In the eternal battle between werewolves and vampires, the latter will look back and say, "2008 vas vonderful! Twilight! True Blood! Ah! Ah! Ah!" But there are signs of a werewolf rebellion. Book critics are howling over Toby Barlow's Sharp Teeth, a werewolf noir written entirely in free verse (it's brilliant). Hollywood will kick off 2009 with Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, in which werewolves fight vampire slave masters. Then the already lupine Benicio Del Toro will star in a reimagining of Universal's 1941 classic The Wolf Man — and do multiplex battle with Hugh Jackman's X-Men Origins: Wolverine (not technically a lycanthrope, but still more wolfman than large weasel). Then maybe we'll see the lesbian werewolf teen flick Jack and Diane, long rumored to star Ellen Page. Why the hairy surge? Vampires are decadent, boom-economy monsters who live off the blood of others. In other words, stockbrokers. Werewolves, by contrast, are hairy blue-collar loners, contemptuous of civilization, motivated by hunger and bitterness. When society gets too corrupt, werewolves bite rich bastards in the ass. LOGAN HILL

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