What a difference a couple of years can make.
From Fear #19 (Dec., 1973). Text by Steve Gerber; art by Val Mayerik and Sal Trapani.
From Man-Thing #1 (Jan., 1974). Text by Steve Gerber; art by Val Mayerik and Sal Trapani.
In the autumn of 1973, Howard the Duck’s debut in the last few pages of the “Man-Thing” story in Fear #19 had been followed just one month later by his apparent demise in the first few pages of Man-Thing #1. Marvel Comics’ editor-in-chief at that time, Roy Thomas, hadn’t thought that the publisher’s readers were ready for a “funny animal”-style character in what was at least ostensibly a horror comic, and had asked Man-Thing writer Steve Gerber to get Howard out of the book as quickly as possible. But Thomas turned out to be wrong; the fan response to the acerbic waterfowl was overwhelmingly favorable, and Gerber was eventually given the go-ahead to resurrect Howard in his own solo backup feature in Giant-Size Man-Thing. After two such stories had appeared, and were again well-received, the author pitched Marvel publisher Stan Lee on the idea of giving Howard his very own solo title — and Lee, who not all that long before had reportedly been utterly bewildered when attendees at his college campus appearances quizzed him about when Howard the Duck would be coming back, immediately said yes. And thus it came to pass that in late October, 1975, Howard the Duck #1 — featuring a guest-appearance by Marvel flagship character Spider-Man, no less — was hatched into the comic-book-buying world.
Cover to Giant-Size Man-Thing #5 (Aug., 1975). Art by Gil Kane and Dan Adkins.
Before we dig into that landmark issue, however, your humble blogger hopes no one will mind if we first take a little time to look briefly at “Hellcow!” — the second solo Howard the Duck story, which originally ran in the fifth (and final) issue of Giant-Size Man-Thing, five months prior to the release of Howard the Duck #1. One reason for doing so is that we covered Howard’s first solo adventure in our post about Giant-Size Man-Thing #4 back in February; and, as regular readers of this blog may recall, that story — which began by revealing that Howard’s fall through interdimensional space (as shown in Man-Thing #1) had terminated not in death, nor even by returning him to his own homeworld of anthropomorphic animals, but by depositing him in the city of Cleveland, OH — ended on something of a cliffhanger, as Howard found himself unjustly arrested and carted off to jail after saving the city’s population of talking hairless apes from the depredations of Garko, the Man-Frog. After all, we wouldn’t want anyone out there to have to wonder forever how our feathered protagonist got out of that mess, would we? But, honestly, an even better reason for spending a few minutes with “Hellcow!” is that it’s a good, fun story; one that I’d hate for us to have to skip over simply because we couldn’t squeeze a complete GSMT #5 post into our May blogging schedule. And so, without further ado…
Returning as Howard’s artist for his second solo outing was Frank Brunner, who, as you may remember, got the gig for “Frog Death!” after the originally assigned illustrator, Neal Adams, just couldn’t find the time to get to the job. But while Brunner had inked his own pencils for that earlier story, the duty of embellishment here fell to Tom Palmer.
“Commissioner Gordonski”? Gee, I wonder who he’s supposed to remind us of…
The irate Gordonski kneels to frisk Howard, searching for the zipper he knows has to be there — but…
A free duck once more, Howard walks out into the night, wondering to himself: “Where do I go? What does a guy do to make a buck an’ survive… in a world where he doesn’t belong?”
Brunner and Palmer’s visual depiction of the “desperate stranger” is right on model for the Marvel version of this character… which, of course, is exactly what you’d expect, given the involvement of the latter artist — the regular finisher over Gene Colan’s pencils on Tomb of Dracula for the last couple of years and counting.
Bizarre as it might be, this scenario plays by the Marvel Universe’s established rules regarding vampires (at least to the extent that Tomb of Dracula and its related titles themselves do) — thus encouraging the reader to accept the events of this story as being as legit as those in any “straight” Marvel horror comic… even if the whole idea of a murderous vampire cow wearing a knockoff of Count Famous’ own opera cape is hilariously absurd.
Hurled through a plate-glass window into an auto repair shop, Howard searches frantically for a weapon to use against the pursuing hellcow. His eye falls upon a lug wrench, and then…
The image of a weeping vampire cow with her fangs stuck in a tire is at one and the same time both very funny and very sad — in other words, it’s quintessential Steve Gerber.
Re-reading that “Waaaaaaaaugh” all these years later, you really have to wonder at Gerber’s — and Marvel’s — chutzpah. It almost feels like they were daring the Walt Disney legal department to take notice… or so it least it seems to me today. Back in 1975, it just seemed really funny.
But, in any event, the conclusion of “Hellcow” leaves Howard “free” — at least in the narrow sense of his not being under restraint. Yet. even so, he remains “Trapped in a World He Never Made”*… just like it says in the tagline on the Frank Brunner-drawn cover of Howard the Duck #1.
