewolves.
Eduardo and Carlos Lobo first appeared in comic books back in the weird and wacky time of 1988. Arriving in Texas in time to stop a gang war and establish their drug cartel, the brothers—who are occasionally referred to as Los Hermanos de la Luna—had more than just power and charisma going for them. Thanks to their mutant powers, the two drug lords were also werewolves.
Their South Texas drug empire wasn’t about to stay peaceful or untouched, however. In 1988’s Spectacular Spider-Man #143, New York’s Kingpin gets wind of the Lobos’ criminal doings down south and, like any megalomaniac hungry for power, he gets paranoid. Through some convoluted comic book storytelling, Punisher is captured, brainwashed, and brought to Texas to murder the Lobos brothers, who Kingpin has begun to perceive as a threat to his own criminal empire. The attempt fails when Spider-Man interferes, leaving Carlos wounded. Instead of going into hiding, the brothers take the fight to Kingpin.
What starts with the grisly murder of a single drug runner and a message written in the man’s blood, reading “Wolves Bite Back,” quickly escalates. The Lobos attack more of Kingpin’s men, slaughtering them in a subway and leaving just a single man clinging to life, before finally turning their attention towards the Kingpin himself, Wilson Fisk. The assassination is foiled thanks to a dummy of Kingpin, but only after the werewolves kill all his guards. Let it never be said that Kingpin isn’t a savvy businessman. Knowing when to take the L, he arranges a meeting with the lycanthropic brothers to make a deal. The meeting is attacked, however, leaving Eduardo dead.
There’s a lot to unpack with the wolfy, drug-running duo, from the tendency of '80s comics to cast Latinx characters as criminals to the very strange choice to make them werewolves as a superpower. The characters, however, are certainly worthy of some attention—a fact that comic writers apparently agreed with when Carlos Lobo reappeared in comics 2012’s Scarlet Spider run, along with a new character, his sister Esmerelda “Esme” Lobo. The sister shared Carlos and the deceased Eduardo Lobo’s superpower of turning into a werewolf and all the perks that come with it.
Comics have seen some strange villains in the decades since they rose in popularity, and werewolves barely scratch the surface. It is, however, delightful to imagine Kingpin looking down on a small lycanthropic drug cartel and thinking to himself, “Yeah, I can fight them.”