Customer Reviews

Essential Howard The Duck

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3 star:		(2)
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If you've ever loved a book and then seen it butchered by a movie version, then you'll understand. What was arguably the most brilliant comic of the 70s, Howard The Duck, was not immune to the Hollywood treatment that most comic-book-- and indeed book adaptations are subject to...

As I've said this was a brilliant comic, very adult for its time. Filled with both parody and satire about the times and all time, and funny without being forced, both experimental and freewheeling-- writer Steve Gerber found a singular voice in Howard the Duck, and spewed forth with wit and wisdom rarely seen in comics-- ...

This affordable black and white edition collects the complete Steve Gerber Howard The Duck from the 1970's, and includes the debut material from Fear #19 as presented in Marvel Treasury Edition #12 (along with the Treasury's meeting with the Defenders), Giant-Size Man-Thing #4 (Man-Frog) and 5 (Hell cow), Howard The Duck Annual #1, and Howard The Duck #1-27. It's all here in one convenient place! No more searching for back issues in smelly stores. This is a beautiful easy-to-read volume that makes a great story even more of a pleasure to read.

Don't let stories about mutated frogs, turnips, and cows bitten by Dracula who rise from the grave to stalk the country-side as vampire-cows stop you from picking this up, there is an undercurrent to the stories that transcends the subject matter and yet never ignores or belittles it. ...Wauuugghhhh!!! You just have to read it for yourself.

Artists include: Val Mayerik, Frank Brunner, John Buscema, Gene Colan, Carmine Infantino, Klaus Janson, Tom Palmer and Steve Leialoha.

Highest recommendation!

At least, that verdict is my opinion after thirty years of reading everything from Eisner to Barks to EC to Miller to Lee and Kirby and a whole lot more. Twenty five years after they first appeared, these Howard the Duck stories by Steve Gerber continue to move me like no other comics I have read. Explaining why isn't easy. Certainly what I wrote about the other Howard volume applies equally here: "If I had to list one feature of Gerber's writing that stands out above all others, it would be characterisation. This may be a comic book about a talking duck and his girlfriend, but these two are more vivid and realised than nearly all the characters you'll find in comics, film or TV. However, characterisation is just for starters - Gerber puts more care and intelligence into his comics than you'll find arguably anywhere." But there is so much more: great satiric insight into 1970's America, weird humour and fabulous artwork by Gene Colan. And that still doesn't capture it. Ultimately, I really can't say why Howard the Duck remains so meaningful after all this time - beyond suggesting Gerber exposed something of his soul here in a very special way. The only drawbacks to this volume are that it's not in colour and the great HTD newspaper series does not appear(Marvel take heed!). Very, very highly recommended for anyone who likes comics with thinking - as is the other Howard volume available and Steve Gerber's Nevada.

So, tonight, my local comic book store had this great 50% off sale on TPB's, and I happened to pick up Essential Howard the Duck.
Now, being in comic fandom for a good few years, I'd always read about Howard the Duck. But except for a few appearances in the back of Wizard magazine and vague memories of the horrendous live -action movie, all I had going for me was what came down through the grapevine - and all that came down to me was some really positive buzz. So it was with great anticipation that I sat down with the book tonight.
And boy, did Marvel's favourite anthropomorphic fowl not disappoint. Ahead of his time? Try ahead of -our- time. What an astonishing book - I'm honestly speaking when I say that it deserves much more praise than it's getting nowadays.
This is some great stuff, bringing in metaliterary commentary on social trends and Western culture's normative cultural ethos. Even if the new volume of She-Hulk is attempting to continue the humourous vein set in the '70s and '80s by books like this and She-Hulk volume 1, it seems that the cultural, ethical discussions prevalent even in mainstream comic media in the Bronze Era (is that what they're calling it these days?) has been wholly excised from these modern series.
With its thinly veiled but highly positive social commentary, and constant nods to classic literature (a seemingly tormented, wild man who watches over a young girl in a late-1800s style house is called "Heathcliff Rochester," a nod to the Bronte sisters), philosophy (Howards has Hegel), and other intellectual landmarks in the western canon, Howard the Duck has a little bit of everything for everybody. Very highly recommended.