And, as we find on the opening splash page of that same issue, in the interval between GSMT #5 and HTD #1, that situation, exacerbated by loneliness and abject poverty, has become intolerable…
Joining the creative team with this issue was inker Steve Leialoha. Like Frank Brunner, Leialoha was a resident of California’s San Francisco Bay Area; his big break at Marvel had come just a few months prior to this, via his finishes over the pencils of yet another Bay Area pro, Jim Starlin, on Warlock. Recommended to Brunner by Starlin, he’d remain on this book through issue #14.
Everybody noticed Stan Lee’s Master Charge (that’s what they called MasterCard back in the olden days, boys and girls) on the tower wall, right? Just checking.
This scantily-clad damsel — who, as most of you already know, is destined to become the second-most important character in the whole Howard the Duck series (some might even argue that she’s just as important as the Duck himself), but whose name won’t be revealed until later in our story — was not originally conceived by either Steve Gerber or Frank Brunner. Rather, she was the inspired idea of Gerber’s friend and fellow writer Mary Skrenes, who’d sat in on the working dinner during which Gerber and Brunner hashed out the details of the plot for “Howard the Barbarian”:
In 2008, Skrenes recalled the circumstances of Beverly Switzler’s creation for a Howard the Duck retrospective published in Back Issue #31:
I came up with her character and her name… We were sitting in some place, like a Burger and Brew, with Frank Brunner and talking about the issue. Howard was climbing up a tower of credit cards planning to “off” himself. When he reached an opening at the top and looked inside… I said, “And, of course, there must be a scantily clad damsel chained to the wall.” The boys liked it.
Hey, it just occurred to me that this story is set in Cleveland, and its promised special guest star is pretty firmly ensconced in New York City. I wonder how our storytellers will contrive to get Spider-Man to Ohio?
Pete’s facial expression in that last panel is just priceless, isn’t it?
In 1975, the juxtaposition of a robed, bearded sorcerer and a “Cosmic Calculator” made for a humorous incongruity; fifty years later, both the wizard and the accounting machine seem almost equally quaint.
That line of Howard’s about the giant nest reminding him of where he was first hatched is moderately amusing… although maybe not quite as amusing as the original version, where the last word of the sentence was not “hatched”, but “laid”.
The gag was a contribution of Frank Brunner’s, which he’d scribbled into the bottom margin of his pencilled art page (see left), and was picked up by Gerber for his script. Per a blog post by former Marvel editorial staffer and writer Scott Edelman, the “laid” version of the line made it at least through the inking and lettering stages of production before being “corrected” by art director John Romita prior to the issue going to press (see right).
And now you know.
We now arrive at a section of our story where the talents (and tastes) of Frank Brunner — whose past works include the sword-and-sorcery yarn “Sword of Dragonus” in Monsters Unleashed #2 (and whose future works will include illustrating an adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s “The Scarlet Citadel” for Savage Sword of Conan #30) seem to be very much at home…
Howard upends his sword’s scabbard, and wouldja believe, out falls his very last cigar. His resourceful new companion even has his matches (it’s not quite clear where she had those stashed, but whatever). A grateful Duck lights up, and begins to cogitate — and within a moment or two…
The quest for the gem-key has been achieved, though at the loss of Howard’s cheroot, which falls into the pit and is impaled on a spike. Howard’s new friend suggests they don’t dawdle to mourn, but rather get out of there as fast as they can: “Something’s gonna happen. I can feel it in my bones.” A moment later, as they run past the two giant stone guardians standing at the citadel’s entrance, there comes an ominous loud KRE-E-ECK, and our two adventurers look up in horror. “Perceptive skeleton you’ve got there, Toots!” Howard exclaims.
In the same Back Issue article quoted from earlier, Mary Skrenes offered further reflections on the origins — as well as the enduring presence in the Howard the Duck series — of Beverly Switzler:
I think there are a couple of reasons that Beverly became a continuing character… One, it really worked well for Howard to have a friend who accepted him exactly as he was, feathers and all, and could be a positive optimist to his cynical pessimism…
The second reason is kind of eerie to me. Back on that fateful night when I interjected the girl into Steve’s plot, I said, “And her name is Beverly Switzler. No, wait, I meant to say Swizzle.” He got excited and said, “No, it’s got to be Switzler!” It was some kind of “sign” to him. He never explained why. After Steve’s death [in 2008], when I took his ashes to New York, somebody, probably his brother Michael, told me that, “Steve named a character after the Switzler Hall Building on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus.” I had never heard that name before. It was like a little last laugh he had on me.
(UPDATE, 10/29/25, 1:05 pm: As noted by Blake Stone over at the Marvel Collected Editions Message Board, several months prior to HtD #1’s publication a news item published in FOOM #10 [Jun., 1975] had identified Howard’s “faithful companion” as “Mercedes Bent” — a fact which suggests that the actual process of naming Bev Switzler was perhaps a little more complicated than was recalled decades later by Mary Skrenes.)
