Howard The Duck

[dan bailey]

And the phrase "world he never made" comes from a poem by A.E. Housman:
"I, a stranger and afraid
In a world I never made."

Figures it'd be some poncey Brit.

[berk]

Figures it'd be some poncey Brit.

I feel like an idiot because I've read that poem before but never made the connection until JKCarrier pointed it out.

[benday-dot]

Figures it'd be some poncey Brit.

Ha. I l know you are being tongue and cheek, but Housman's poetry is on the whole pretty folksy and charge with a lot more feeling than pretentious show. From poet Housman to duck Howard, 'tis a world I never made.

[dan bailey]

Ha. I l know you are being tongue and cheek, but Housman's poetry is on the whole pretty folksy and charge with a lot more feeling than pretentious show. From poet Housman to duck Howard, 'tis a world I never made.

Oh, I know. I haven't memorized them or anything, but poems of his like "To an Athlete Dying Young" & ... ummm ... nothing else comes to mind right now; "Athlete" is easily the best-known over here, I'm pretty sure ... are quite strong.

[dan bailey]

Also, of course, figures the two posts before mine would be some poncey Canucks.

[Gothos]

I'd agree that Howard was very much a creature of a particular time and place, since I felt that not only could other creators not "get" the essence of the character, Howard's own creator lost touch with the virtues of Howard. Gerber's MAX Howard mini-series-- at least for the two issues I read-- was so filled with gall and wormwood that I couldn't see its star as the same character. One could certainly argue that it was a legitimate extension of the character, but it wasn't one I liked.

Frankly, a lot of Gerber's post-1970s work has this intense bitterness to it. In itself this isn't a turnoff. I just didn't think Gerber was good at it, compared to an artfully nasty mind like that of Pat "MARSHAL LAW" Mills.

The 1970s Howard was acerbic and opionated, but he was capable of many shades of feeling, more than one usually gets in a Kurtzman-style satire. It was lightning in a bottle, and no one's hit on the way to do it again.

[Polar Bear]

So far, the only post-70s Gerber I've really enjoyed was his Foolkiller mini. Haven't yet read enough of Hard Times to make a determination.

[Ramage]

The problem I have reading 1970's Howard the Duck---it just doesn't seem that funny to me. And the things it satriizes just seems too easy. But that might be a problem of perspective--I read the bulk of Howard as an adult years after it was originally published ( I was under ten back when Howard was originally published). The things that it was satirizing were already well ridiculed by a multitude of other stories in all the various media. The 1970's were a strange time. If I had read it in its time with an adult perspective--maybe I would have thought it amazing.


As a budding pervert however, I fully liked how Beverly was drawn.


--However, the early 2000's Max series I thought was brilliant. It pretty much skewered the entire Vertigo line as a pretentious wankerfest, made easy hay out of the whole Bad Girl phase of comics (Howard as a witchblade type character based upon feminine hygiene was especially charming), touched upon the classic Disney trademark crap, and even tried to piss on the whole Oprah as cult industry thing at the time. And the end when Howard got to meet God, it kind of harkened back to Gerber's own real life struggles with the universe turning out to be a work for hire. Granted the ending was more of a chuckle, but really when a fictional characte meets God are you truly expecting something profound and not cliched. Profound is tough!

Plus as a full grown pervert, i was finally able to see Beverly topless. That was gratifying.

--Always wondered if there was any resentment from the superstar writers that Gerber had kind of insulted their magnum opuses as silly. Has Ennis every commented on Gerber's riff on Preacher?

[LEADER DESSLOK]

Comics might have impacted some pulp sales but it was the introduction of paperback books as well as TV that really killed it. Plus I never heard that Bill Gaines was trying to revive pulps. Are you referring to the Pictofiction magazines? They had no connection to the pulps.

The Picto-Fiction magazines looked and felt a LOT like the Pulps--but they certainly didn't feel like the EC comics which came before them. As for the comment about "Text" laden comics--can I assume he meant stuff like PRINCE VALIANT? If EAR AT THE FIREPLACE was thinking of that as one example--guess what? I've never been wild about that strip either! It all just seemed too pretentious to me. Dave Sim used a LOT of "TEXT LADEN" pages in CEREBUS which is why I am hesitant to look at anything beyond--JAKA'S STORY when he "started to make it a habit".

Whenever I read comics--that's what I'm prepared for, and what I expect. I'm not averse to reading captions, in fact, that is one of the things which I feel is lacking in some modern day comics. I'm a huge fan of Moore, Gaiman (but not in Sandman) and Wolfman's work because of the rich and lively prose they wove into their stories. I also love Kirby's because it reminds me so much of Stevenson and Dickens and of course, Stan Lee and Bill Finger's captions were gloriously melodramatic; but what I don't want is a comic book with page after page of expository prose because somebody couldn't make their deadlines! Nope, nein, nyet!

When it's a novel I want to read, that is what I'm going to read, and usually (but certainly not exclusively) it's going to be a writer who has a proven track record of entertaining me. I'm not a fast reader, so reading a novel represents a time investment--one I'd rather not waste.

[LEADER DESSLOK]

You beat me too it. Comics by no means killed the pulps. There was a sales impact but the pulps were still the number one reading material for adults until the paperback original hit big at the tail end of the 40s and into the 50s.

When you refer to "The Pulps", can I assume you mean those half-sized magazines which feature Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Black Bat and the rest of their ilk? If so, then all you have to do is read back issues of Alter Ego and listen to testimony after testimony of Golden and Silver Age professionals who commented on how comics killed THOSE type of Pulps. As for the larger world of pulp fiction, yes, those survived and the advent of the paperback novel added to the mix. They were all printed on various grades of cheap newsprint.

