HOWARD THE DUCK: AN APPRECIATION
Jul. 21st, 2010 01:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogThis may blow my credibility as a comic book fan (assuming I ever had any, which is a grand assumption indeed), but I’ve only just discovered that Steve Gerber has been dead for over two years. In my defense, Gerber’s death occurred in February 2008 while I was knee-deep in telephones journalism in Barcelona. So between that and Gerber not being the biggest brand name in comics, it’s no surprise I missed it.
Anyway, being a fan of Howard The Duck, I thought I should say something, even if belatedly.
Howard The Duck may be one of the more underrated comic books ever, its cult following notwithstanding. And while it’s easy to blame that on George Lucas, it would also be wrong. The movie version sucked for the same reason that Marvel eventually dropped Gerber from the comic and later the series entirely – HtD was more high-concept than it looked, and not a lot of people really got it.
And admittedly, the idea of an anthropomorphic cartoon duck from another dimension imported into the “real” world as a vehicle for existential social satire would be a tough sell in any era, let alone the mid-1970s. So in that sense, it’s amazing that HtD ever made past his debut guest appearance in Man-Thing.
Ironically, it was the movie that got me into the comic book. The original run was before my days of financial independence (and I was more interested in Spiderman anyway), and despite the film’s general suckiness, I found myself seeking out back issues out of curiosity. Which is as well, since by that time I was old enough to get the satirical aspects of it.
Looking back, HtD seems ahead of its time, at least as far as mainstream comics go. Certainly he was the first Marvel character to run for President.
He even ran against the actual candidates at the time (Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter) rather than fictional ones. The odds of getting away with that in a mainstream comic book today are slim (with or without the cigar).
As a comics fan and an amateur political commentator, I have to respect that.
One reason I’m mentioning all this, incidentally, is that I just finished reading the comeback mini-series for Howard The Duck that Gerber did in 2002 with Phil Winslade and Glenn Fabry for the new (at the time) Marvel Max imprint, which also means Gerber got to utilize tons of swearing, nudity and ultra-violence that he could never have gotten away with in the 70s.
I can’t say the adult stuff really adds anything to the book (though if you’ve ever wanted to see Beverly Switzler naked, yr prayers will be answered), and while satire has always been the bread-and-butter of classic HtD, Gerber tried a little too hard sometimes. Still, he had a lot of fun mocking everything from boy bands and Oprah to Witchblade and pretty much the entire DC Vertigo line-up circa 2001.
So it was nice that he got to revisit Howard and Beverly properly once more before he passed on.
Trapped in a world he never made,
This is dF
Anyway, being a fan of Howard The Duck, I thought I should say something, even if belatedly.
Howard The Duck may be one of the more underrated comic books ever, its cult following notwithstanding. And while it’s easy to blame that on George Lucas, it would also be wrong. The movie version sucked for the same reason that Marvel eventually dropped Gerber from the comic and later the series entirely – HtD was more high-concept than it looked, and not a lot of people really got it.
And admittedly, the idea of an anthropomorphic cartoon duck from another dimension imported into the “real” world as a vehicle for existential social satire would be a tough sell in any era, let alone the mid-1970s. So in that sense, it’s amazing that HtD ever made past his debut guest appearance in Man-Thing.
Ironically, it was the movie that got me into the comic book. The original run was before my days of financial independence (and I was more interested in Spiderman anyway), and despite the film’s general suckiness, I found myself seeking out back issues out of curiosity. Which is as well, since by that time I was old enough to get the satirical aspects of it.
Looking back, HtD seems ahead of its time, at least as far as mainstream comics go. Certainly he was the first Marvel character to run for President.
He even ran against the actual candidates at the time (Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter) rather than fictional ones. The odds of getting away with that in a mainstream comic book today are slim (with or without the cigar).
As a comics fan and an amateur political commentator, I have to respect that.
One reason I’m mentioning all this, incidentally, is that I just finished reading the comeback mini-series for Howard The Duck that Gerber did in 2002 with Phil Winslade and Glenn Fabry for the new (at the time) Marvel Max imprint, which also means Gerber got to utilize tons of swearing, nudity and ultra-violence that he could never have gotten away with in the 70s.
I can’t say the adult stuff really adds anything to the book (though if you’ve ever wanted to see Beverly Switzler naked, yr prayers will be answered), and while satire has always been the bread-and-butter of classic HtD, Gerber tried a little too hard sometimes. Still, he had a lot of fun mocking everything from boy bands and Oprah to Witchblade and pretty much the entire DC Vertigo line-up circa 2001.
So it was nice that he got to revisit Howard and Beverly properly once more before he passed on.
Trapped in a world he never made,
This is dF
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no subject
on 2010-07-20 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-07-21 02:57 am (UTC)