Of course, Mary Skrenes’ contribution to the character of Beverly Switzler ultimately went a lot further than her initial idea of a “scantily clad damsel chained to the wall”, or even her coming up with the character’s name. A year or two after this comic’s publication, the letters column of Howard the Duck #19 would include an editorial reply (most likely authored by Steve Gerber himself) that simply stated, “Beverly Switzler is Mary Skrenes”.
Two decades later, in a 1994 radio interview eventually transcribed and published in Comic Book Creator #33 (Winter, 2024), Gerber was somewhat more circumspect on that topic:
How much is Mary really like Beverly? In some ways, a great deal and, in other ways…? Not at all. You know, I mean, Beverly and Mary are not the same person, but there are aspects of Mary in Beverly.
Whatever the actual percentage of Skrenes in Switzler (and vice versa) may have been, it seems obvious to conclude that without the former, the latter wouldn’t exist — at least, not in a form we’d be likely to recognize.
I’m not sure that this occurred to my younger self when I first read this story back in October, 1975, but in re-reading it now, I’m struck by certain similarities between this climactic sequence of Howard, Beverly, and Pro-Rata battling over the gem-key and Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s classic tale, “The Wondrous World of Doctor Strange!”, which was originally published in 1965’s Amazing Spider-Man Annual #2 (but which your humble blogger first caught when it was reprinted four years later, in Doctor Strange #179).
Both stories find Spidey allied with another hero against a skull-capped, pointy-whiskered wizard over a crystal-faceted mystical artifact of great power (in the case of the earlier story — a relevant page from which is shown at right — it’s the Wand of Watoomb). While it’s certainly possible that the similarities are unintentional, I can’t imagine that Gerber and Brunner weren’t familiar with Lee and Ditko’s tale from A-SM Annual #2. (For the record, a less memorable sequel featuring the same trio of characters, as well as the Wand of Watoomb, had appeared much more recently in Marvel Team-Up #21). So, even if all this wasn’t intended as a conscious tribute to the earlier story (or stories), it may well have been an unconscious one.
The Cuyahoga River’s propensity for catching fire — most famously in 1969, when it helped inspire the passage of the Clean Water Act of 1972 — was the kind of thing that practically everybody in America would have known about, circa 1975.
Revisiting this story for the first time in years if not decades, it occurs to me that Steve Gerber has left a few minor loose ends hanging at its conclusion. How can Howard and company know for sure that Pro-Rata actually perished in the blazing waters of the Cuyahoga? Assuming Spider-Man can track down “Big Bird”, what’s he going to do with him when he does? Meanwhile, what’s Howard supposed to do with that magical jewel-key? To the best of my knowledge, all those questions remain unanswered, half a century later.
Still, if I’m going to be honest, I doubt any of those concerns troubled me upon first finishing this story, back in October, 1975. Rather, I suspect I simply sat back, satisfied after having read a really excellent comic book — one that was funny, smart, exciting, and very well-drawn. Minor quibbles aside, I still think “Howard the Barbarian” holds up as a fine piece of entertainment… even if both the pop culture parody and the social satire can’t help but feel a little dated in their particulars.
One notable thing I wasn’t aware of back in the fall of ’75, of course, was that I was rather lucky to have been able to buy and read Howard the Duck #1 at all — at least at the cover price of 25 cents. That’s because a combination of factors — including a lack of faith in the title’s commercial viability on the part of Marvel’s circulation director Ed Shukin, as well as some enterprising actions taken by a number of comic-book dealers around the country — resulted in customer demand greatly exceeding product supply, at least in some areas. According to various sources, Shukin sent HtD #1 to press with a minimal print run of 275,000 copies, of which a significant percentage was bought up by the aforementioned dealers… with the predictable result that some comics fans either couldn’t find copies at all, or had to pay greatly inflated prices for them.
Asked in 1999 how he’d felt about that situation at the time, Steve Gerber responded frankly:
I was angry as hell. I felt as if the book had been sabotaged by the very people who supposedly liked the character… The sales on [issue] #2 were respectable. I don’t recall exactly what the sales figures were, but I think it would’ve done a lot better — I think the whole series would’ve done a lot better — had that first issue reached the stands. (Comic Book Artist #7, Feb., 2000).
Gerber’s ire was certainly understandable — though it’s an incontrovertible fact that, however many more copies of its earliest issues Howard the Duck might have sold had speculators simply sat on their hands, the end result was that the series still became popular enough to be bumped from a bi-monthly to a monthly publication schedule within six issues… by which time Howard’s political campaign to become the 39th President of the United States was already well underway. But, naturally, that’s a story for another post, a bit further down the road.
