Howard the Duck

When I think of Marvel  titles from the 70s I think of Ms Marvel, Nova, Marvel Team-Up and Howard the Duck. I know there's lots more but those are the sort of titles which were distributed to newsagents in those days before Comic Shops.

Over the last couple of years I've completed my runs of Nova and Ms. Marvel and eventually got to read the entire run in order. Unfortunately both series were not as good as I remembered.

Howard was slightly different. I only had one Howard the Duck comic from my childhood (issue 27) but Howard was so popular for a few years (1975-1978) that my curiousity was peaked. I've now managed to get the whole of the run (with my latest purchase) except for the very first appearance in two Man-Thing strips and the last issue of his own title.

The 10 page back-up feature in Giant-Size Man-Thing No. 4 was actually Howard's first appearance on Earth and was a good place to start reading (and a cheaper place too!). I've also read another back-up from GSMT#5 and those stories directly lead into Howard the Duck #1

After just finishing No.2 I can say that I am enjoying this so far and I'm looking forward to more. These two issues were drawn by Howard's co-creater Frank Brunner and the art is fantastic. Really, really good.

Steve Gerber's script is also enjoyable and it's a good thing I'm reading these as a 45 year-old because my 11 year-old self wouldn't have understood what was really going on at all.

I wonder how many I can read before Christmas?