Howard the Duck pretty much ceased to exist when Steve Gerber was removed from the book. In 1978, the very public dispute that Jerry Siegel had revived with DC over Superman caused Gerber to raise questions about creative control that Jim Shooter didn't want to hear. Demands for creative control sounded to management like demands for copyrights or trademarks. Gerber was off the book, which changed frequency from monthly to bi-monthly and two fill-in issues (out of continuity) were done from his notes until Bill Mantlo could write two final issues. The title was cancelled along with tons of other Marvel titles at the beginning of 1979. By that time, Gerber was long gone, along with Jack Kirby, who dropped three titles (BLACK PANTHER, DEVIL DINOSAUR and MACHINE MAN) abruptly. They worked together on the animated "Thundarr The Barbarian" television show in 1980.
Gerber had been the only writer to handle Howard since creating him for a Man-Thing story in ADVENTURES INTO FEAR #19 (12/73), which continued into the new series MAN-THING #1 (01/74) in which Howard fell into the void of space, supposedly gone forever. Gerber hadn't created Man-Thing, but a succession of writers on that feature turned over quickly. Man-Thing's first appearance in the B&W SAVAGE TALES magazine in 1971 was written by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway and drawn by Gray Morrow and intended to begin a regular feature, but the planned second issue didn't happen. The title would eventually restart at #2 in 1973 with new material after the stories originally slated back in 1971 were mostly cannibalized. The second Man-Thing story by Len Wein and Neal Adams, for instance, had already been incorporated as a flashback into a Roy Thomas/John Buscema Ka-Zar story in ASTONISHING TALES #12 (06/72)-13 (08/72). A third story, which takes place before the Ka-Zar story but after the flashback, was written by Tony Isabella with art by Vincente Alcazar. Bear in mind, that's four writers and four artists for three stories. That third story didn't appear until it ran in the B&W magazine MONSTERS UNLEASHED in 1974, after Man-Thing had his own title, but reads as though it was drawn from an earlier, unused script. It might have been a new story, or it might have been intended for a hypothetical SAVAGE TALES #3 in 1971.
The letters' page of ASTONISHING TALES #13 told readers looking for more Man-Thing that he would be getting his own feature soon, but couldn't confirm where. "Even we aren't sure-- but it'll definitely be in one of our presently featureless monster mags, FEAR, WHERE MONSTERS DWELL or MONSTERS ON THE PROWL." It turned out to be two months later in ADVENTURES INTO FEAR #10 (10/72) with another story by Conway and Morrow, the last before Gerber was handed the feature and also the last to be under a dozen pages, a sign that it, too, might have been planned for the B&W magazines. When Gerber took over, he not only expanded the page count but the scope of the stories as well. Man-Thing was still a swamp monster, but the readers learn that the unlikely combination of events that caused its creation were compelled to happen in order to fill a need-- to produce a guardian at the Nexus Of All Realities, a point in space that enables travel to and from any of the parallel worlds. Over the course of issues #11-19, a wizard named Dakimh uses the muck monster and a gifted magical trainee named Jennifer Kale to fight demons and illusions, all of it directed by a villain named the Overlord who intends to exploit the Nexus for conquest. It is strongly implied that the army he is building to storm the other realities is populated by characters from comic books which, by 1973, had fallen out of favor with readers: war comics, westerns, period adventures, straight science fiction, etc. The only comic characters Dakimh can gather are a Sword & Sorcery barbarian (Korrek) and an anthropomorphic 'funny animal' (Howard). As the battle takes them between one reality and another, Howard trips en route and falls into the infinite void, having served his narrative purpose of establishing that comic book 'alternate Earths' need not be limited to being variant versions of super-heroes, but could occasionally cross genres without necessitating that the characters always occupy the same continuity.