I have to admit that I was sort of expecting to find that someone had gone back over the original artwork by Frank Brunner, Gene Colan, and others for the issues of "Howard the Duck" collected in this Essential Volume 1 and drawn pants on the fowl trapped in a world he never made. But only in the cover art by Brian Bolland does Howard wear pants, a move mandated, as I recall, by a lawsuit dealing with copyright infringement because of another white skinned duck and his extended family who went without pants. Next thing we know, Howard is being sued for public indecency by some guy named Wally Sidney, and ever since then Howard wore pants.

The conceit of Howard the Duck was fairly simple. The foul-mouthed fowl accidentally slipped through a dimensional warp in "Fear" #19 (December 1973), where he had a nice little adventure with the Man-Thing. Unable to get back to the Duckworld, Howard was trapped here with the hairless apes and forced to deal with a world of superheroes instead of the funny animals that most cartoons ducks have to deal with. Howard made something of a splash in the Marvel universe, and in January 1976 he got his own comic books.

The common denominator of the stories was writer Steve Gerber, who created the character as a joke (it topped a barbarian eating peanut butter) and then made Howard the Duck the premier social satire comic book. Okay, so there was not a lot of competition for the title, but it was still very good. Val Mayerik did the initial art for Howard in "Fear" #19 and "Man-Thing" #1, but then Frank Brunner did the first four memorable solo adventures for Howard until Gene Colan became the definitive artist, especially when it came to drawing the lovely Beverly Switzer. The hype was all about the werid villains like the incredible Cookie Creature, Kong Lomerate and Dr. Bong, as well as Howard's run for the Presidency against Ford and Carter in 1976, but at its heart this story was about Bev and her ducky.

The only thing you need to be worried about is trying to remember what was going on a quarter of a century ago to figure out who and what Gerber is lampooning or skewering at any given moment. Sometime the fun comes just from something as simple as having Howard join the Defenders, just to have the Hulk scratch his head in amazement and Dr. Strange say things like "Behold, Duck--the Orb of Agamotto!" Otherwise, you just think of Howard as the closest thing in comics to Groucho Marx this side of Lord Julius in "Cerebus" (duh) and enjoy the one Marvel comic that was consistently a funny book.

As for the movie version, I though the casting of the humans was excellent, especially Lea Thompson as Beverly, and I really liked the title song played by Cherry Bomb at the end, but they would have to really improve the script for it to just stink.

I grew up reading Howard The Duck. I still have all the copies in near mint. I didn't want to read these collectibles, so I decided to order The Essential Howard The Duck. This collection is Black and White inside, and the story is not complete. In fact it left me hanging. Dr. Bong still has Beverly at the end of this... I mean you can't leave Beverly in such danger. So I ordered the Howard The Duck Omnibus version, which is all color, and exactly what I had hoped for. The OMNIBUS takes a while to deliver, but it's worth the wait if you want the complete story, and all color. Waaaaghhhh!

One might think it's amazing that this brilliant comic only lasted a couple years - but then again, it's so unique that it's equally amazing it was published at all. I remembered this comic from its brief incarnation as a daily newspaper strip. Alas, that's not contained here, but the complete comic-book adventures are. The spine says "Vol. 1," which gives me hope that the newspaper serial might be on its way.

After this book came in the mail, I liked it even more than I expected to - this from a 30-something NON-comic book fan. The stories are twisted, laugh-out-loud funny, and even touching in a bizarre way. See below for more detailed reviews.

While most people think of the awful feature film when the name Howard the Duck is mentioned, the real place to go is this book. Collecting all of the adventures that Howard's creator, Steve Gerber, considers to be canon, this book is absolutely hilarious! While much of the satire within is aimed at the 1970s' many events (including the Krishna "craze" and the 1976 US presidential elections), it's still a great read, and the black-and-white format serves the art nicely. Buy this, then start buying the new comic, which picks up almost exactly where these classic adventures leave off.

