HOWARD THE DUCK TP MEDIA DUCKLING
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Pulls
Size: pages
Price: 11.99
This review contains spoilers, click here to read
This TP came out in 2008 and contains three things: Howard The Duck #1 - #4 (2007), Howard The Duck #1 (1976) - Howard The Barbarian, Civil War: Choosing Sides - "Non-Human Americans".
In the back cover there's an A in a white square and I thought it meant Adult which would be a harsh rating, but it turns out according to Wikipedia that it means "ages 9 and up" - ha? Also "MAX" doesn't really work ever since Pepsi used it to mean "less but the same" - to mean a losing weight diet. Confused? Don't worry - so did the people I used to bag groceries for.
For people that don't know - Howard the duck is a character that exists to make fun of the Marvel Comics universe.
In the first part (#1 - #4) Howard the duck is a cab driver and he has a friend called Beverly. He gets in trouble with two scientists that are trying to hunt him, and the entire things gets famous and complicated and Howard is tried for using his "special powers", and he somehow manages to discover a plot to take over the world.
There are guest appearances of people from the Marvel Comics universe.
This part is nice but the first part (first issue) is boring. I'm not interested in Howard the duck so that means I have to rely on the situations he's in and the people surrounding him, and that's too much of a gamble - I'll maybe pick up an essential or omnibus or just leaf through the trades/issues.
One great thing I got from reading this is noticing the guys in yellow suits that appeared for a panel or two in JLI HC Vol .1 which increased my liking of this issue.
Sometimes the panels are very organized and sometimes they're in a mess and there are all kinds of panels.
The use of the computer is obvious (like in the shading) but it doesn't bother me too much, and the coloring is uniform - same color for a certain part, and the onomatopoeias here don't bother me.
The drawing is nice but I have a problem with the way light was drawn - it doesn't matter much to me but in the panel of the car of Howard's lawyer you see a cellphone and something pink and yellow beside it and I wasn't sure if it was a light or they intended to draw something else, and it's a tad annoying - it looks like a circle with two rectangles (one longer than the other) sticking out of it... like a rabbit with one ear folded (because "one ear cut" isn't nice...).
The TP is divided into parts and before each part there is a page with a drawing that shows what will happen in the following part, and the part number is written and after a few panels the part's name is written.
The word balloons are regular - there is a special word balloon with lots of points for voices coming out of electrical devices (like a television screen), and the creature that is trying to take over the world has a word balloon that looks like a folder with several tabs.
There is a rectangle with rounded edges in a fading yellow color for Howard's thoughts, and the narrator has regular rectangles in fading purple, a regular yellow rectangle for the editor's notes, a rectangle with rounded edges in fading bluish purple words someone not in the current panel says.
There's a nice place where some of the script of this comics was put but it's not hard to find because the text doesn't fit the page so well.
The next part is with a lot of shading using ink and the coloring is uniform and reminds me of old comics (and it is old comics - 1976) and that means sometimes you can see print dots.
The plot of this issue is that Howard wants to commit suicide and he spots a tall tower and decides to climb it and jump from it but he somehow manages to interrupt a wizard and he meets Beverly for the first time and they both are sent by the wizard to fetch something for him from a dangerous place, and it jokes about a famous instrument in the Marvel universe.
It's a nice part and Spider-Man makes an appearance.
The page that separates this part from the rest is the cover of the issue.
The last part is separated from the others by a page that features several characters from the Marvel universe and under it is written "Civil War: Choosing Sides" and after a few panels "Howard The Duck in: Non-Human-Americans" is written, and it's just a part of a comic and the plot is that Howard the duck comes to register in the government because of the new law stating that non-humans should register.
The drawing is simpler and looks like it was hand made and the coloring is uniform and the shading as done using a computer and it almost looks like a cartoon.
A nice TP. In the end there are two variant covers - one for the front cover to see what would happen to Howard if whatever made those holes in the wall didn't miss him (I thought the holes were made using guns but it looks too serious to be a result of a gun, but according to the first part it has to be, but this won't be the first time where a cover isn't connected to the content...).
The second cover is a different cover to the "Civil War" part where Howard is holding a wooden club with spikes and the other characters are knocked out and it looks like someone hit them...
After that there are pencil and ink drawing of Howard by Juan Bobillo.
Art: 3 - Good
Fixed formatting…Epiphany sucks.
I wonder why this wasnt included in the omnibus from last year?
Maybe they just wanted to collect Gerber’s original run and not this modern take on Howard. But I would love to find this, I remember reading the Civil War tie-in and that was funny as hell for me.