Howard The Duck

[berk]

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

The laws of men, the laws of ducks
Are kept by all but ponce Canucks.
...

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.

I remember a story in Gerber's Defenders with the title "I Think We're All Bozos in this Book", which I thought was a reference to an old Firesign Theatre bit called "I Think We're All Bozos on this Bus", which I think I have on cd around here somewhere.

[Gothos]

Yeah, I've probably confused the Howard and Defenders titles, but I got the sense that the genesis of Howard's bus-to-hell tale might have still been the Firesign Theater schtick. Maybe he even said as much back in the day, for all I can recall.

Nobody else remembers that one, huh?

How about "best Howard story of all time?"

[berk]

I remember the later issues of the series only vaguely: I missed several of those issues due to the notoriously unreliable distribution of those days and thus didn't always feel as involved in a given storyline as I might have, since I often hadn't seen its beginning. I must re-read them sometime now that I finally have all the Gerber issues. The one you mention sounds familiar - did it occur during Howard's nervous breakdown? Like most of my favourite classics, I haven't read HtD in decades.

That reminds me: I see from GCD that there was one issue near the end of Gerber's run that was plotted by someone else and scripted by Mary Skrenes: normally I'd avoid this since it wasn't written by Gerber himself, but the involvement of sometime writing-partner Skrenes makes me wonder. Anyone know if Gerber acknowledged it as a legitimate HtD story? He's listed as editor, though that might not mean much as he left the book shortly thereafter and might already have lost control of the series.

[LEADER DESSLOK]

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

"...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!"

I assume you didn't see this so I thought I would "re-state" it. I don't want to quibble over this because too many professionals from that era stated "I realized the pulps were dying..." or words to that effect pretty darn consistently, if not in Alter Ego then elsewhere (because I admit that I read a LOT of PoP Culture history) At least those creators who had a pulp background, that is. I don't dispute whatsoever the impact of television or the paperback novel but bear in mind, pulps were available to G.I.s overseas--but many of them chose to read comics too, just like those kids who stayed at home! Surely you've read how G.I.s bought a LOT of comics--and one of the reasons why paperbacks took off is because many of those military people who returned home--wanted a quick read, like they previously got from comics but now they wanted more mature material, which helped paperback sales and perhaps E.C. Comics as well.

[Ish Kabbible]

Totally agree with the above regarding the pulps. Interesting to read about the mass migrations of artists from the dying pulps to comics in the 40s, from comics to advertising in the late 50s, back to comics with the resurrgence in the mid 60s, and again from comics to video games and animation in the 80s.Steve Gerber was part of that last migration
I also agree that Howard was an icon of the 70s. Trapped in a decade he never made, it was never the same after regardless if it was Gerber or someone else writing it.