But in a discussion of comics vs. "Hero-Oriented" Pulps, perhaps we should make that distinction clear because comics certainly didn't have an impact on "Choke and Stroke" magazines like MAN'S MAGAZINE--nope, Grindhouse porno killed those!

[FanboyStranger]

--Always wondered if there was any resentment from the superstar writers that Gerber had kind of insulted their magnum opuses as silly. Has Ennis every commented on Gerber's riff on Preacher?

I don't think so. Neil Gaiman, in fact, was a major fan of Gerber's, and continually hounded Steve to write the full story of the dancing girl, the ostrich, and the killer lamp from HtD 16, which eventually morphed into Nevada. Also, in the Nevada letter columns, Steve was asked if he was upset that he wasn't quite as popular as the critical darlings of the day (Ennis, Ellis, Morrison, etc), and he replied that they were his darlings, too. I think all those creators knew that Steve appreciated their work even as he was parodying it, especially when some of their major collaborators like Glenn Fabry and Phil Winslade were contributing. (I know Ellis was a major fan from discussions in his forums in the '90s, and Morrison has confessed to be a fan of both the Mad Genius Associates, Gerber and McGregor. Ennis, I don't know-- he's never been a big American comics fan, but I have to imagine he would love Steve's sensibilities.)

[LEADER DESSLOK]

I'd agree that Howard was very much a creature of a particular time and place, since I felt that not only could other creators not "get" the essence of the character, Howard's own creator lost touch with the virtues of Howard. Gerber's MAX Howard mini-series-- at least for the two issues I read-- was so filled with gall and wormwood that I couldn't see its star as the same character. One could certainly argue that it was a legitimate extension of the character, but it wasn't one I liked.

Frankly, a lot of Gerber's post-1970s work has this intense bitterness to it. In itself this isn't a turnoff. I just didn't think Gerber was good at it, compared to an artfully nasty mind like that of Pat "MARSHAL LAW" Mills.

The 1970s Howard was acerbic and opionated, but he was capable of many shades of feeling, more than one usually gets in a Kurtzman-style satire. It was lightning in a bottle, and no one's hit on the way to do it again.

I had completely forgotten about MARSHALL LAW. I agree, even at his best, Gerber's satire never measured up to Mills or Sim when he was on top of his game. I guess I'm just more into those guys (and Peter Bagge) than Gerber, but in his favor, Steve DID create a great cast of colorful oddballs which is why overall, I was a fan of the HTD series...

[Slam_Bradley]

When you refer to "The Pulps", can I assume you mean those half-sized magazines which feature Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Black Bat and the rest of their ilk? If so, then all you have to do is read back issues of Alter Ego and listen to testimony after testimony of Golden and Silver Age professionals who commented on how comics killed THOSE type of Pulps. As for the larger world of pulp fiction, yes, those survived and the advent of the paperback novel added to the mix. They were all printed on various grades of cheap newsprint.

But in a discussion of comics vs. "Hero-Oriented" Pulps, perhaps we should make that distinction clear because comics certainly didn't have an impact on "Choke and Stroke" magazines like MAN'S MAGAZINE--nope, Grindhouse porno killed those!

When I say pulps I mean pulps. That doesn't just mean Doc Savage, The Shadow, et. al. That means Black Mask, Dime Detective, Dime Western, Amazing Stories, Spicy Mystery, Astounding, etc. Paperbacks were the death-knell for the pulps and the few that survived the late 40s - very early 50s did so by moving to digest size.

[Ish Kabbible]

When you refer to "The Pulps", can I assume you mean those half-sized magazines which feature Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Black Bat and the rest of their ilk? If so, then all you have to do is read back issues of Alter Ego and listen to testimony after testimony of Golden and Silver Age professionals who commented on how comics killed THOSE type of Pulps.

I've read every Alter Ego magazine cover to cover and do not recall ANY assertion that comics killed the single-character pulp magazine. In fact the opposite. Street and Smith was the pioneer and leading publisher of this type (Shadow,Doc Savage) When comics took off, they jumped in with a Shadow comic version. The reasoning was to get kids interested in the Shadow character and they would eventually buy the pulp magazine version which was aimed at a more adult audience. The pulp magazine and comic existed side by side for many years and were cancelled together in 1949-the same month.
Keep in mind single-character pulp magazines were a very small segment of the overall pulp market. The World War 2 paper shortage was the first deathblow to pulps. The adult pulp buyers were drafted and sent overseas but the kids stayed home and bought comics. After the war the introduction of paperbacks and the rising TV audience killed the pulp industry. Pulps then morphed into slick magazines or digests
The comic and pulp reader was essentially different audiences. No character survived in the comics after the original pulp version expired
Now if you want to talk about the demise of Big Little books due to comics-thats a different story

[Gothos]

I had completely forgotten about MARSHALL LAW. I agree, even at his best, Gerber's satire never measured up to Mills or Sim when he was on top of his game. I guess I'm just more into those guys (and Peter Bagge) than Gerber, but in his favor, Steve DID create a great cast of colorful oddballs which is why overall, I was a fan of the HTD series...

Yeah, I think that in the 70s Gerber was very good at creating a diversity of characters who had their own voices, agendas, etc-- more diversity than I found in many of the later "British Invaders." Some of Gerber's characters were just toss-off concepts like Pro-Rata and Berserk Joe, but a villain like Turnip-Man had a very different feel from Doctor Bong, and so on.

One of Gerber's best moments for comic "voice" appeared in the tale "I Think We're All Bozos on this Bus," where Howard gets trapped on a bus with the Kidney Lady and half a dozen nutbars, most of whom are trying to convert the un-convertible Howard to their pop psychological religions.