*As noted by Brian Cronin in a 2022 column for CBR.com, this enduring catchphrase appears to be a riff on a couplet from A.E. Housman’s poem, “The Laws of God, the Laws of Man”, originally published in 1922:
I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made.
Randy Newman fans at the time knew about the flaming river…
Howard’s first appearance in Man-Thing, Roy Thomas’ reaction to it, and all of the subsequent Gerber-scripted stories are super hilarious. It was so improbable to see this become a mainstream success, but the time was right. Underground comix had plenty of anthropomorphic characters, but the Comics Code actually helped to keep Howard enjoyable for all ages and yet edgy enough for more jaded sensibilities without being repellent and distasteful.
I believe Howard the Duck no. 5 had distribution problems and its numbers are far scarcer than no. 1.
“Assuming Spider-Man can track down “Big Bird”, what’s he going to do with him when he does? ” And why didn’t he snap a quick picture of Howard while he had the chance? Giant bird? Yeah, Jonah’s not gonna care about that one.
A fun issue kicking off a fun series. Fascinating background information. I can understand Gerber hedging on “Beverly is Mary” — basing characters on close friends doesn’t always go over well (there’s details about my wife I’d love to use as the basis for a fictional character … but no).
Another outstanding review of an amazing comic! For what it’s worth, #1 arrived on the comic book racks of my small logging town in southern Oregon. But that was it for Howard until #7. By that time, it was in the middle of a story that wasn’t that great with all the momentum from the early issues evaporated. That said, just like Dr. Strange, going from Frank Bruner to Gene Colan on the art didn’t hurt at all.
This first issue of Howard came out just as I turned eight, and I didn’t read it at the time, perhaps in part because of the speculators buying up all the copies, but more likely because, at that age, I was only interested in comics about superheroes, and found “funny animals” childish, even though I was a child. This is doubtless why Stan and other powers-that-be at Marvel insisted on Spider-Man guest-starring, to give True Believers like myself a hook to tie the book to the larger Marvel Universe. In hindsight, I think Gerber’s story would have worked just as well without Peter Parker in it, although Brunner’s tossed-off depiction of Peter’s quintessentially ‘70s lace-up blouse is a high point here. Again, in hindsight, it’s interesting that the two most enduring “funny animal” characters of this era, Howard and Cerebus the Aardvark, began life as parodies of Conan the Barbarian. I didn’t really begin to engage with Howard until his black-and-white magazine debuted a few years later, and part of the appeal of Beverly to young me then was how Gene Colan drew her as sexy – and topless, if I recall correctly – much as Brunner here depicts her as a full-on scantily-clad Conan damsel. With one final bit of hindsight, that the villain of this piece is a wizard/accountant whose “cosmic calculator” reduces everything to numbers and, by implication, money, pretty clearly foreshadows Gerber’s losing battle with Marvel over ownership of, and fair compensation for, his creation.
Don’t have time to write much just now before heading off to work, but these were great stories with great artwork by Brunner. I’d rate HtD #1 as a contender for best comicbook of 1975.
This sent speculators wild.
The thing I really noticed was that Brunner did a very credible Ditko-esque Spider-Man and might have done well on that book (or, increasingly by this time, books).
Where Brunner might have brought good fortune to Spider-Man, I think his departure brought good fortune to Howard.
My sense is Brunner wanted to do spoofs and parodies of popular genres; kind of a “Tax Avery meets Underground Comix” vibe. I don’t think Gerber’s more personal (and, frankly. stranger) vision would have dominated the stripe as it did, if Brunner (a fan favorite artist who took a big part of the plotting on books he worked on) had stayed on the book,
Possibly, the book would have been more successful if he had stayed, It might be better remembered. However, it would not have been what it was.
As for Mary Skrenes, if Bev Switzler is based on her, it would not be the first time she had a comic character based on her. She was used as the basis for a minor character in the 1971 Batman story, “Night of the Reaper.” Oddly. she had already worked for DC as a writer and editorial assistant by the time that book was published.
Mary Skrenes, is probably one of those influential (but less well-known) people who have a broader impact on comics (and realtered media) than most people know, like Roy G. Krenkel.
I did not like Howard as much as Man-Thing, but I’m glad that aspect of Steve Gerber’s psyche was shared with the fans.. . . .
It has been brought up in months past that Mary Skrenes wrote for DC under the pseudonym Virgil North when she was dating Berni Wrightson in 1970.
I’ve been waiting for this one.
I still have Howard #1 (and most of the rest of the first ten issues as well, I think), but couldn’t put my hands on it quickly to save my life. Amazingly, I had no problem getting the book in the redneck wilds of Clinton, Mississippi, which is without a doubt the exception and not the rule, but I’ll take it. It’s a pleasure to read it again and download it’s silly brilliance into my brain.
Brunner will always be one of my favorite pencillers from this era. Leialoha, while talented, wasn’t as good an inker here as Giordano had been on Doctor Strange, but he grew into the role over fourteen issues and I wound up liking his inks on Brunner’s pencils a lot.
