Saturday, November 04, 2006
Comic Art
Of all the characters that ever "worked" with The Defenders, none can be viewed as more bizarre than the one you see here - Howard the Duck.Howard is mostly remembered as a movie that went horribly bad. I am one of the six people on the planet that thought the movie pretty good. The problem is, I think that you just had to "get" Howard, which meant you had to be seriously into comics. He was a cult figure and the cost of production necessary to make a superhero movie at the time meant you needed a huge hit - i.e. the picture needed a lot more than cult audience.
Howard came out of last week's character's solo comic - Man-Thing because well, frankly, they needed something weird. Needless to say, a talking, cigaar-chomping, heroic duck just kind of fit the bill.The thing about Howard is this - he defies the comic book rules. Like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that came after him, he was very sophisticated parody, but you had to have a deep understanding of that which he parodied to begin to get the joke. To their credit, Howard's team tried to continue the joke, which sort of meant the character had a limited life span, unlike Eastman and Laird who came up with TMNT - sold out, converted the characters to children's toys and have made more money than Croseus.
Disney sued over Howard, claiming a Donald rip-off, which was one of the more delicious things about the character. He did make fun of Donald after a fashion and you have to remember that Disney was a pretty reasonable comic publisher. In one character they managed to poke fun at themselves and the competition. It was tasty.For comic fans of a certain age, it does not come much better than Howard, but we are a small group, too small to support the character. Sigh.... Ahhh, but the memories, seeing all those "serious" superheroes, and voluptuous comic babes lined up next to a short, cigar-chomping, curmudgeonly duck.
Related Tags: comcis, comic books, comic art, The Defenders, Howard the Duck
