ah. geek love.

full disclosure 1: in high school German class, i once did a skit in which we had to do things said on an airplane/in the airport. a line in ours was "der film ist Howard the Duck, ein film aus America." so...

so marvel has relaunched everyone's favorite anthropomorphic duck in a new series...

now, when they brought him back in the Civil War: Choosing Sides one shot, it was kinda cool. in part because the story made sense: howard pissed off about registering, goes to do so anyway, and is told that he doesn't exist. pissed off duckiness ensues.

so i had some high hopes for the series, or at least was very curious as to exactly what they would do with Howard in the current marvel universe...

well, the art, as seen here, was quite nice. and i have to say, this opening splash page of Howard dreaming he's playing cards with other 70's era marvel monster characters - though the placement of Ben Grimm seems odd. anyway. so yeah, art lovely.

the story....

umm...

granted, i actually think there was a printing error in mine, as the "plot" seemes to start out of nowhere in the middle of what seems more to be the intro. there's no noticable framing device to say it's supposed to be that way so i can only assume it's not.

oddly, that doesn't save anything...

essentially it seems that howard is driving beverly to her rehearsal - actually she's driving, though she doesn't know how - then while he;'s waiting he picks up in his cab two scientists who want to... shoot him. i mean, if the story is going somewhere it hasn't started yet. there are little jokes that work. and again, art = good but... but...

i don't know. i, to be honest, quite love howard the duck. i''ve read - though i don't own - the essential howard the duck.the original run was brilliant. slightly surreal. and just... awesome. it was a sadly underrated - kind of like omega the unknown, the relaunch of which i seem to have missed, despite really wanting to check out jonathan lethem's take on the character (though i hear it, too, was underwhelming) - book from steve gerber. and... yeah.

but my true love for the character comes from this fine piece of cinematic fun. ok, it was ridiculously ill conceived and very poorly executed - so bad that George Lucas actually
dissavowed his involvement in the production. yeah, it's probably one of the worst movies ever made. but it's also fucking brilliant.

full disclosure 2: i used to watch this movie every time it came on TV and quite possibly rented it a few times once we had a VCR. i also remember being 7 or 8 and playing howard the duck with some of the other neighborhood kids. yep. playing. howard the duck.

seriously: tim robbins, leah thompson, geoffrey jones (that's right: thomas jefferson himself... okay, he was also that dad in beetlejuice, and has done numerous other films. but i always seem his as thomas jefferson). all acting with a bunch of different midgets in a duck suit. true, the plot had nothing to do with anything from the comic book - changing beverly to a musician was one thing, making a villain called "the dark lord of the universe" show up which was a badly done, animatronic alien that reminded me a little of the aliens in "explorers" or AT least, like a really badly renderred man-thing... the fact is, Howard the Duck could have, like the original comic, been a brilliant satire. but george lucas is not known for that. so instead we get howard's "fish out of water" observations (duck out of water?) such as, when he is served eggs, or "if god had intended ducks to fly, he wouldn't hava taken away our wings." HA! and then the marty mcfly style jamming with beverly's band? awesomely necessary!

and really, that's where i stand on the new series so far. yeah, we probably don't need a new origin story. i mean, hell, he's a duck, on earth, with humans, one of whom he has a definitely non-platonic relationship with. what more origin do you need? no, he's not an established spiderman type character but, i mean, hell, he got his own video game for crying out loud !

i guess, the fact is that i. love. howard the duck. yeah, the new series could be a waste of time and ink. and yeah, his one time as a hollywood star pretty much sucked, and completely diminished the character. but, still, howard the duck rules. that's all.