As to the plot, it was simple, as was Hellcow and Garko, the Man-Frog, but at the same time inspired by a side of the creators’ humor we hadn’t really had much chance to see before. You could always tell Gerber had this kind of weirdness in him, but it was great to see it fully unleashed and off the chain for the first time in the Howard stories. Adding Spidey into the mix was strictly a marketing ploy, indicative of the fact that no one at Marvel could understand why there was such demand for the character of Howard (see the low print run for further proof), and really wasn’t necessary. As to what Spidey did with the pterodactyl or whatever the hell that bird-thing was, I’m sure that was the Gerber’s point. “If I have the creature fly off and Spidey chase it, then it automatically becomes someone else’s story, ’cause I ain’t writing Spider-man!”
As for the Mary/Beverly thing, I can see where Gerber would have originally thought that was a compliment, but as the book progressed and the character evolved, he might have given her some character traits that Mary didn’t have and didn’t want. Who knows? It was probably just a way to give her some credit for creating and naming the character in the first place. I have several ex-wives myself who would make excellent villains of Thanos/Darkseid proportions, but legal injuncture prevents me from detailing said characterization here.
I hope you’re able to cover a number of these, Alan. At least as many of the first ten issues as you managed to buy off the shelf. Howard was a book I had no idea my 17-year-old self needed until I got it and I think my 67-year-old self will get a kick out of him, as well. Thanks!
My mistake. I wrote that Brunner drew “fourteen” issues. I meant four. Wishful thinking, I suppose, though Gene Colan did a fine job, too.
Almost there, Don! Steve Leialoha inked the first fourteen issues of HtD, but Frank Brunner only pencilled the first two (though if you count the two short tales in Giant-Size Man-Thing, he did draw four Howard *stories*). But, hey, don’t sweat it, we all make mistakes (I’ve already had to update the original post once, and the day ain’t over yet.)
Given they made it canon that Bev and Howard are doing the nasty, that alone might have made Gerber self-conscious.
There seemed to be no problem in HTD 1 reaching the UK. I saw a few issues around the newsagents here back in the day. Although, thanks to the vagaries of UK distribution, we didn’t receive them until January. The cover dates matched the on-sale dates here until the distributors streamlined the process in 1981, I think.
But this comic blew my 13 years-old mind, as did most of the subsequent issues. I still have all my original copies today.
Howard in disguise in “Hellcow” reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes trying to get into to see “Vampire Sorority Babes.”
(Commissioner Gordonski, there’s a ticket-seller who’s just dying to meet you…)
Do you think Bill Watterson knew it and paid homage to it almost a decade later?
It would not surprise me in the least if young Bill Waterson had read “Hellcow” back in the day and remembered the trench coat bit.
Considering things from the other direction, I wonder if Gerber and Brunner were poking a little fun at Wein and Wrightson for attempting to disguise an 8-foot tall bog monster using a trench coat and hat during a visit to the big city in Swamp Thing #7?
Another maybe-not-a-coincidence: both Howard and Alec Holland dispatch snarling canine metamorphs via falling chandelier (HtD #1 and ST #4, respectively).
More inside jokes from “Hellcow”:
– Farmer Brown’s attire and facial hair bring to mind Fred Ziffel (a man with considerable experience dealing with enhanced barnyard animals)
– Howard employs a Mjolnir-like mallet to send Bessie to Valhalla
– the awkward moment when the authorities catch Howard mid-staking is reminiscent of the original Night Stalker tv movie
A.E. Housman is the inspiration for a Tom Stoppard play called *The Invention of Love.*
James T. Farrell gave the title *A World I Never Made* to his first Danny O’Neill novel (1936). Two years later, he turned to another Housman poem for its sequel, *No Star Is Lost*:
Stars, I have seen them fall,
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
From all the star-sown sky.
The toil of all that be
Helps not the primal fault;
It rains into the sea,
And still the sea is salt.
For what it’s worth, the remaining Danny O’Neill books are *Father and Son* (1940: title not taken from a poet), *My Days of Anger* (1943: title taken from Charles Baudelaire’s *Intimate Journals*) and *The Face of Time* (1953: title taken from William Butler Yeats’s “Lamentation of the Old Pensioner”).
THE LAMENTATION OF THE OLD PENSIONER
by: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
LTHOUGH I shelter from the rain
Under a broken tree
My chair was nearest to the fire
In every company
That talked of love or politics,
Ere Time transfigured me.
Though lads are making pikes again
For some conspiracy,
And crazy rascals rage their fill
At human tyranny,
My contemplations are of Time
That has transfigured me.
There’s not a woman turns her face
Upon a broken tree,
And yet the beauties that I loved
Are in my memory;
I spit into the face of Time
That has transfigured me.