Man-Thing continued his monthly series for 22 issues plus 5 quarterly Giant-Size (twice the pages) supplements. The last two included new short stories starring Howard solo, explaining that he fell back to the last reality he had come from, but rather than land in the Everglades he wound up in Ohio. The fan reaction was positive. Thus, as the sales of monster comics waned at the end of 1975, MAN-THING was cancelled and HOWARD THE DUCK began bi-monthly with #1(01/76). After a few issues it went monthly and he began to run for President. He was the cover story of FOOM #15. After only seven issues, he was granted a Marvel Treasury Edition. Do you know who didn't get one? Iron Man, Daredevil, X-Men, Sub-Mariner, Captain Marvel, any of the western characters (still being published through the 70's), Sgt. Fury or Power Man.. It's true that some of those characters got stories in the Christmas issues, but that's hardly the same as getting your own volume. And Howard's back catalog was so thin that it required that a third of the treasury be devoted to a new story, which took place between issues #7 and #8. Around the time of the treasury and the election, George Lucas was in contact with Marvel and Roy Thomas, providing materials from which the comic book adaptation of "Star Wars" could be made ready by spring 1977 when the movie was due for release. Lucas said years later that he had long enjoyed the Howard comics and it couldn't have hurt that Gene Colan had become the regular penciller months earlier. Colan is known for having a photographer's eye when creating layouts, giving individual panels the sort of innovative 'camera angles' that would catch the attention of a film school student turned successful director in the auteur-friendly 1970's. Of course, Lucas and Howard both had pretty good years in 1977. Lucas' has been well documented; Howard introduced KISS to comics, got an annual and a syndicated newspaper strip. Pretty good for a four year old character. 1978 began almost as auspiciously, with a two-issue Star Wars parody/tribute (Man-Thing, Dakimh and Jennifer Kale return as Chewbacca, Obi-Wan and Leia, respectively). Then, as mentioned above, Gerber ran afoul for trying to run a fowl and was out the door before the Superman movie even made it to theaters.
With both the color comic and newspaper strip cancelled, Marvel moved Howard to their B&W magazine line. At first, he appeared in one-page gags in CRAZY #50(05/79)- #54(09/79) and #59(02/80) [except #52 and every third issue following it, which where reprint specials]. Then, Mantlo scripted Howard's own magazine series #1(10/79)-#8(11/80) and #9(03/91), during which Alan Kupperberg (who drew the last six months of the newspaper strip from Marv Wolfman's scripts) produced a Howard story for MARVEL TEAM-UP #96(08/80) and Steve Skeates and Pat Broderick handled the majority of the three-page Howard stories in CRAZY #63(06/80)-#77(08/81) [again, except for every third issue from 64 to 76]. A one-page Howard gag by Kupperberg turned up a year later in the all humor issue of WHAT IF...? #34(08/82), but aside from a cameo in Fred Hembeck's FANTASTIC FOUR ROAST (05/82), that was it for a year. Not only was there no feature, but there were no guest appearances.
In the latter half of 1978, fill-in stories scripted for Marvel by Steve Gerber were published, a solo Beast story in AVENGERS and a Lilith story in MARVEL PREVIEW. That appeared to be the end of his affiliation with them, except that he was scripting Hanna-Barbera stories for editor Mark Evanier under the anagrammatic pseudonym "Reg Everbest". All six of the H-B titles got the ax in the same cull that cancelled the Howard color comic. But Evanier (who has since written extensively about his Hollywood experiences) provided a route to animation, and "Thundarr the Barbarian". After the cartoon premiered in September 1980, Eclipse published Gerber's graphic novel STEWART THE RAT in November. The following year, Eclipse began publishing a B&W anthology, ECLIPSE MAGAZINE, and Gerber occasionally contributed to it. Back on fans' radar, DC took his scripts for a PHANTOM ZONE mini-series and Dr. Fate back-up feature in FLASH for 1982. Jack Kirby, not surprisingly, had kept busy, too. Pacific Comics published two series of his, CAPTAIN VICTORY and SILVER STAR, from 1981 to 1983. During that time, Kirby and Gerber collaborated on a personal project that Eclipse agreed to publish as their first full color comic, taking the place on their schedule of the May 1982 issue of the B&W magazine. It was DESTROYER DUCK, a clear and obvious protest for creators' rights and a specific condemnation of Marvel's treatment of Howard in Gerber's absence. Originally advertised to come out on December 15. 