Real
Name: Janocz
Creature Feature
Real
Name: Janocz
Identity/Class: Cursed human
Occupation: Troubleshooter for hire
Affiliations: Soulsearchers
Known Relatives: None
Aliases: None
Base of Operations: Mystic Grove, Connecticut
First Appearance: Soulsearchers and Company #2 (Claypool Comics, August 1993)
Powers/Abilities: Janocz can transform into a variety of monsters - never the same one twice. He has little conscious control over when and how he changes, and if too stressed, he has no control over the creature he becomes either.
History: In Pastramia there is a gypsy tribe. It is the tribe that Greta Bartok, Mystic Groves' fabled Witch of Tiger Hill comes from. And it is the tribe that Janocz, also known as Creature Feature, belongs to.
Several years back, the loveliest woman in the tribe was a girl named Helga. She fell in love with a man from another tribe, and married him. Sadly he proved to be under a terrible curse, and some weeks after the wedding he transformed into a raging beast. In self defence (so they claim) the tribe was forced to kill him. However Helga proved to be pregnant, and fearing what the child might become, the tribe banished her and the infant.
Helga made a good life for herself, and ended up marrying again, this time to a millionaire. He died a year after they married, leaving her the wealthiest widow in Europe. But even with all her money, she missed her old life, and told her son Janocz all about it. When she died he was a teenager, and not knowing what else he wanted to do, he sought out her old tribe.
Janocz had inherited his father's curse, and would transform into a variety of different creatures whenever he got stressed. As a result he found it difficult to approach the gypsy tribe. Terrified at the monstrous beasts that appeared to be stalking them, they called on Greta Bartok, who hired Soulsearchers to go to Pastramia to help them. Their initial encounter with the monster revealed its true nature, and the tribesfolk apparently accepted Janocz, curse and all, as one of them.
But as soon as the Soulsearchers left, the tribesfolk set about tying Janocz to a stake, intending to burn him alive. The Soulsearchers returned in the nick of time, having realised that everything had gone way too smoothly, and rescued Janocz. Since he now felt he had nowhere else to go, they recruited him into their number, something he was happy to go along with, as it allowed him to hang out with Kelly, who he has a major crush on.
Comments: Created by Peter David and Richard Howell.
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