{"id":11399,"date":"2021-12-31T00:00:13","date_gmt":"2021-12-31T04:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/?p=11399"},"modified":"2020-10-26T10:50:23","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T14:50:23","slug":"howard-the-duck-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/2021\/12\/31\/howard-the-duck-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Howard The Duck #1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Time to get weird! After being introduced in the pages of Man-Thing, Howard the Duck jumps to his own shockingly popular solo series with a little help from our friend. Pretty sure this is the blog’s first “facsimile edition,” a thing Marvel started doing where they reprint classic (And sometimes “classic”) comics just as they appeared before, same ads and all. Unfortunately, they’re on glossy paper, so the classic colors don’t look as good, but still, a lot cheaper than buying the originals. I think I only own 2 of these, and we’ll certainly be seeing the other one eventually. But let’s focus on this, which I’ve never actually read. This tale is brought to us by Howard’s creator, Steve Gerber, penciler Frank Brunner & inker Steve Leialoha. We open on Howard, a duck from another world where anthropomorphic ducks are normal, trapped in the city of Cleveland. Having had some rough times in his first adventures eslewhere, he’s standing on the bank of the Cuyahoga River contemplating throwing himself in when he decides to row a floating log out to a tower in the distance and throw himself off that, instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Take that, Deadpool, Howard was talking to the audience before it was cool. Now firmly into this faux-sword & sorcery world in the style of then-hugely-popular Conan, Howard saves the woman from an attacking wolf, largely by accident, and is shocked to see the wolf turn into a man as it dies. Then a wizard appears behind him and zaps him. But before we see what happens, let’s check in with…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As good a way to get Spider-Man in your story as any.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, this is the kind of thing you’re dealing with in a Howard comic. It only gets sillier from here, really. Howard’s most well-known foe was called Dr. Bong. As Kool Keith would say, back in the 70s, it was all about drugs. Pro-Rata sends Howard and the as yet unnamed lady through a Ditko Dimension to retrieve the key for him. In a far more Robert E. Howard-type place, Howard & Friend land in a big nest, and set out to get the key Howard wants to bail, but the lady says Pro-Rata is watching. Then a knight kinda guy runs up to try to save the lady from Howard and he has to defeat the knight. Which he does, rather handily, by knocking his lance into the ground and making his horse throw him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Inside, they find the key suspected above a trapped pit. Howard lights his last cigar to think on a solution, and eventually settles on throwing it at the rope holding the key, burning it and allowing the key to fall into the hands of his companion. But, of course, the big guys from the front door come to life and start chasing them. If that’s not bad enough, the owner of the big nest they appeared in is back, a huge flying monster. As they run away from their various menaces, they finally exchange names, Howard & us learning the name of his soon-to-be boon companion is Beverly. But also…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lucky timing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And that’s that. A suitably bizarre debut. Like I said, Howard would go on to be a surprise hit, one of Marvel’s most popular new characters in a long time for awhile. The 70s, man. He would eventually force a lawsuit from Disney, which is pretty funny to think about now, and a lawsuit from Steve Gerber, who felt he was treated poorly by Marvel (And let’s be clear, pretty much anyone who felt they were treated poorly by Marvel surely was). He went on to star in George Lucas’ most infamous failure, and has appeared in 3 of the 21st century Marvel movies, even. But here’s where his solo adventures began, and naturally, Spider-Man was there to help. Or be helped, mostly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time to get weird! After being introduced in the pages of Man-Thing, Howard the Duck jumps to his own shockingly popular solo series with a little help from our friend. Pretty sure…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1023,954,13,2,548,401],"class_list":["post-11399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1970s","tag-frank-brunner","tag-howard-the-duck","tag-j-jonah-jameson","tag-spider-man","tag-steve-gerber","tag-steve-leialoha"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11399"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11647,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11399\/revisions\/11647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/comicsfromspace.com\/spiderman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}