book ï Howard The Duck Omnibus HC Ê Steve Gerber

R able to see through the absurdities of human society in the 1970s with uncanny accuracy and an acerbic wit His adventures presented writer Steve Gerber with a platform from which to engage in an ongoing critiue of contemporary fools and pretenders from power mad capitalist wizard Pro Rata to cult leader Reverend Joon Moon Yuc to the dre I remember haggling with a vendor at a convention in Boston in the late 80s for a full run of Howard the Duck offering up numerous other books to get the price down and still ending up 5 short So getting my hands on this book years later containing better reproductions of all those issues plus was a bit of a rush Still it took a while for me to get around to reading it First be aware that the Howard the Duck comic only shares a few character names with its movie adaptation The original Howard is firmly rooted in the Marvel Universe along with Spider Man and Doctor Strange both of whom he encounters in the stories here I had read most of the Steve Gerber run on Howard before but it never looked as good as it does here These issues are the true Howard the Duck canon Gerber's Howard is often not a happy camper just trying to live life with a very small group of hairless ape friends The stories are satire heavy when not focusing on Howard essentially loosing his mind the book is hilariously absurd most of the time but it does get a bit bogged down wallowing in Howard's unhappiness and at times the book was a bit hard to read but ultimately worth it Unfortunately Gerber's departure happened in the middle of a story that was obviously building towards something other than where the book ended up going and that was pretty jarring Everything after that point is a bit of a mixed bag Once I got used to the changes I was able to enjoy the Bill Mantlo stories presented here Unfortunately much of Mantlo's run from the black white Howard book are missing from this collection There's probably 400 500 pages of Howard's adventures that happen between issues 31 32 just ignored excepting a single panel flashback in issue 32 Issue 32 reads like a failed attempt to relaunch the color book and 33 which came out 9 months later was probably the weakest thing in the book But rather than end on a sour note there's a great interview with Steve Gerber and Gene Colan who drew the vast majority of the color and black white Howard issues

Steve Gerber Ê Howard The Duck Omnibus HC eBook

Howard The Duck Omnibus HCGet down America Vote Howard the Duck in 2008 That's right folks It's an election year and what better way to celebrate than to cast your vote for the one candidate who'll tell it like it is Born on a planet populated by talking waterfowl Howard the Duck found himself trapped in a world he never made ours Howard was the archetypal outside Had the entire run been written by Gerber this would probably get four stars as for the most part the Gerber penned issues are amusing and innovative However the last hundred pages or so are by other hands and the writers especially can't measure up to Gerber's offbeat sensibility and for that matter the artists even though I generally admire their work Paul Smith's especially can't measure up to Gene Colan who drew the lion's share of the original run According to an interview appended to the collection he found his work on Howard the most satisfying of his career which surprised me somewhat as I wouldn't say it's his best work though it certainly is distinctively Colan and always admirable Perhaps the inkers didn't uite do it justice Al Milgrom certainly didn't for the pages he inked Anyway the stories offer a hodge podge of satire of comics as well as of society generally and politics specifically notably in Howard's multi issue run for President apparently nobody checked HIS birth certificate along with occasional appearances from Marvel mainstays no doubt mandated by Marvel Well worth reading for the Gerber material though even it has its ups and downs but one can easily skip the final two or three issues reprinted The interview from FOOM is a nice and surprising bonus though; given that the mag was Marvel's official fanzine I am surprised they let Gerber get away with a few of the things he said about mainstream comics