The seventies were a relatively interesting time for comic books. The Golden Age was long gone and the Silver Age was coming to an end. The space was being filled by all sorts of writers and artists who grew up on the Marvel Age of the sixties and were trying to capture it or subvert it as werewolves, barbarians, vampires, man-things and ghost riders shared the stage with the super-heroes. It is somewhat of a stretch to know which category Howard the Duck fit into but it is even more surprising that it happened within the Marvel Universe itself at all ,and would sometimes guest star a character from said world, such as Spider-Man, the Man-Thing, or the Defenders. Steve Gerber did his best work on this series as it was the only comic book that was entirely appropriate for his style. His days with the Defenders were never a good fit and his time with the Man-Thing are best forgotten. Gene Colan also did some of this best work with this series, second only to his Tomb of Dracula. It is one of the delightful suprises of the series to see how Colan was able to go from the darkness of one to the visual humour of the other. The Essential Howard the Duck is a beautiful glimpse into the seventies at their most unique. It is wonderful that in a world of super-heroes and monsters, for one brief, shining moment a duck walked amongst them and, on occasion, soared above them.

In a strange and very perverse sense, it might just be appropriate that the appallingly awful HTD movie is Howard's predominant image in the public eye. Why, you ask? Well, I reply, because Howard himself was never really understood or appreciated by the world around him; that's the entire point. (And yeah, I wish the movie had been better, too. I'm just choosing to enjoy the irony.)

The tag-line for Steve Gerber's magnum opus was "Trapped in a world he never made!" and that pretty much sums it up. Howard is the epitome of anyone from one world mistakenly tranplanted into another. Visually, imagine if one of the myriad cartoon characters from the kiddie reels somehow got injected into a Martin Scorcese film. How would D***** Duck (pick your fave) react to a world of junkies, street thugs, dehumanizing media figures and stupid, indifferent politicians? Granted, there are assorted super-villain types and the occasional super-hero guest star here and there (it's a Marvel comic, after all), but they're not really the point, any more than the predictable parodies of at-the-time crazes like Kung Fu, Star Wars or the Exorcist. Underneath the slapstick, the thankfully abbreviated battles and the wry wisequacks -- er, wiseCRACKs, that is -- there's a substantial amount of insightful social commentary and genuine angst.

Of the assorted artists involved, Gene "the Dean" Colan remains the definitive HTD artist; who else could so convincingly merge the gothic banality of Cleveland streets and New York alleyways with the evolution-defying cartooniness of Howard's anatomy? WHo else could portray despair, madness, cynicism and just plain rage writ large across the face of a feathered critter who goes "BOOOIIINNNGGG!!" when he charges (reluctantly) into the fray? Let alone make a giant sea serpent wearing a top hat look scary?

But even Colan's excellent work takes a back seat (if only just barely) to Steve Gerber. Val Mayerik and other artists also turned in fine work on the series, but Gerber's writing could not be replaced. Possibly no other comic series of the '70's could have afforded this opportunity to break out of the genre's formulaic conventions, and possibly no other writer of the time could have made the most of such an opportunity anyway. If it helps, recall what Quentin Tarantino did for movies in the '90's, and then imagine the same sort of thing in comics, twenty years earlier. Then again, if that's too weird a notion to wrap your head around, don't sweat it; you'll still find a lot of humor to enjoy. Where else will you find a hero who flies across the world to his abducted girlfriend's rescue by winning a radio contest? ("I dunno...Grant, I guess.")

I've loved some of the choices Marvel has made with their Essentials line. Instead of just sticking with the Marvel main-stays, Spider-man, Fantastic Four, X-Men, etc., they've been dipping into the pool of what many consider 2nd or 3rd tier characters whose adventures are not as well known. Howard the Duck has always been a favorite of mine, one of the more creative books to come out of the 70's in my opinion. Unfortunately a lot of people only know the character through the horrible Hollywood version of the character brought to us in the 80's. As with all the Essentials I wish the reprints were done in color. The paper quality doesn't bother me, I understand the need to keep product costs low.