This Duck Gets Down
by Kent Murphy
A couple of years ago a new comic book character introduced himself in the otherwise undistinguished pages
ofa “creature” comic called Man-Thing: a duck, Howard by name, the feathered kind with a rumpled,
ill-fitting sport coat that didn’t quite cover his protruding tail. He carried a cigar and a jaunty air of
confidence while, deep in the Everglades, light years from home, he was about to face a gang of goblins
summoned by a master villain. Howard, in the manner of all great heroes, attracts trouble like a lightning
rod.
The Duck wears his dockworker philosophy on his sleeve, a self-reliant
figure in an execrable world populated by, as he puts it, talking,
hairless apes.” Howard escaped his first encounter with Earth only to
misstep on a celestial pathway home. He fell tumbling through the
void, this time into a vacant lot in Cleveland. Depressed by his poor
sense of direction, Howard resolved to dive from a height toward the
smelly Cuyahoga River, which once in real life caught fire. But near 1
the top of a slender tower on the river’s edge, the Duck I
stumbled once again. This time a voluptuous redhead
barely dressed in golden chains sobbed her despair
and Howard made his move. Thus began his rela
tionship with the delightful Beverly, a kind of love
one who doesn’t know Howard cannot hope to
fathom.
Maybe four feet tall with wide flat flip
pers, the comic kingdom’s newest hero
looks no more the part than Bogey did.
But Beverly Switzler, who could be
Lauren Bacall’s lush baby sister, fell
hard for the tough little bird who came
to her aid in what turned out to be a mad
accountant’s castle.
The celebrated first issue of Howard the Duck
ends on a wan and pessimistic note. Two themes
appear on its final page that follow' through all his
adventures. With Beverly at his side and not a dime
in his pocket he listens to her ask Where will you go
now? What will you do?” The existential anguish
comes to comics, voiced by a delicious babe dedicated
to a duck. Howard’s reply would have pleased
Camus. “1 dunno . . . but 1 could sure use a good
cigar.”
At times we all wonder about a parallel
universe, some wheeling cosmos spin
ning next to ours separated by only an
eyelash and a few Jaws of physics.
Howard comes from one ol those nearby
worlds, flung into our own when the starry nexus
rippled for a moment and he was caught in the crack.
His must have been a world much like our own, lull of
wisecracking, acerbic macho types who posture to cover up a
soft core that melts for happy dogs and dizzy blondes. Howard
makes his way through our world with aplomb, startled only by the
occasional observation, such as Spiderman’s “Hey! You’re a talking duck!
But Howard is not one to let these things pass without comment. “You’re not
exactly Mr. Normal, either, y’know,” he retorts to the webslinger.
Howard is most recently involved with a wasted trio of weakly bred socialites, one
of whom is a Barbara Walters sound-alike incapable of articulating an “L.” The duck is
appalled by the immaturity he finds among them. After a horrific misadventure in which
he appears as a circus comedian, the duck delivers himself of a typically stern lecture. “Listen
close Iris, cause here’s a lesson obviously never taught you: Actions have consequences. All
you hairless apes seem so self-possessed, I’m not surprised it never occurred to you, but mess
with people’s lives—*id fate eventually messes back! You’ll get yours, Iris.’’
Steve Gerber, a Marvel Comics writer, created Howard the Duck half a decade ago in his
Brooklyn apartment. He was 26 and full of creative frustrations after working as an
advertising writer and then a spinner of “sword and sorcery” genre comic book tales. Gerber
eventually got together with Frank Brunner, an artist, who also wanted to do comics that
appealed to the mind as well as the mindless. They teamed up for a pair of Howard adventures
based incongruously in Cleveland, and Stan Lee, Marvel’s publisher, knew he had a winner.
Howard the I)uck Number One hit the presses with much fanfare and once on the streets
promptly disappeared.
Among comic collectors Howard the Duck is already legend. Although on the market lor
barely two years, issue Number One, featuring the first animal super-hero since Mighty
Mouse, commands a mint-condition price of $15 (if you can find a willing seller). In the South
and on the West Coast the price may ease some, but supplies are lower in those places. One
archive near Atlanta would say only that Howard the Duck back numbers were in stock. They
most certainly were not for sale. Another dealer said, Yeah, I got some. But they re buried.
