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Marvel Masterworks: Howard the Duck #1
Marvel Masterworks: Howard the Duck Vol. 1
Trapped in a Masterworks he never made! There were several worthy candidates for the milestone 300th Masterworks edition, but only one waddled away with election victory: Howard the Duck! In Howard, Steve Gerber and his artistic cohorts Val Mayerik, Frank Brunner and Gene Colan delivered one of comics' most iconoclastic and hilarious characters. We kick things off in his inaugural Masterworks with his quirky fi rst appearance as a "fowl out of water" alongside the macabre Man-Thing, where they team up to protect Cleveland from the Man-Frog and Hellcow. The satirical stories continue with Howard and gal pal Beverly Switzler taking on dire threats such as the Space Turnip, the Beaver and - public transportation??! And then: Howard runs for president! All restored in Masterworks glory! COLLECTING: HOWARD THE DUCK (1976) 1-14; MARVEL TREASURY EDITION (1974) 12; MATERIAL FROM FEAR (1970) 19; MAN-THING (1974) 1; GIANT-SIZE MAN-THING (1974) 4-5; FOOM (1973) 15
376 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 24, 2021
11 people are currently reading
48 people want to read
About the author
Steve Gerber
637 books65 followersSteve 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'
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'
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 6, 2025
Steve Gerber’s cigar chomping fowl’s first appearance and first 14 issues and a Treasury story fill this volume. I’ve never delved into Howard before this besides a 2019 facsimile of issue #1. I found these stories rather fun, social, political ( he runs for president after all ) and enhanced by such artists as Val Mayerik, Frank Brunner, John Buscema and especially Gene Colan who really made the duck his own.
Howard faces off against a host of offbeat characters like The Space Turnip, a monsterous cookie man, The Beaver, and other assorted oddities with cameos from Spider-man and Daimon Hellstrom. Present alongside him is the red-headed beauty Beverly Switzler.
No one story stood out as a true favorite. They were all rather amusing.
Howard faces off against a host of offbeat characters like The Space Turnip, a monsterous cookie man, The Beaver, and other assorted oddities with cameos from Spider-man and Daimon Hellstrom. Present alongside him is the red-headed beauty Beverly Switzler.
No one story stood out as a true favorite. They were all rather amusing.
May 23, 2023
Really outstanding stuff: Steve Gerber's postmodern parody of superhero (and many other genres) stories feels alive in a way little else Marvel was publishing at the time. Reading this 50 years after the fact, it's not at all hard to see why this achieved a cult following.
March 12, 2022
Excellent satire!
Howard the Duck appears to belong in the pages of the "funny animal" comics of Disney fare, but the comic is a highly intelligent combination of satire, surrealism, and absurdity. The title is simultaneously of its time and timeless. It's the stuff of serious comic book scholars, yet highly entertaining. Had it been published in a later decade, it would have been an independent comic release, but something about the wild decade that was the 1970s landed it at one of the "big two" comic publishers. Every comic book enthusiast needs to read Howard the Duck!
Howard the Duck appears to belong in the pages of the "funny animal" comics of Disney fare, but the comic is a highly intelligent combination of satire, surrealism, and absurdity. The title is simultaneously of its time and timeless. It's the stuff of serious comic book scholars, yet highly entertaining. Had it been published in a later decade, it would have been an independent comic release, but something about the wild decade that was the 1970s landed it at one of the "big two" comic publishers. Every comic book enthusiast needs to read Howard the Duck!
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May 10, 2022Howard The Duck is a turkey.
Howard The Duck was the first Marvel hero to appear on the big screen and his film was awful. His comic books are not that bad. Nothing could be that bad except Teen Beach Movie 2 but it's bad and for some of the same reasons. There are too many characters. They enter. They do nothing. If Steve Gerber remembers, they exit. I think he forgot some of them. The book is littered with abandoned fragments of plots.
Howard The Duck was the first Marvel hero to appear on the big screen and his film was awful. His comic books are not that bad. Nothing could be that bad except Teen Beach Movie 2 but it's bad and for some of the same reasons. There are too many characters. They enter. They do nothing. If Steve Gerber remembers, they exit. I think he forgot some of them. The book is littered with abandoned fragments of plots.
March 14, 2022
Assorted tomfoolery.
Good color artwork and lots of it. Beverley looks good. As a kidney patient didn't like the kidney gags. Forgot about them running Howard as an actual candidate, pretty funny still. Everyone does a guest appearance, Spiderman, Dr strange, hulk, night hawk and even kiss. Lame villains of course. Number three humor magazine and proud of it......
Good color artwork and lots of it. Beverley looks good. As a kidney patient didn't like the kidney gags. Forgot about them running Howard as an actual candidate, pretty funny still. Everyone does a guest appearance, Spiderman, Dr strange, hulk, night hawk and even kiss. Lame villains of course. Number three humor magazine and proud of it......
May 4, 2023
Howard the Duck is good.
February 14, 2025
I assumed this bizarre character from the 1970s would be dumb, but this series is fantastic.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews