It has been 51 years since Marvel Comics gave its first solo series to one of its strangest heroes, a decade before that same hero became the company’s first-ever big-screen movie flop. Howard the Duck was a character who was never supposed to last. He was a Steve Gerber creation that editor Roy Thomas hated enough to demand that Howard be killed. While Thomas believed that Howard broke the plausibility of the fictional reality of the Marvel Universe, fans didn’t care and demanded his return. This finally happened, and 51 years ago, Howard was popular enough to receive his own solo comic book series.
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On October 28, 1975, Howard the Duck #1 by Steve Gerber and Frank Brunner hit shelves, and it ended up as a huge hit for Marvel Comics. However, while the Howard the Duck comics were incredibly popular, a decade later, he ended up as the very first Marvel Comics feature-length film released into theaters, and it was such a big flop that Howard’s reputation was ruined forever.
Howard the Duck’s First Series Followed High Fan Demand
Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics
Howard the Duck made his Marvel Comics debut in the pages of a Man-Thing story. The story started in Fear #19 by Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik. This specific issue saw Man-Thing and the sorceress Jennifer Kale get thrown through the Multiverse via the Nexus of Realities. They battled the great warrior Korrek, who ended up befriending Man-Thing. This is also the issue where Howard the Duck first appeared, and he teamed up with Man-Thing and Korrek before seemingly falling to his death in Man-Thing #1. Luckily for fans, that wasn’t the end of Howard the Duck in Marvel Comics.
Man-Thing had proven popular enough to get his own solo series, and in Giant-Size Man-Thing #4, there was a backup story by Gerber and Brunner, and Howard the Duck was back. It showed how his fall sent him through the Multiverse, and he ended up stuck on Earth-616. After meeting two kids, he finds a man who plans to conquer the world, and when the police arrive, they assume that Howard is the monster they were called to take in, and they arrest him. That was it for the story, but it was what really finally sold readers on Howard the Duck.
It is a good thing that readers in the 1970s fell for Howard because Marvel Comics’ editor-in-chief Roy Thomas hated Howard the Duck and ordered Gerber to kill him off in the Fear series. However, readers wanted him back so badly that they began sending massive amounts of mail and even showed up during Stan Lee’s college lecture tour and made their voices known. This is what brought him back for Giant-Size Man-Thing and then for his own comic book series that followed.
Howard the Duck #1 introduced Howard in a contemplative state, as he was considering suicide and climbed a tower to do so. This is where he met Beverly Switzler for the first time, and also battled the villain Pro-Rata. The comic also ensured that Howard was completely ingrained in the Marvel Universe, with J. Jonah Jameson sending Peter Parker to take pictures of the so-called talking duck from Cleveland. Spider-Man saved them, Howard eventually fell in love with Beverly, and the rest is history.
The Howard the Duck Movie Made the Character a Joke For Years
Image Courtesy of Marvel Entertainment
The Howard the Duck movie arrived in 1986, 11 years after he got his first solo Marvel Comics series. Directed by Willard Huyck, this was a movie that George Lucas fought to get made as a fan of the Marvel character. Lucas served as the executive producer, but everything went wrong when the film didn’t offer up the absurdist humor from the comics, the costuming was creepy, and Howard the Duck just fell flat. The scenes with Howard, who was clearly an actor wearing what amounted to a Halloween store costume, making love to Beverly (Lea Thompson), became a huge joke and, decades later, an internet meme. This became a cult classic, but only as a movie that is so bad that it’s good.
The movie changed Howard’s origin to remove the Marvel monsters and just had him end up shot out of his apartment on Duckworld in his armchair and to our Earth. He met Beverly, who here was in a band called Cherry Bomb, and he wanted to find a way back to his planet. It has since been listed among the worst movies ever made. It made $38 million on a $37 million budget, and its Rotten Tomatoes score is 14% from critics and 38% on the audience side. It actually hurt the cast’s chances of getting future work. Lea Thompson said she quickly accepted a role in Some Kind of Wonderful because she was afraid that if she didn’t, her career might have ended.
However, it did have fans. Mel Brooks hired Ed Gale (the actor who played Howard) for Spaceballs because he was in Howard the Duck first. Gale has even said that, at conventions, he gets more attention for his role as Howard than his role as Chucky in the Child’s Play movies. Amazingly enough, Howard made his return decades later in the MCU. This happened first as a cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy, its sequel, and then as a blink-or-you-miss-it moment in Avengers: Endgame. He then showed up in What If…? as Darcy’s lover. It has been 51 years since Howard the Duck got his own solo comic series, and 40 since a movie made him a joke, but fans today love him all the same.
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