The Incompleat Howard - Volume One!

Howard the Duck is easily one of the most fascinating and distinctive creations in the long history of the comic book format. On the surface this wiseacre duck is just one more in a lengthy parade of funny animals which have populated comics and cartoons for decades. Anthropomorphic critters are staple of literature and in America are represented by Uncle Remus who is in a tradition as old or older than Aesop's Fables.  

We're so used to talking animals such as Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, Pogo Possum, and Marvel's own Zippy the Seal that we don't really blink when we stumble across the conceit. But to some degree Howard changed that when for the first time in a talking animal we were presented not with a just a trickster but with a full-fledged personality which was whipsawed into a world he never made and in which he was constantly on the verge of going quaking mad. Mickey had tenderness, Bugs had brashness, Pogo had thoughtfulness, but Howard had something nearly all funny animals lacked up to that time -- depth. 

The yet-to-be-named Howard stumbled out of the bushes in a Man-Thing story by Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik. He was instantly salty and unlike the mute star of that comic more than able to express his attitudes about the madness he was witnessing. Reading comics for a long time can do strange things to a person and one problem is that the bizarre and the absurd become hard to distinguish in worlds filled with insanely super-powered mystery men dedicated to some abrupt form of justice. It's a four-color world which descends deeper and deeper down its own rabbit hole until the reader becomes somewhat numb to oddness. Howard as a commentator on the weird events engulfing him was able to brighten the flavor of the truly strange for readers too accustomed to it. I count myself in that number. 

Almost as quickly as he was given a name he was killed off in the debut issue of Man-Thing beneath a lush Frank Brunner cover, in a moment of carelessness which pointed up at once the capriciousness of life and death itself. Howard we hardly knew ye! 

But the hue and cry went up and we fans wanted more of this oddball displaced duck. We wanted more of his relentless critique of our own society and our own hobby. And we got it at last when Howard the Duck debuted in his own back-up series in the pages of the awesomely named Giant-Size Man-Thing #4. He was written by his creator Steve "Baby" Gerber and drawn by the aforementioned Frank Brunner to magnificent effect. His seeming death was merely a long trip which landed him in Cleveland of all places and he came face to face with the menace of the Garko the Man-Frog (the cover gets the name wrong). Howard doesn't like much of what he finds in the land of the "hairless apes" and despite saving the day ends up in jail. 

It's in jail we next meet him in the very next and very last issue of the amazingly titled Giant-Size Man-Thing. This time the menace is an ancient one when one of Dracula's victims has risen from the the inevitability of death and has become the menacing Hellcow. Dispatching a vampire is difficult enough but doing when the vampire is on the hoof might we be harder still. 

But as the Man-Thing series reaches its conclusion Howard the Duck steps into the void. Gerber and Brunner stay aboard and Howard meets the most important person in his new world -- the bodacious Beverly Switzler. With the assistance of the web-spinning Spider-Man they defeat the schemes of a literal financial wizard and as the story ends Howard and Beverly find themselves with signficant others. 

The nature (or perhaps "un-nature") of their relationship is revealed in the very next issue when we see that Beverly and Howard share a bed. What these two consenting adults do it up to them, but the Comics Code didn't want the fact that anything which might be considered "bestiality" was in progress. But we all knew and it was hilarious to think that in a mere comic book there was some duck-on-dame hanky-panky, and shockingly it was being handled largely in an adult manner. In this issue Howard battles a superhero/villain with an outer space turnip theme and meets for the first time the crazy-as-a-loon Kidney Lady. 

With the third issue Brunner steps away from the character and the ruggedly reliable John Buscema is able to perform admirably in a story which has Howard acquire a lifetime's worth of martial arts training an afternoon making him the "Master of Quack Fu". This kind of on-the-nose satire would always be a part of the Howard act, but as the series developed become less and less important. 

The fourth issue finds the debut of the art team of Gene Colan and Steve Leialoha and Howard is poised for his march forward. The series is a hit critically with fans and I'm assuming was dong financially well too as within the year a comic strip Gerber and Colan would be a reality. In this issue we meet Paul Same, a young man overcome with society's expectations of what a man should be and so was forced to find his true power in slumber. 

