Essential Howard the Duck, Vol. 1

Howard the Duck (1976) #1-27, Annual #1

by Steve Gerber

Marvel's popular 1970's talking waterfowl from another planet commented on the absurdities of human society while parodying the fantasy, sci-fi and super-hero genre.

Collects: Howard the Duck #1-27, Annual #1, Marvel Treasury Edition #12 & Giant-Size Man-Thing #4.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Marvel, Comic Book, Fiction, Humor, Art

592 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 1978

About the author

Steve Gerber graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in communications and took a job in advertising. To keep himself sane, he wrote bizarre short stories such as "Elves Against Hitler," "Conversion in a Terminal Subway," and "...And the Birds Hummed Dirges!" He noticed acquaintance Roy Thomas working at Marvel, and Thomas sent him Marvel's standard writing test, dialoguing Daredevil art. He was soon made a regular on Daredevil and Sub-Mariner, and the newly created Man-Thing, the latter of which pegged him as having a strong personal style--intellectual, introspective, and literary. In one issue, he introduced an anthropomorphic duck into a horror fantasy, because he wanted something weird and incongruous, and Thomas made the character, named for Gerber's childhood friend Howard, fall to his apparent death in the following issue. Fans were outraged, and the character was revived in a new and deeply personal series. Gerber said in interview that the joke of Howard the Duck is that "there is no joke." The series was existential and dealt with the necessities of life, such as finding employment to pay the rent. Such unusual fare for comicbooks also informed his writing on The Defenders. Other works included Morbius, the Lving Vampire, The Son of Satan, Tales of the Zombie, The Living Mummy, Marvel Two-in-One, Guardians of the Galaxy, Shanna the She-Devil, and Crazy Magazine for Marvel, and Mister Miracle, Metal Men, The Phantom Zone , and The Immortal Doctor Fate for DC. Gerber eventually lost a lawsuit for control of Howard the Duck when he was defending artist Gene Colan's claim of delayed paychecks for the series, which was less important to him personally because he had a staff job and Colan did not.

He left comics for animation in the early 1980s, working mainly with Ruby-Spears, creating Thundarr the Barbarian with Alex Toth and Jack Kirby and episodes of The Puppy's Further Adventures, and Marvel Productions, where he was story editor on multiple Marvel series including Dungeons & Dragons, G.I. Joe, and The Transformers. He continued to dabble in comics, mainly for Eclipse, including the graphic novel Stewart the Rat, the two-part horror story "Role Model: Caring, Sharing, and Helping Others," and the seven-issue Destroyer Duck with Jack Kirby, which began as a fundraiser for Gerber's lawsuit.

In the early 1990s, he returned to Marvel with Foolkiller, a ten-issue limited series featuring a new version of a villain he had used in The Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown, who communicated with a previous version of the character through internet bulletin boards. An early internet adopter himself, he wrote two chapters of BBSs for Dummies with Beth Woods Slick, with whom he also wrote the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Contagion." During this period, he also wrote The Sensational She-Hulk and Cloak and Dagger for Marvel, Cybernary and WildC.A.T.s for Image, and Sludge and Exiles for the writer-driven Malibu Ultraverse, and Nevada for DC's mature readers Vertigo line.

In 2002, he returned to the Howard the Duck character for Marvel's mature readers MAX line, and for DC created Hard Time with Mary Skrenes, with whom he had co-created the cult hit Omega the Unknown for Marvel. Their ending for Omega the Unknown remains a secret that Skrenes plans to take to the grave if Marvel refuses to publish it. Suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis ("idiopathic" meaning of unknown origin despite having been a heavy smoker much of his life), he was on a waiting list for a double lung transplant. His final work was the Doctor Fate story arc, "More Pain Comics," for DC Comics'

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've never met cigar-chomping, wise-cracking, sex-appeal-oozing, three-foot-two-high Howard and his beautiful rock singer/artist's model girlfriend Beverley, then you need to buy this book. Of course, if you have met them, then you need to buy it even more. And, if there's anyone I've left out, they're still more in need of it than the first two groups. Most comic-book heroes wouldn't even begin to know what to do about a breakdown of the Law of the Excluded Middle, but Howard deals with metaphysical emergencies so often that he's started to find them a little boring.