1981 [on the back of ECLIPSE #4(01/82)], it was probably out by February (the July issue of the magazine was due to ship in April, according to The Comic Reader that year). The issue of WHAT IF...? with the Howard page would have shipped to the direct market in early May with a newsstand 'on sale' date by the end of the month. Of course, Marvel had bigger problems than Howard. The emergence of publishers like Pacific, Eclipse and Capital had forced them (and DC) to offer collectors comics made with better materials and printing methods. Initially offering reprints and graphic novels, then special projects, by the time Marvel formed a Baxter paper imprint (Epic) Destroyer Duck had become an ongoing series at Eclipse, joined by SABRE by fellow disgruntled former Marvel employees Don McGregor and Billy Graham. Eclipse's color roster continued to slowly grow while Marvel cancelled the last of their B&W magazines (except SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN), converting the last issue of BIZARRE ADVENTURES #34(02/83) into a Baxter color comic, including an eight-page Howard Christmas story by Steven Grant and Paul Smith (who had just started work on UNCANNY X-MEN). Smith also drew Howard's half-page entry in the OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE #5(05/83). Butch Guice provided a Howard pin-up for MARVEL FANFARE #9 (07/83), which had a Man-Thing cover story. Then, in 1984 both Howard and Destroyer Duck disappeared. George Lucas wanted to turn his love for Howard into a movie, which would make it Marvel's first full-length theatrical feature film. Gerber was, on paper, hired as a consultant but little of his creation made it into the movie. In it, the plot centers on Howard's homeworld being another planet, not an alternate Earth, although great pains were taken to furnish scenes of his homeworld with 'duck' versions of American Earth culture. The social satire was gone, replaced by an occasional sarcastic quip. The script was provided by the producer and director, old classmates from Lucas' film school days who felt that the movie would more appropriately be animated. Every step towards getting this film into theaters seemed to involve everyone concerned second-guessing their own instincts and acting counter-intuitively, So much wasted talent, wasted money and wasted opportunity, it has become justifiably notorious in both comics and film circles. Leading into its release in August 1986, the only comics appearances Howard made in the previous three years were HOWARD THE DUCK #32(01/86) (by Steven Grant and Paul Smith again), a pin-up by Dave Sim in MARVEL FANFARE #25 (03/86) and HOWARD THE DUCK #33 (09/86) (by Christopher Stager and Val Mayerik, his original artist).
The storybook I have excerpted above was published by Grosset & Dunlap, who licensed Marvel characters for puzzle books in the late 1970's. By the way, the Read-Aloud story book mentioned on the back cover had ISBN #0448-48606-7 and the Book-And-Cassette set had ISBN #0448-48619-9. What I find strange about that is that by 1986, Marvel had expanded to publishing books and that by volume, most of them were children's books featuring many of the licensed characters which also appeared in their Star Comics and toy-based titles: Transformers, Heathcliff, Madballs, Sectaurs, Muppet Babies, etc. These came in the form of story books, paint-with-water and coloring books, activity books and so on. There was even at least one Howard the Duck sticker book called "A Walk Back In Time" (ISBN #0871-35157-9). So why was this handled by another publisher? It may have been a contractual obligation of the studio or distributor, but I simply don't know for sure.
One last note for the curious: the images scanned above were originally 8.5" X 11.0".
Gerber had been the only writer to handle Howard since creating him for a Man-Thing story in ADVENTURES INTO FEAR #19 (12/73), which continued into the new series MAN-THING #1 (01/74) in which Howard fell into the void of space, supposedly gone forever. Gerber hadn't created Man-Thing, but a succession of writers on that feature turned over quickly. Man-Thing's first appearance in the B&W SAVAGE TALES magazine in 1971 was written by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway and drawn by Gray Morrow and intended to begin a regular feature, but the planned second issue didn't happen. The title would eventually restart at #2 in 1973 with new material after the stories originally slated back in 1971 were mostly cannibalized. The second Man-Thing story by Len Wein and Neal Adams, for instance, had already been incorporated as a flashback into a Roy Thomas/John Buscema Ka-Zar story in ASTONISHING TALES #12 (06/72)-13 (08/72). A third story, which takes place before the Ka-Zar story but after the flashback, was written by Tony Isabella with art by Vincente Alcazar. Bear in mind, that's four writers and four artists for three stories. That third story didn't appear until it ran in the B&W magazine MONSTERS UNLEASHED in 1974, after Man-Thing had his own title, but reads as though it was drawn from an earlier, unused script. It might have been a new story, or it might have been intended for a hypothetical SAVAGE TALES #3 in 1971.
The letters' page of ASTONISHING TALES #13 told readers looking for more Man-Thing that he would be getting his own feature soon, but couldn't confirm where. "Even we aren't sure-- but it'll definitely be in one of our presently featureless monster mags, FEAR, WHERE MONSTERS DWELL or MONSTERS ON THE PROWL." It turned out to be two months later in ADVENTURES INTO FEAR #10 (10/72) with another story by Conway and Morrow, the last before Gerber was handed the feature and also the last to be under a dozen pages, a sign that it, too, might have been planned for the B&W magazines. When Gerber took over, he not only expanded the page count but the scope of the stories as well. Man-Thing was still a swamp monster, but the readers learn that the unlikely combination of events that caused its creation were compelled to happen in order to fill a need-- to produce a guardian at the Nexus Of All Realities, a point in space that enables travel to and from any of the parallel worlds. Over the course of issues #11-19, a wizard named Dakimh uses the muck monster and a gifted magical trainee named Jennifer Kale to fight demons and illusions, all of it directed by a villain named the Overlord who intends to exploit the Nexus for conquest. It is strongly implied that the army he is building to storm the other realities is populated by characters from comic books which, by 1973, had fallen out of favor with readers: war comics, westerns, period adventures, straight science fiction, etc. The only comic characters Dakimh can gather are a Sword & Sorcery barbarian (Korrek) and an anthropomorphic 'funny animal' (Howard). As the battle takes them between one reality and another, Howard trips en route and falls into the infinite void, having served his narrative purpose of establishing that comic book 'alternate Earths' need not be limited to being variant versions of super-heroes, but could occasionally cross genres without necessitating that the characters always occupy the same continuity.
 |
| One of these guys has an Oscar. Just sayin'. |
Man-Thing continued his monthly series for 22 issues plus 5 quarterly Giant-Size (twice the pages) supplements. The last two included new short stories starring Howard solo, explaining that he fell back to the last reality he had come from, but rather than land in the Everglades he wound up in Ohio. The fan reaction was positive. Thus, as the sales of monster comics waned at the end of 1975, MAN-THING was cancelled and HOWARD THE DUCK began bi-monthly with #1(01/76). After a few issues it went monthly and he began to run for President. He was the cover story of FOOM #15. After only seven issues, he was granted a Marvel Treasury Edition. Do you know who didn't get one? Iron Man, Daredevil, X-Men, Sub-Mariner, Captain Marvel, any of the western characters (still being published through the 70's), Sgt. Fury or Power Man.. It's true that some of those characters got stories in the Christmas issues, but that's hardly the same as getting your own volume. And Howard's back catalog was so thin that it required that a third of the treasury be devoted to a new story, which took place between issues #7 and #8. Around the time of the treasury and the election, George Lucas was in contact with Marvel and Roy Thomas, providing materials from which the comic book adaptation of "Star Wars" could be made ready by spring 1977 when the movie was due for release. Lucas said years later that he had long enjoyed the Howard comics and it couldn't have hurt that Gene Colan had become the regular penciller months earlier. Colan is known for having a photographer's eye when creating layouts, giving individual panels the sort of innovative 'camera angles' that would catch the attention of a film school student turned successful director in the auteur-friendly 1970's. Of course, Lucas and Howard both had pretty good years in 1977. Lucas' has been well documented; Howard introduced KISS to comics, got an annual and a syndicated newspaper strip. Pretty good for a four year old character. 1978 began almost as auspiciously, with a two-issue Star Wars parody/tribute (Man-Thing, Dakimh and Jennifer Kale return as Chewbacca, Obi-Wan and Leia, respectively). Then, as mentioned above, Gerber ran afoul for trying to run a fowl and was out the door before the Superman movie even made it to theaters.