The book begins to take on its full rich character with the next issue which has Howard tagging in against a brutal heavyweight to make some bread for himself and Beverly. They've decided that Cleveland is not a place they are going to be able find success and so strike out for the "Big Apple". 

The trip is an arduous one and soon enough Howard's rough-hewn personality has them walking along the highway in a downpour. They find some respite in a house riddled with the pseudo-gothic trappings of a romance novel and up for sale. There are also some "Yuckies" (Moonies). Not interested in that, they find that the locals operate much like the mobs from those classic Universal movies when they suspect a monster in their midst. 

Turns out they were right when an enormous Gingerbread Cookie Man shambles forth and proves to menacing as well as delicious. This story though is a short one and ends with blast.  The focus shifts to one Dreyfuss Gultch a country singing star and member of the "All-Night Party" who are casting about for a candidate for the highest office in the land. They think they've found their "man" in the duck named Howard. 

In 1976 having funny and bogus candidates for president of these United States was a harmless lark. Howard was just one more of many who got a name on the ballot in a feigned attempt to poke a bit of fun at a process which was mired in cynicism. In recent years we've learned the dangers of actually electing cartoon characters to the office and frankly this tomfoolery ain't quite as much fun anymore. 

Another sign of Howard's success is that the "Get Down America" campaign gets treasury-sized when the Duck non-joins the non-team called The Defenders. Typical for the Gerber era, the villains are lame and this time intentionally so. The covers by Gene Colan are some of the finest and funniest in the whole run of treasury books from Marvel. 

But a scandal rocks the campaign when bogus photos of Howard and Beverly in a bathtub together are published. Howard's exceedingly slim chances of winning are doomed and he and Bev head to Canada to find out more about who might be behind this scheme. There they meet a Canadian super-patriot and an exceedingly agitated bellhop. A plan to change the course of Niagara Falls  is foiled when Howard is able to defeat the villain called "The Beaver". 

And then things really get complicated. The stress of living in a "world-he-never-made" has at long last unstrung our hero. In fact being a "hero" has stressed him out and Howard has a nervous breakdown. We get to share his hallucinations as most all of the cast we've met to date check to have a word. We even get a peek at Geber's other baby -- Omega the Unknown. 

The wildness continues as a crazed Howard escapes his caretakers, grabs a bus to Cleveland, and has it out with Kidney Lady at long last and meets a possessed young woman named "Winda Wester" who might or might not be possessed by demons. 

The brawl lands Howard and Winda in a sanitarium where the care is suspect at best and Howard confronts his demonds as it were. 

Winda's demons come out and we discover they resemble a famous rock band from Detroit. (The fact Gerber was working on a KISS comic magazine at this same time had nothing to do with this offbeat crossover I'm sure.)

With demons about the Son of Satan makes an appearance but circumstances have Howard become a bit devilish himself. The sanitarium is rocked to its core and the head of the operation reveals himself and he looks like someone Captain America once popped in the chin. 

Howard, Beverly, Winda and Paul are sharing an apartment in Cleveland when a magic carpet takes the ladies to Bagmom.  It's an Arabian Nights misadventure from a time when the Arabian sands could still be fun. 

As this first collection closes out we see Beverly and Howard together again just as they find themselves on a cruise ship attacked by the hallucinatory images of the mysterious Dr. Bong. 

We think we're going to find out what and who Dr. Bong is but the "Dreaded Dealine Doom" makes necessary one of the strangest "comic books" that Marvel ever published. With illustrations by the likes of John Buscema, Mike Nasser, Ed Hannigan, and Alan Lee Weiss we get an essay or two, a short modern parable and some analysis of same, and I suppose an apology for why Steve Gerber was late getting Gene "The Dean" Colan the script making this an issue ripe for reprints. Not wanting to do that we get a strange hybrid entertainment. 

 

This volume is also chock full of extras from the back pages of Howard comics as well as some pages from Crazy and an interview with Gerber from FOOM. And this is only the beginning, the first of four hefty tomes telling the saga (mostly) of one Howard the Duck. More Duck next week.

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