Duck Before It's Too Late!

Howard the Duck (the movie) has been a synonym for awful for so long that it's hard to recollect what it was really like. Released in 1986 it's a movie mired in its time unfortunately. Movies then required all too often hectic antics to fill in for characterization and car chases, no matter how illogical or inane were the calling card of any movie of the time not starring Meryl Streep. It seemed to be a law in Hollywood that a cop car had to crashed in every movie made in the 80's. All this hokum invaded the potential of a really excellent Howard the Duck movie, something I'd still love to see.

The roiling hysterics of modern day society, led by our Doofus-in-Chief have made me yearn more and more for a time when satire had real bite because it wasn't reality. Steve Gerber made a duck to speak for all of the little people, those lost and put upon in a world they don't feel a part of. But Howard was not a victim, he was more like Steinbeck's Tom Joad, a being who saw what needed doing and did it, albeit reluctantly. A hero for the common man, set apart by his species, but never his attitudes.

I watched Howard the Duck again yesterdat and then listened to the "How it was Made" vignette and I knew immediately why the movie doesn't strike home. The makers of this movie used the word "silly" in reference to Howard and while Gerber's Duck is supposed to be "absurd" he is never meant to be "silly". To their credit the producers said they didn't really want to explain how Howard came to be on Earth and that really struck me as a successful way to approach the character -- he just is and we deal with it. But then they said they wanted to make the movie in Hawaii at first too and that would've been a disaster. This felt like a movie of convenience and its lackluster reputation is a result.

I'm plunging my nose into some of the raw Howard in the weeks to come and no doubt a report or two will result. Steve Gerber and the artists who worked with him such as Val Mayerik, Frank Brunner and Gene Colan made something quite remarkable in those waning years of the 70's. I'm eager to tap back into it. I know one thing though...it won't be "silly". The span between absurd and silly is the entire world.

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