Leafing through this masterpiece the other day, I wondered if anyone's yet written a doctoral thesis describing Howard's influence on late 20th and early 21st century pop culture. For example, the sequence which crosses the plots of Jane Eyre and Frankenstein and culminates with the awakening of the nightmarish Cookie Creature immediately reminded me of the giant Gingerbread Man from Shrek 2. And, as a long-time Doonesbury fan, I couldn't help wondering if Howard's run for President in 1976 inspired the Duke 2000 campaign.

But, if this thesis does exist and I manage to get my hands on a copy, the first thing I'm looking up in the index is Infinite Jest. Surely the crazed French-Canadian patriot in the wheelchair is the spiritual ancestor of the A.F.R.? How could David Foster Wallace not have been inspired by his scheme to airlift a million beavers to the Niagara Falls and reverse the course of the river, bringing the US to its knees and awakening Canadians to their destiny as the continent's true masters? By now, a competent literary researcher must have given these vital questions the attention they so obviously deserve?

A quick (quack?) Google search threw up tantalizing hints that the book I'm looking for is out there. I can already see Howard and Beverley, no strangers to self-reference, setting off to find DISSERTATION OF DOOM. What a shame Steve Gerber didn't get around to writing that episode...

[Devon Start · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the movie.. i was like 9 thats my excuse. So ive long been curious about the source material and the author. Seems to have as storied a past as the guy that writes Cerebus.. but with a different kind of bitterness.

so i got the first two volumes of these comics, read the first and half the second..or maybe i finally finished the second.. which should tell you something about the quality.

the begining was fun, it lampooned other styles of comics and had that mid 70s vibe going on. and i rather enjoy marvel in the 70s. The stories however seemed to ramble, likely because many of them are small sections of other wierd comics where howard made cameo appearances. The jokes rely on a lot of dad level puns, like the financial wizard.. being a real wizard, but again thats sort of what you expect.

but eventually the stories lose their way, and become disjointed. Maybe it gets better once the author found his wings, but i dont think he ever had the chance, and certainly not like Cerebus, where the author had years to develop his own story telling..

entertaining but not great

[Alex Firer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure how to feel about this. A lot of weird ideas, but the book can be seen as either a weird Marvel book, or a REALLY tepid Fritz the Cat clone. When it soars it's interesting, and when it doesn't it feels like that scene in Clowes' "Pussey" where Dan Pussey tries to figure out how to work for Art Spiegelman and just ends up drawing superheroes.

The criticism feels like Gerber yelling at straw men instead of really exploring the issues he's trying to talk about.

Honest rating is a 3.5. More important than super high quality, laying the groundwork for people accepting guys like Hickman or Morrison.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

The almost-quintessential collection of Steve Gerber's run on his most enduring creation. Any resemblance to a certain George Lucas film is coincidental; this is '70s absurdist satire at its purest. Some elements may seem dated, but not as many as you'd think; all the stuff that pisses Howard off in these pages is still to be found, from vapid political hucksterism to psychotic cultural warriors to the Moonies. And villains? Why, you haven't thrilled until you've thrilled to the fearsome visage of Sudd, the banality of Bzzk Joh, the mad misogyny of Doctor Bong. All this, and a Giant-Size Man-Thing, too. It's enough to make you say "WAUGH!" (Not to be taken internally. Or at all seriously.)

[Mark Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Howard the duck is an incredibly smart series from the 70s. Unfortunately George Lucas thought it would make an excellent dumbed down summer popcorn flick. Now Howard has been tainted in the minds of people and its too bad because it's excellent. Steve Gerber and Gene Colan are geniuses.

[James Bowman · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's easy to see why this was such a cult hit, and I enjoyed most of this series. Lots of weird and off-beat adventures, Gerber at his best. The only complaint I have is that something goes horribly wrong in the last few issues, which have some uncomfortable and mean plot twists.

[PJ Ebbrell · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are some books you need to read at the right age and possibly know the market it was aimed at. I struggled with HtD, in the 70s and I still do not find it funny. I got this versions for Gene Colan line work.

[Andrew Coltrin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually read the individual issues when I was in high school. Writer Steve Gerber blew my mind with his talking duck and his dialog that kept me running to the dictionary.

[tony dillard jr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Other than a certain first appearance by a super girl, this book was the oldest item on my wish list until just recently. This volume covers the entire Steve Gerber run of the groundbreaking Howard the Duck comic from the 1970s. Gerber had problems with deadlines and was replaced after issue #27. If the quality didn't suffer, the creative juices surely did with Gerber's dismissal. Howard was stuffed just 4 issues later.

