Howard the Duck Vol. 0: What the Duck? by Chip Zdarsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Great. Funny, and great.
Here are three of the jokes I thought were great. If these hook you in, then read it!
1. The story involves an Infinity Gauntlet knockoff known as the Abundant Glove.
2. The Abundant Glove also has knockoff gems. They are as follows:
Compassion
Laughter
Dance
Respect
A Second Dance Gem
3. The case of the Heroes For Hire Against Howard’s “Hero For Hire” Ad Campaign
A lot of you probably saw Howard the Duck in the end of Guardians of the Galaxy. Whether it was weirder to see a duck man or Benicio Del Toro with a weird blonde wig is debatable.
What is NOT up for debate is the weirdness of the Howard the Duck movie from the 1980’s. After all this Back to the Future day hubbub, can we finally get back to the idea that Lea Thompson PROBABLY had sex with a duck man. And can we ignore my Google habits and the fact that I know ducks have enormous, corkscrew penises that are corkscrew because that way they can bypass the SECOND vaginas that lady ducks have, the decoy vagina they use when they don’t want to have ducklings? Because that is a significant fact within movie history. There was a major Marvel movie release with bestiality before there was a release with gay love! I guess whether Howard is a best is up for debate. You don’t actually SEE the corkscrew lil’ Howard. Despite my NUMEROUS letters to Marvel asking for it on the DVD release. Most of which went unanswered, a few of which were answered. Rudely.
But, True Believers, my history with Howard, my Howardstory, if you will, goes back even further than Lea Thompson’s questionable sexual practices.
It’s the story of three brothers plus a real nerdy friend that I had.
My dad, when we were kids, had a shitload of comics. I mean a shitload. He subscribed to the monthly books the entire time I was a kid, and he would read them, then stack them in an entertainment center in the basement that no longer held a TV or anything like that. Just comics. And once me when playing hide and seek. I closed myself in one of the cabinets and hid long enough that parents were driving the neighborhood to find me. That’s some serious hiding right there. Parents got in a car. I did not fuck around with hide and seek.
Anyway, when this entertainment center wasn’t hiding my body, it was filled with comics. The huge TV space was just stacks and stacks of comics.
And at some point, I convinced my dad to let us split up his collection. Here’s the breakdown.
My oldest brother got The Avengers.
My younger brother got Iron Man.
My nerd friend got Fantastic Four. I guess because he happened to be there that day(?) Not really sure how that worked out, but here we are today, and he has a comics room FILLED with comics. I’m 100% sure he’s the only one who still has the books we got that day, so I feel good that they went to the right home.
Oh, and me. Let’s not forget yours truly.
I got a couple different things.
Jack of Hearts. A playing card themed hero. Who had an arrow that pointed at his groin.
I don’t remember much about him, and the only powers I remember are that he had an arrow pointed at his groin and no one mentioned it.
I also got War of the Worlds, starring Killraven. Who was like…Conan, but in the future, but a post-apocalyptic future. Imagine Conan, but instead of a big desert, he’s fighting shit on a collapsed Golden Gate Bridge. This may have also been the beginning of my hatred for media where swords and guns are combined. The fuck, you guys. The fuck. Here’s a tip: If you’re in a battle with a sword in one hand and a gun in the other, hurl that sword into a volcano and use both hands to shoot the gun. C’mon.
Finally, I got Howard the Duck.
My dad’s run was pretty thorough. He had most of the 30-some core issues from the original series, and I was introduced to Quack-Fu, Man-Thing, and of course, Howard’s nemesis, Dr. Bong. Who was a giant bell, you dolts. That Maryweed has rotted your goddamn brains.
The original run was mostly about a semi-suicidal duck from a planet of duck men who found himself trapped on a planet of “hairless apes.” He had some adventures, occasionally crossed streams with Marvel regulars, and mostly bumbled around.
They were fucking great. A total precursor to the slacker superhero types of the 90’s, but with a little more heart, and a little more sense of humor.
I tried to fill in the series with the issues I was missing. This was in the pre-internet days, youngsters, and your best bets were a trip to Mile High Comics, where you could pay a princely sum to get a single issue. By “princely” I definitely mean “gouging”. That place. Such a paradise, yet so gougey. Or, you could take your chances on a bet. For example, Ron, who had a coin shop, also had an entire basement full of comics.
No, this is not a story that ends badly. “Go in the basement, I have COMICS, kids!”. Not that.
Me and my aforementioned nerd buddy went into his store’s basement and spent HOURS looking through piles of comics that were unsorted. It was dark as the only light came from the stairwell and the store above, and the comics were just piled willy-nilly on the floor. Willy Nilly may have also been a title I got from my dad’s collection. If Willy Nilly was a guy, and if he sucked, I definitely got it.
This was the kind of work you had to do to collect comics back when. It was a lot more than living with the buyer’s remorse. You had to venture into a darkened basement, sort through piles and piles of shit, and then emerge, squinting into the daylight, only to ask “How much?” and have this asshole open an Overstreet Price Guide. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Overstreet was the corkscrew giant duck penis of price guides for comics. It would screw you hard, and in ways that were baffling and confusing, and its very appearance was sickening and unnatural.
Ron quoted me the price for Howard the Duck #16. A book that was only inches above a cement floor moments ago, a book that was in a basement unequipped with lights, a book that should have been a dollar book, he told me “Let’s call it $8.99.” Bastard. Rat bastard. That book is $7.99 TODAY on eBay.
I didn’t buy it. I returned it to the basement, hid it somewhere in a stack. Just in case I cam back some day, a rich man with ALMOST ten bucks to burn.
Now you can buy the Essential Howard the Duck, 592 pages of duck. Or you can buy the Howard The Duck Omnibus, which reprints the first 33 issues and some other key moments in full, glorious color.
Penis Arrow of Hearts didn’t stick with me. But Howard did. So much so that when I put a comic on Amazon, and I needed to rip off the cover from somewhere, I knew exactly which one to pilfer.
There have been a few reincarnations of Howard over the years. Even one by the O.G., Steve Gerber. But it just didn’t quite hit the sweet spot.
And finally, we got it. Nice work, Mr. Zdarsky.