They’re going to stay buried.” One enthusiast tried to explain the comic’s intrinsic appeal as
he displayed a rare issue. “The drawing and lettering are high quality. They assign their best
writers and artists to Howard.” While he
talked he handled the pages as one might
examine a fragile medieval manu
script. “It’s the kind of book that
people who care about comics
would do. You get the-feeling as
you read it that the people who
put it together really like what
they’re doing.” A clerk at Fantasy
Land Books in Chamblee, Georgia,
believed that Howard was appealing
because “It has more realistic dialogue
than other comics.”
But not all collectors are so thought
ful. “I’m keeping it because the price is
going up,” announced one. A
grandmother said that she had bought the
entire series for her grandson, now four, “So
that he would have something for college.”
She updates the investment each month at a
neighborhood grocery.
Overstreet’s authoritative Comic Hook Price
Guide, published annually, pegs mint quality copies
at $.75 for most numbers, excluding of course the
very early ones. Vet that’s more than twice the cover
price for comic books only a year or two old. Few stocks
or bonds have appreciated so much.
Despite Howard the Duck's high Hying collector’s reputa
tion, the Duck fell flat on his beak as a daily comic page figure.
When Howard displaced Steve Canyon last year, in the Ma
con, Georgia, Telegraph, the readers howled. They pro
tested so much that the editor had to respond with a piece
defending his decision. “ The comics page must keep up,”
he said in essence. I he noble exper
iment was tried at almost the same
time in Columbus, Georgia, as well.
The Columbus ledger made room lor
Howard and promptly felt heat from
its readers. Howard endured for two
months in Columbus, about three in
Macon. A Telegraph staffer told the
story of Howard’s end. “We ran a
survey to rank the comics by order oi
preference. Howard the Duck came in last.” Not only was Howard last, he was a distant last.
‘Folks just weren’t ready for him here,” sighed a newsman.
The college crowd that reads Howard is a varied one. 'Io keep up with the Duck, it has to be.
‘Weirded out,” complained a pre-med sophomore who had once read HID. “I’ll try again in a
year or so. See what he’s up to.” On the other hand, a recent graduate in Political Science felt
empathy. “I’m over-educated and can’t find a job. So is Howard. He makes me laugh about
it.”
A self-educated polymath, Howard’s a walking diatribe on social ills, but a commentator
without a forum, an orator with no soapbox. His on-again-ofl-again affair with Ms. Switzleris
an analogue for the mid-Seventies’ uncertain view of affection. It hurts Howard when he
thinks himself weak so he periodically shuns the attentions of those who love him and declares
for rugged individualism. But he can’t operate for long alone, he is by nature gregarious and
concerned. These traits show up in his readers, the elements mixed in them in many ways.
‘People buy this one who don’t read any other comics,” says one bookseller. “ They seem to be
mostly college types.”
As an anti-hero Howard has the appeal of one treated unjustly by life, a fiesty soul down on
his luck but determined to make his own comeback. And the women like him. Girls love him,
want to mother him, want to make it with a duck. Because regardless of his intelligent bearing
and smart mouth, Howard remains a duck. He never steps out of character. Once he was
asked, “You rilly a duck? Lemme hear you quack." Howard takes the abuse in stride, the way
we all learn to live with large noses or naturally curly hair.
Rumors drifting through the comic book underworld have it that Howard the Duck is
dying, that it’s a successful cult venture but a commercial failure. These rumors, in turn, spur
speculative buying and Howard sales inch upward another month. The managers at Marvel
Comics Group, Inc., in New York, Howard’s publishers, are playing it close to the vest. Jim
Shooter, consulting editor on Howard the Duck, said, “ I know of no plans to end it,” when asked
about the rumors. But Gerber, Howard’s creator, is gone and the new editor is Bill Mantlo. In
the near future Howard the Duck will become a bi-monthly black and white publication, larger
and more mature, they say.
Just so he sticks around for awhile longer. (u
Kent Murphy oj Atlanta was admsed two years ago to purchase all available copies oj a new duck comic book. In thefuture
he will take such suggestions seriously.