George Orwell is rather hard on Housman’s *Shropshire Lad* in one of his essays, saying that the poetry “just tinkles” to a reader in his thirties, though it resonated more to a younger reader.
I remember that *MTU* issue. Melinda was not in a sleep that resembled death, but in a death that resembled sleep, and Dr. Strange and Spider-Man walked “Wein and Buscema-ly away” while Xandu wept and wailed.
A funny beginning to the series , enjoyable enough. Spider-Man seems kind of shoe horned in to draw attention and readers. Something that always bothered me about the Howard Comic though. That is, given the ridiculousness of Howard himself. His size, his talking, the human girlfriend, the cigars even, I wouldn’t have gone for the bizarre, weird villains. Howard himself is the strange oddity. Having all these assorted larger than life monstrosities for him to be in conflict with seems like overkill to me. I get that Gerber was going for parody but how about having Howard engaged with more realistic menaces,, playing off the inherent absurdity of what he is. For instance the scene in the jail where the guy’s trying to find Howard’s zipper strikes me as the funniest section of the whole post. He could have Howard encounter; by the book bureaucrats, poultry inspectors, marketing types eager to sign him up, army officers seeing his potential for infiltration, etc. Lots of stories could’ve been built around this. Instead we get these cliched monsters who show up with little or no build up and are dispatched just as easily. When Kafka wrote “Metamorphosis” he didn’t need anything more outlandish than Gregor. HE was what outlandish, the giant cockroach, no need for other surreal additions.
I take your point, but I still think the series was hilarious as was.
Curiously, the usually awful Civil War event had one of its few good stories dealing with Howard and it gets into the territory you’re talking about. He’s trying to register for the metahuman draft or something like that (I forget exactly), gets nowhere and finally a government official reveals they’ve spent years covering up the existence of a humanoid duck in Cleveland — they’re not going to blow that by formally registering him!
Brunner’s art is good, and I may somehow have acquired one or two HtD mags back then, I think the art was the draw but (I would have been around 13/14 at the time) I really never got into it. The character just seemed to me at the time so out of sync with the rest of what I knew Marvel for – obviously satirical (most of which was lost on me at the time) , a bit “adult “, deliberately “wacky” but quite a bit too cynical for me. I just wasn’t ready for it.- don’t think any Disney character tease (if that’s what it was) , was on my radar in any way. I partly saw it as a kind of Irving Forbush mascot for Marvel (Howard for President!) but beyond that , wasn’t interested.
I think my feeling at the time was , the art is pretty good, supporting characters interesting, but why have that annoying duck character spoiling it all the time that seemed cast from a complete different artistic and imaginative dimension – dramatically like a constant sore thumb. By the time I had read any issue , I had no idea of any origin of the character that might have made any narrative sense of that. I couldn’t suspend my disbelief – which became so easy with most of Marvel’s other earlier output but appearances from other established Marvel characters just seemed to make it more “off” and unsettling. I was clearly behind the times back then but as I recall that was my impression.
Now that Dianey owns Marvel, we could very easily see Howard and Donald Duck cross paths.
Ok, I’m back, after a long day working at the courthouse, then doing a few miles of walking and playing trivia with some friends, feeding my cats & dog, etc. Alas, I missed all of Howard’s appearances in Fear, Man-Thing & Giant-Size Man-Thing (speaking of absurdities!) as well as the first three issues of his own mag, although I at least got all the stories eventually. But once I finally did read an issue, #4, it jumped right into my list of favorite comics. I already liked Gerber’s writing — his sensibilities struck a nerve with my angsty, alienated young teen-age self. I was never ornery like Howard, but I liked the way Gerber wrote him. Although this was a “funny book”, Gerber treated Howard seriously as a character and didn’t make him out to be ridiculously silly, although certainly some aspects of the series were very silly, as with Monty Python’s Flying Circus (cue Graham Chapman’s overly serious colonel to make an entrance to come in and order everyone to stop being silly!). But Howard was always very relatable as a character, IMO, trying to do the best he could under difficult circumstances. And, like most Marvel key characters, a magnet for trouble and overall strangeness. Of course, in these early stories, Howard goes out seeking the Hellcow, anxious to somehow make a name for himself by slaying the bloodthirsty beast and hoping to thereby be rewarded with an occupation that could make him solvent and meet the necessities of food & shelter, not to mention maintaining the bad habit of smoking cigars!
