Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #461007 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

Customer Reviews

Howard the Duck is unleashed on the Marvel universe
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.

This book is Fantastic. Well written, and very funny.
Essential Howard the Duck

If you're going to buy only 1 TPB this month,
it must be this one.
This series was before my time, but when i recently read it, i was blown away.
The stories are very well written, and contain a
lot of criticism hidden inside good stories and
jokes.
Howard's run for President, is a highlight in this
collection, and even people who haven't ever read
a Howard the Duck story or hated the Bad movie,
will love this book.
I usually take a month to read an Essential book,
because of the large amount of stories in it,
but i read this one within a few days.
It is simply a must-read.
If it were possible, i'd rate this book 10 stars!!

Steve Gerber's 1970's satirical masterpiece
This volume contains a nice recap of Howard's introduction in Adventure Into Fear 19, his brief appearances in Giant-Size Man-Thing 4 & 5 and the first 27 issues of his own title, there were only 31 before it turned into magazine format.
Using Howard as an outsider Gerber was able to to comment on the absurdities in issues like politics and religion that, sadly, are just as relevant today. When Howard's own comic came out in 1976 the USA had just come out of the Viet-Nam war and memories of Nixon's political fall were still fresh as the 1976 election neared. That election also featured largely in Captain America and The Avengers tales, with 1976 being the Bi-centennial of the U.S.A. there was a fair deal of soul-searching.
Gerber teamed Howard up with a brilliant selection of life's failures Beverly Switzler a part-time art school life-model, Paul Same a painter of limited talent, Winda Wester who lisps quite badly and believes she is possessed, he has one sane ally Beverly's uncle who oddly is also called Beverly Switzler.
From the start this was never going to be a normal comic as Howard faces villains in the form of a vampire cow, a man possessed by a space-turnip, a Frankenstein style Cookie monster, Kidney woman and a man in a Beaver exo-skeleton before facing his nemesis the bell-headed Dr.Bong.
A few of the regular Marvel universe characters get a look in, Spider-Man appears in his first issue, The Defenders in a great story, Son of Satan and Man-Thing and for rock music fans KISS also appear. The last three tales feature The Ringmaster and his Circus of Fear.
The highlights are Howard's run for President of the U.S.A. as leader of the All-Night Party; Howard's nightmares as he is held in an asylum which were spread over several surreal issues and the Island of Dr. Moreau style tale with Dr. Bong which was interrupted by a prose tale with collaborations from many Marvel greats, which is included here, as the original deadline was missed.
And I haven't mentioned Winky-Man, Rev. Joon Moon Yuc, the Master of Quack-Fu, Pro-Rata, Sudd the human soap bubble or the smiley faced puritan menaces of S.O.O.F.I. let alone the Star Wars spoof.
It's witty, intelligent and very well drawn, I especially loved the Gene Colan issues. It was over 30 years since I last read any of these stories and it was a pleasure to re-read them.