As it did with Captain Victory and Silver Star, Twomorrows Publishing has created a "Graphite Edition" of one of Jack Kirby's oddest 80's comics. In conjunction with Steve Gerber who first created Destroyer Duck, Kirby and Alfredo Alcala produced the pages in the original comic to help Gerber defray his legal expenses.
And so, we get one of the grand comic books of the 80's, the totally in-your-face satire named Destroyer Duck. The comic started out as a method by which like-minded talents (Jack Kirby, Alfredo Alcala, Mark Evanier, Joe Staton, Sergio Aragones, among others) donated their time and talents to produce a comic with various features, but headed by Gerber's and Kirby's Destroyer Duck. Goo the Wanderer by Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones debuted in this little Eclipse comic too.
The debut story is about that struggle directly and hilariously as we meet Duke Duck, an ally of the "Little Guy", a small duck who gets sucked into a distant dimension where he is exploited and killed by Godcorp Ltd., a soulless organization which lives up to its credo of "Grab it all! Own it all! Drain it all!" (Remind you of anyone we know?) Duke ends up going to this other world and kicks some Godcorp butt.
(Kirby with Neal Adams embellishment.)
After this one-shot though it was deemed smart to do more Destroyer Duck stories and Gerber and Kirby and Alcala kicked out four more issues before seven issue series was taken over by Buzz Dixon and Gary Kato. Duke has showed up a few times since, in the pages of Total Eclipse in the late 80's and the Image one-shot guest-starring with Savage Dragon in the late 90's. Surely there's an audience for these bizarre tales of the "Marauding Mallard of Vengeance".
Destroyer Duck is far from prime Kirby comics, but even his worst have charm. Tomorrow, something different.
(Frank Miller)
Destroyer Duck is far from prime Kirby comics, but even his worst have charm. Tomorrow, something different.
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I only picked up the first issue for the Sergio Aragones Groo strip The entire comic though was pretty much "in you face " stuff, obviously working towards a cause . It certainly had its charms and worth collecting for Kirby fans.
ReplyDeleteYeah. I agree, the satire is so pointed in that debut. But to be fair that's all it supposed to be. The later issues are much more like Gerber's work on Howard the Duck, but drawn by Kirby.
DeleteIt was nice to see Alcala inking Kirby. Just a shame that Jack's art wasn't exactly at its best by this time.
ReplyDeleteActually it was neat to see Kirby's work in the pencil form here, since as much as I admire Alcala's work (his inks on John Buscema's pencils in Savage Sword are arguably the best Conan stories of that era and truest to the REH original) he tends to dominate.
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