But, of course, things don’t work out and as this issue begins, Howard’s feeling so downtrodden he’s contemplating suicide, a subject that I don’t recall having been dealt with previously in any mainstream comics, aside from the nearly contemporaneous concluding chapters of Starlin’s Magus storyline in Warlock wherein the hero travels into the near future to encounter and “kill” his future self in order to prevent him from becoming the Magus. A very strange form of “cosmic suicide”. Then, about a year and a half later, there was the conclusion of David Kraft’s Scorpio storyline in the Defenders, wherein Jake Fury takes his own life off-camera, with or without the help of the LMD version of his brother Nick. And grimmest yet, the suicide of Heather Glenn in Daredevil several years later. In HtD #1, however, Howard’s heavy gloom fades as he winds up having to deal with a mad financial wizard, saving a woman who becomes his lifeline in preserving his sanity as a companion to commiserate with and help each other survive the madness of the world. I’ve certainly gotten through some bouts of depression myself, although I’ve never met my equivalent of a “Beverly” (well, I came sort of close but the absurdities of real life ensured things didn’t work out as I would have liked; nevertheless, somehow I’m still here). I admit, I’m curious about the relationship between Gerber & Mary Skrenes even though it’s really none of my business, but clearly she played a prominent role in the writing of both Omega the Unknown (as credited) and on HtD (as mostly not credited, by her own insistence to my understanding, but certainly she was a muse for him).
As to the art, Brunner’s capacity for “realistic” art helped sell the notion of Howard as a “real” character within the funhouse world of Marvel super-heroes. Each of his splash pages for the two GSMT stories & HtD #1 displayed fantastic variations of Howard’s turmoil, first tumbling through dimensions in a nightmare situation with no idea where he would wind up; then in a jail cell, nervously awaiting an uncertain fate; and finally on a river’s edge, contemplating ending it all. The writing and art meshed very well together, IMO, but I can understand their disparate outlooks tearing them apart, as with Lennon & McCartney, each pulling in different directions, and, finally, Brunner took off. But Colan was also capable of a somewhat skewed realistic drawing style that also worked well for the series. Would have been interesting to see how Neal Adams would have dealt with the concept, but also glad for the HtD stories that Brunner did produce.
And now, time to head off for the land of nod. And cheers to Alan for his rundown on these first few chapters in the life of our favorite Marvel fowl!
I’d previously read about the mass speculation that shop-owners had partaken in and the cost of Howard#1 was astronomical at the time (compared to Spider-man issues etc.), can anyone think of earlier issues that were wildly speculated on – or is this the start of #1 fever that still holds us today?
I’m an appreciative audience when it comes to Brunner so this was always a must-have for me, as is issue 2…but I do wish Gene could have done the Hellcow, that would have been hilarious (well, even moreso than prersented).
Shazam #1, at first, but the book did not take off, X-Men # 94 was sort of the opposite, it took a awhile for the book to catch on, but when it did—boooom.
I did get X-Men #94 out of the $00.25 bin in the Summer of 1976. A very good investment.
Yes, I was one of those who missed Howard the Duck at this time 50 years ago because I never saw it. I am fairly certain that I would have bought that first issue if I had seen it. I was going to college then and the town where I lived did not have the best distribution of comics, and I had no idea of the situation with HTD 1 (that it was hard to find). I also had no local comics shop nearby. I am fairly certain I did not see any of the next few issues of Howard at all, and when I finally became aware of the existence of the series (most likely in mid 1976), I was going through a period of dropping a lot of books, so I was not looking to start something new. Of course I came to regret that decision. I was certainly a fan of Gerber’s work; I was reading and enjoying his Defenders and was about to start buying the Guardians of the Galaxy series in Marvel Presents that Gerber would start writing in November 1975. I had read and enjoyed the 2 Howard the Duck stories in GS Man-Thing 4 and 5. I did eventually start buying the actual Howard the Duck series but it took some time. Not until March 1978. For some reason, I liked the cover of HTD 25, promising Howard coming up against the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime (which I did not know was the first time Howard was going up against some old time Marvel villains). At the newsstand that I picked up this issue, HTD 24 was still on sale so I picked that up too. Well I have to admit I was hooked and this time I was able to find a local comics shop that had back issues for reasonable prices so was soon able to catch up on Gerber’s work on Howard…with one exception. Yes, it took me quite some to get HTD 1. I don’t remember where I eventually did get it, possibly at a convention…but it was definitely not for 25 cents. It was not enormously expensive but it was some amount of money. It’s well over 40 years ago so I just don’t remember how much it cost me. While I thought it was good, especially the Brunner art, there are some other issues I do like better, especially HTD 3 (Master of Quack Fu), and when Howard briefly turned human. Gerber really found his total voice on this series
But regarding HTD 1 itself, a few thoughts. I have observed that Beverly Switzler was absolutely critical to the success of the series. Howard needed somebody to sound off to, and when she was away even for a few issues the series was not the same. It does seem that Gerber picked the right time to do a barbarian satire in HTD 1. It appears that at this time Conan was at the height of his popularity, with his series and the Savage Sword magazine and that even led Roy to putting out a new Red Sonja series. If I remember correctly, this very month was the first time Frank Thorne began drawing Red Sonja in October 1975. It appears that Brunner was inspired to give Beverly a Red Sonja type outfit.