With the debut of 1986 box office BOMB- Howard returned for a few more issues with original numbering. But like I said, the live-action film starring Back To The Future's Lea Thompson was a massive stinker and Howard's time was once again cut short.

There was also a Howard the Duck Magazine that lasted 9 issues. It featured more edgier stories that even the envelope-pushing comic couldn't skirt pass the Comics Code. Those are harder to find and more expensive. Yet despite this book being listed as volume 1, with the elimination of Marvel's it seems like I'll never get the rest of Howard's story. But that's actually not the case. About 5 years ago, Marvel re-issued 4 volumes of full color material starring the grumpy mallard. So, I might be able to get everything else on my wish list without going broke.

The original Howard the Duck was a throw-away character in the pages of Man-Thing. LITERALLY! But he feel into our hearts as well as down-town Cleveland in the very first pages of his own title. Howard The Duck was a reflection of the odds and loose ends of the late 70s. With the end of Nixon and the completion of the Vietnam War, America was fractured and the whole world seemed ready to just fall to pot. And Howard was there to point out all our problems.

From parodying some of Marvels greatest heroes of the time period to mocking Star Wars, Big Apple vigilantism and the 1976 election, nothing was safe in Steve Gerber's hands. This collection isn't perfect. There's some slang terms and jokes that in 2020 would have gotten Gerber cancelled. But I see the intention on Gerber's part to point out a lot of the flaws of 1970s society.

This was a series that also experimented with creative writing. There's one issue that's nothing but essays. (Check out a cameo first appearance of the main characters of Vertigo's Nevada). For the most part, I enjoyed the pathways Gerber explored. But I hated what he did with the ahead of it's time inter-species relationship between duck Howard and human Beverly. I don't want to spoil things but Gerber leaves things ill-fated. That's all I'll say...

A book ahead of it's time that will be honored for all-time in the hearts of comic book collectors and historians.

[Woody Chandler · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a trippy trip down memory lane! I well remember the excitement surrounding the release of the first issue, the extreme disappointment when #2 failed to appear at the local newsstands & getting a mail subscription through my paternal aunt.

My Pops was also a big fan & now, reading it with adult eyes, I understand why. This was not some kiddie comic, nor was it the standard superhero fare. This was Steve Gerber giving free reign to puns, allusions, crazy humor on an almost-comix scale! Of course, it was set in Kleveland. This should be read alongside of Harvey Pekar's "American Splendor" of the same era.

The Gene Colan artwork didn't really register with me as a kid since I was not a Daredevil fan. Seeing his work transition from the eerily creepy DD work of the late-'60's/early-'70's to HtD was really striking. So MANY panels that remain vivid in my mind were his doing. "Yer gassin' me!", Beverley in her bikini (!), Dr. Bong (!)'s first appearance. What a trip, man!

They ended this anthology with the end of Steve Gerber's association with the book, the daily strip (!) & his employment with Marvel. It's too bad that a Vol. 2 was never released as many threads are left hanging as this one closes. I was reading this one in my garret room at night before bed, but I finally just decided to buckle down & finish it. It really should not have taken this long.

Farewell, Howard. It was great to reconnect.

[Ian Banks · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic mix of the absurd, the undergraduate and the meta. Howard mixes with the likes of Spider-Man, Man-Thing and several Roman-a-clef characters from our own world. Howard is probably Marvel's most bizarre and literate character that ever got his own long-running comic. It's a load of fun but shows the signs of author fatigue very early on. If there's a major problem it's that it can't decide if it wants to tell original stories or pastiches of other, more famous Marvel titles or even reject a lot of the tropes that Marvel has created or become famous for to bite the hand that feeds it. Undisciplined in places but has its own manic energy that makes the pages very easy to turn.

[Dan McCollum · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up recently on a whim, and oh my god, I not only fell in love with this season, but also the amazing absurdity, yet surpringly earnest, work of Steve Gerber. This has opened a pathway for me into Marvel comics from the 70s. Cannot suggest this enough to people who also love books like The Tick or the show Venture Brothers.

[Alec Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was much better than I expected going in. Great sense of humor.

[Michael Beyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is classic Marvel Comics entertainment. Howard the Duck is hilarious. Gene Colan, the artist, is a master.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are just completely ridiculous storylines throughout but I love Howard the Duck so I'm in.

[Ramses Van · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first time reading comics (outside of some when I was a kid), and I loved it!! This book was an amazing introduction to the character. The ending was a bit abrupt tho.

