It's 1993, Wolverine is a very cool character in the coolest Marvel comics, his arch-enemy Sabretooth is also extremely cool, and the market is absolutely flooded with new characters who are trying to be just as cool as them. It helps if your name sounds a bit like "wolf", definitely. So how could this new character fail, with a cover like this?
Aardwolf. A name that just screams "picked up the book of animals of the world, turned to entry number 2 and stopped looking." He was probably doomed to failure from the start. But Aardwolf's background is Madripoor (the Asian island nation chock-full of evil businessmen who are also crimelords, where Wolverine spends a lot of time), so the cover decides to stress not only how much like Sabretooth he is, but also that he's like a famous businessman. Donald Trump. Yes, that's not going to look at all silly, thirty years down the line.
The cover of Night Thrasher #3 is drawn by Javier Saltares, who was supposed to be the regular artist of the series, but inside it's a fill-in story pencilled by Ken Lashley and Fred Haynes, and inked by six different people, taking a few pages each to get it done by the deadline. The letters page tells us that David Boller and Don Hudson will be drawing the next issue, and Saltares will return to his regular role with #5. Hudson isn't actually credited on #4, but Saltares does come back for #5, only to disappear once more, and for good. Boller became the regular penciller after that.
The writer, though, was Fabian Nicieza, and you'd think he must have had something to do with creating Aardwolf. But he cheerfully acknowledges that it's a funny kind of thing for an Asian crimelord to call himself, having him explain that it's a childhood nickname, and "a hyena-like mammal which feeds mostly on termites and insect larvae, would you believe?" He tries to justify it by saying he kills termites like Night Thrasher (who of course also has a silly name that's had a lot of jokes made about it over the years, but Nicieza isn't to blame for that one - Tom DeFalco thought it up), but it sounds more than a little forced.
And speaking of silly names, Aardwolf's real name is Chon Li. I mean, seriously? Street Fighter II was a very big deal by the time Aardwolf made his debut! Chun Li, busty female street fighter, was a name on the lips of everyone in the target audience of comics like Night Thrasher. How could Nicieza, or whoever, not have heard about her?
To cap it all, Aardwolf is completely the wrong colours on that cover. Inside the comic, he's got grey skin and dark red hair. He's also rather lost among a lot of other rather better characters, and he is never seen again after Night Thrasher #4 (though he ends the story still a businessman/crimelord in Madripoor). Donald Trump had more staying power.
PS The letters page in Night Thrasher is titled "Talk - or I'll gladly break your jaw" after a famous line of his. Other people suggested "Nocturnal Submissions", but Marvel decided against it.
PPS Would you believe there's another Aardwolf in the Marvel Universe? He's part of the "Hyena Clan" who showed up in a Fantastic Four story involving the Black Panther, in 2012. He also hasn't become a supervillain sensation, but at least he lives within a thousand miles or so of actual aardwolves.
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