In the latter half of 1978, fill-in stories scripted for Marvel by Steve Gerber were published, a solo Beast story in AVENGERS and a Lilith story in MARVEL PREVIEW. That appeared to be the end of his affiliation with them, except that he was scripting Hanna-Barbera stories for editor Mark Evanier under the anagrammatic pseudonym "Reg Everbest". All six of the H-B titles got the ax in the same cull that cancelled the Howard color comic. But Evanier (who has since written extensively about his Hollywood experiences) provided a route to animation, and "Thundarr the Barbarian". After the cartoon premiered in September 1980, Eclipse published Gerber's graphic novel STEWART THE RAT in November. The following year, Eclipse began publishing a B&W anthology, ECLIPSE MAGAZINE, and Gerber occasionally contributed to it. Back on fans' radar, DC took his scripts for a PHANTOM ZONE mini-series and Dr. Fate back-up feature in FLASH for 1982. Jack Kirby, not surprisingly, had kept busy, too. Pacific Comics published two series of his, CAPTAIN VICTORY and SILVER STAR, from 1981 to 1983. During that time, Kirby and Gerber collaborated on a personal project that Eclipse agreed to publish as their first full color comic, taking the place on their schedule of the May 1982 issue of the B&W magazine. It was DESTROYER DUCK, a clear and obvious protest for creators' rights and a specific condemnation of Marvel's treatment of Howard in Gerber's absence. Originally advertised to come out on December 15. 1981 [on the back of ECLIPSE #4(01/82)], it was probably out by February (the July issue of the magazine was due to ship in April, according to The Comic Reader that year). The issue of WHAT IF...? with the Howard page would have shipped to the direct market in early May with a newsstand 'on sale' date by the end of the month. Of course, Marvel had bigger problems than Howard. The emergence of publishers like Pacific, Eclipse and Capital had forced them (and DC) to offer collectors comics made with better materials and printing methods. Initially offering reprints and graphic novels, then special projects, by the time Marvel formed a Baxter paper imprint (Epic) Destroyer Duck had become an ongoing series at Eclipse, joined by SABRE by fellow disgruntled former Marvel employees Don McGregor and Billy Graham. Eclipse's color roster continued to slowly grow while Marvel cancelled the last of their B&W magazines (except SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN), converting the last issue of BIZARRE ADVENTURES #34(02/83) into a Baxter color comic, including an eight-page Howard Christmas story by Steven Grant and Paul Smith (who had just started work on UNCANNY X-MEN). Smith also drew Howard's half-page entry in the OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE #5(05/83). Butch Guice provided a Howard pin-up for MARVEL FANFARE #9 (07/83), which had a Man-Thing cover story. Then, in 1984 both Howard and Destroyer Duck disappeared. George Lucas wanted to turn his love for Howard into a movie, which would make it Marvel's first full-length theatrical feature film. Gerber was, on paper, hired as a consultant but little of his creation made it into the movie. In it, the plot centers on Howard's homeworld being another planet, not an alternate Earth, although great pains were taken to furnish scenes of his homeworld with 'duck' versions of American Earth culture. The social satire was gone, replaced by an occasional sarcastic quip. The script was provided by the producer and director, old classmates from Lucas' film school days who felt that the movie would more appropriately be animated. Every step towards getting this film into theaters seemed to involve everyone concerned second-guessing their own instincts and acting counter-intuitively, So much wasted talent, wasted money and wasted opportunity, it has become justifiably notorious in both comics and film circles. Leading into its release in August 1986, the only comics appearances Howard made in the previous three years were HOWARD THE DUCK #32(01/86) (by Steven Grant and Paul Smith again), a pin-up by Dave Sim in MARVEL FANFARE #25 (03/86) and HOWARD THE DUCK #33 (09/86) (by Christopher Stager and Val Mayerik, his original artist).
The storybook I have excerpted above was published by Grosset & Dunlap, who licensed Marvel characters for puzzle books in the late 1970's. By the way, the Read-Aloud story book mentioned on the back cover had ISBN #0448-48606-7 and the Book-And-Cassette set had ISBN #0448-48619-9. What I find strange about that is that by 1986, Marvel had expanded to publishing books and that by volume, most of them were children's books featuring many of the licensed characters which also appeared in their Star Comics and toy-based titles: Transformers, Heathcliff, Madballs, Sectaurs, Muppet Babies, etc. These came in the form of story books, paint-with-water and coloring books, activity books and so on. There was even at least one Howard the Duck sticker book called "A Walk Back In Time" (ISBN #0871-35157-9). So why was this handled by another publisher? It may have been a contractual obligation of the studio or distributor, but I simply don't know for sure.
One last note for the curious: the images scanned above were originally 8.5" X 11.0".
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