[D.M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll confess: Howard the Duck was a childhood pleasure. Long before I knew how much I loved Gene Colan's art, the occasional copies of this series I'd get in a pile of used comics was a visual treasure. When Marvel's Essential series offered one of its cheapo reprint collections, I jumped at it.
As an adult, it's a little harder to swallow Howard. Conceptually, something fairly remarkable really was going on here. Creator and series writer Steve Gerber clearly had a bigger agenda in mind than just some whacko story about an anthropomorphic duck from another dimension: he wanted to satire, tackle issues and explore his own mind in lurid colour right before our unwitting eyes. Unfortunately, Gerber was only in his early 20s at the time, was not a great writer, and had a typically us-vs.-them kind of view of the world. The title suffers for that, but his intentions remain clear and his heart was clearly in the right place.
The art shines in black & white (though some of the more intricate Colan work did look better in colour), but sadly the hack work of a couple of uninspired inkers also shows even more in this presentation. Colan's work looks best with Leialoha, and worst with Tom Palmer, but this collection is not entirely his. Howard's first artist, Val Mayerik, turns up repeatedly, with solid work every step of the way, and Marvel mainstay Carmine Infantino likewise turns in competent stuff.
The stories themselves are, for the most part, a repeating equation: duck is in everyday situation on the world he never made; bizarre villain shows up; duck flouts villain one way or another, usually in a weird way. What makes the stories work, though, is that Howard's (and presumably Gerber's) constant angst and sense of dislocation play hell on his psyche and cause him to frequently question his place in things. The character has two crack-ups (sorry, I won't say 'quack-ups'), one resulting in the utterly remarkable and strange issue 10 story 'Swan-Song of the Living Dead Duck.' Gerber himself has his own minor mental schism eventually, resulting in the surprising if less remarkable issue 16 illustrated essay 'Zen and the Art of Comic Book Writing.'
Howard was never a series that would change comics, or even the way people looked at them. That sort of action would have to wait more than a decade. But Marvel would not see another book that tried to be this deep and strange until the end of the 80s, when everybody was doing deep and strange in comics.

[Helmut · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aber... sie sind ja eine Ente!

Mit seinem "Cousin" Donald Duck hat Howard nicht viel am Hut - Barks war nicht wirklich interessiert an Gesellschaftskritik. Steve Gerber dagegen nutzte diese Chance, gegen alle möglichen Missstände von Gewalt über Politik bis hin zu Extremkapitalismus und Degeneration der Gesellschaft zu wettern und die USA der 70er Jahre durch den Kakao zu ziehen. Dabei ist das ganze doch überraschend intellektuell geworden: In welchem Mainstreamcomic bekommt man sonst solche Selbstgespräche zwischen Autor und seiner Figur zu lesen?

"Y'know what, Gerbs? Deep down, I've always suspected you don't know as much as yer stories would infer. You've learned how ta manipulate words an' pictures to give you a semblance of profundity, but it's all superficial! Cosmetic surgery performed on creaky old ideas an' thoughts! Whaddaya say ta tha?!" (#16)

Gene Colan drückt dem Werk dann als Hauptzeichner seinen Stempel auf, und wer Colans Stil kennt, wird wissen, wie atmosphärisch dicht das Comic auch über den Text hinaus in den Bildern geworden ist. Der Lebkuchen-Frankenstein in Ausgabe #6 ist dadurch grusliger als viele andere Werke wie "House of Mystery".

Meine Lieblingsausgabe ist #3, "Master of Quack-Fu" - selten habe ich in Comics einen so berührenden und gleichzeitig philosophischen Schluss gelesen. Doch hauptsächlich bekommt man viel schwarzen Humor und abstruse Situationen in diesem Comic, der wirklich aus der Masse der Marvel-Maschinerie herausragt.

Die Aufmachung entspricht anderen Bänden der Marvel-Essentials-Reihe - Telefonbuchpapier, stellenweise verwaschener Schwarzweißdruck, nachbearbeitetes Originalcover zu jeder Ausgabe.

Buy it, toots.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chock-full of bizarre villains and Me-Decade social satire, these have got to be some of the weirdest books Marvel ever published. Either they're still pretty funny, or -- and I suspect this might be the case -- they're funny again.

[Trevor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Politics! Culture! Hippies! O my!

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I heard Steve Gerber had died I wanted to reread this.

[Devin Araujo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Howard the Duck is king.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um pato que fuma charutos. Nuff said