It should also be noted there are certain series (American Flagg, HTD) that should only be written by their creator. In my opinion, Gerber was the only one who understood the character of Howard. Mantlo tried but just didn’t get it….showing Howard and Beverly in bed was just wrong and a mistake I choose to ignore.
Great review of a story I did miss, but did finally get to read, several years later. Thanks Alan.
“….showing Howard and Beverly in bed was just wrong and a mistake I choose to ignore.” . . . and also a felony in several states . . . .
Clearly, Bill Mantlo wrote this before he took advanced crim law . . . .
The fact that they included that particular plot point in the movie is one of the major things (along with not being funny) that killed it. Also, I’m pretty sure bestiality is illegal in every state. For now, anyway.
Can a sentient Anatidae morph from an alien plane of reality frame consent under the laws of Ohio and, as a related question, is such a sentient Anatidae morph beyond the age of consent under Ohio law? (Further, does this constitute a violation under the Ohio Ag and Markets law or Cleveland Animal Cruelty ordinances?)
Not to mention the NYS Ag and Market Law . . . .
Now I’m remembering that plotline in Swamp Thing where Batman tells the DA “If you’re treating Abby Holland as a criminal for having sex with Swamp Thing, you have to arrest Starfire, Martian Manhunter and Superman for the same crime!”
Which is nonsense as a)nobody’s caught any of them having sex and b)the DA’s simply extraditing Abby to Louisiana. He could simply say that if Metropolis charges Superman and he comes to hide in Gotham, of course he’d extradite him too but until then …
I love Moore’s ST run but his A Ha This Is Why Your Plan Won’t Work moments were rarely clever.
I think this brings up a good point: the Howard the Duck movie did not work (among other things) because there is no context for him.
HTD showing up in an on-going series about a semi-sentient pile of mud and mold, in a cosmic story alongside a barbarian swordsman who materializes out of a jar of peanut butter made a (sort of) sense. HTD made less sense in a standalone movie, where Thog had no backstory and was just plopped in to add an enemy for “conflict.”
In the comic, Beverly Switzler added a grounding element giving HTD someone to make his cynical comments on human society to (and giving an ordinary person a chance to comment back). In the film Lea Thompson was charming, but it just did not work, the duck suit did not work enough that “you will believe a woman could have an intelligent conversation with a water fowl” (to semi-quote the tagline of the 1978 version of Superman).
The Howard radio series with Jim Belushi might have worked better, it seems like it would still be playing on college radio stations and on certain FM stations that had great collective gratification for the legalization of cannabis.
I think the movie worked great in the early scenes with Howard trapped in a world he never made. Then it turned into a stock SF/horror story about alien invasion with lots of Look How Good Our F/X Are! and I lost interest.
Howard looked “off model” in the movie. A 3-D animated Howard movie with the right script would work very well.
At the time, I was getting my comics at a newstand and a nearby 7-11, but neither place had Howard #1, so I went to a bunch of newstands and convenience stores until I finally found a copy.
In the What If? episode featuring Howard, Beverly was just an unseen annoying upstairs neighbor, which was pretty sad to see.
Like many, I was later to HtD because I never even saw an issue until #4, but thankfully the subsequent Treasury Edition brought me up to date, more or less.
Question: I’ve always wondered about the significance of those blue circles around Beverly’s eyes. I used to see that used a lot on the ladies in other comics. I was pretty young then, so I may have just been out of the loop, so to speak. Would someone mind explaining them to me?
Fantasy eye shadow, as depicted in the ’70s glam rock era (Alice Cooper, Roy Wood of Wizzard, and even Kiss came from that). Ever see the video of Todd Rundgren playing piano onstage, lipsyncing his hit “Hello, it’s Me” in the mid ’70s? At least one of the party gals on Han’s island that Jim Kelly/Williams bumps into while fighting Han in “Enter the Dragon” had makeup on like Beverly Switzler.
Thanks! Nice to know. That was all a little before my time. 🙂
Seems whether he liked it or not, Spidey was assigned duties to either greet most newcomers early in their careers or to appear in mags that weren’t doing so well, as well as to host them in MTU or his own mag. Daredevil and the Avengers were the earliest mags he made a guest appearance in (to the best of my knowledge). He also popped up in the X-Men during Roy Thomas’ run (the first time someone other than Stan scripted him, I believe). He showed up late in Subby’s title, which didn’t save that from the axe a few issues later. Suppose it was only natural that Webhead had to meet Webfoot, even if he had to go well out of his way to do so. But not nearly so far as when his duties required him to host Ka-Zar as a special guest-star in his own mag.
It took me a while to find this: in June 1976 cover-dated Marvel titles it was announced that Berni Wrightson would take over the pencilling chores on Howard the Duck, beginning with no. 5. Wrightson was miffed when he read this, because he had not agreed to this at all, despite creating a Howard for president campaign button and poster. You can read it here:
https://imgur.com/QfFYBKH