The Secret Origin of Howard the Duck
Reading time: 3 minutes
Howard the Duck is a precarious Marvel hero, if you could even call him that. His first appearance is something of an anomaly as well. Howard showed up on the fringes of Adventure into Fear as some sort of obscene joke meant to be hidden on the back burner of the main tale. The story is actually a tale that is loosely centered around the Man-Thing, falling more in line with something that is akin to DC’s Vertigo comics from the 80’s. The tale is a quintessential 70’s story written by Howard the Duck creator Steve Gerber that was continued into Man-Thing #1. Gerber would go on to do much with the character in 70’s including an ongoing series starring the Duck. This story in Adventure into Fear #19 with pencils from Val Mayerik is a little different. The tale follows Man-Thing’s adventures into a mindscape where reality bends with the impossible.
When reality is broken, Howard the Duck and Korrek the Barbarian are amongst those who have been displaced from time. More importantly, so is the mysterious Man-Thing. The Man-Thing’s origins are even more confusing than that of Howard himself. Throughout many of his later adventures, the duck would constantly team-up with this pair of misfits. After all, it is pretty amusing to look at a duck, a weird plant thing, and a large barbarian all teamed up together and ready to fight whatever menace lies next in their path with duck-filled malice.
This is where things start getting even weirder. Howard actually passed through something called the Nexus of All Realities. This is the pathway that supposedly connects all the different realities of the Marvel Universe together. Did I mention that this sounds like a DC Comic? It’s hard to not imagine that the concept isnt going to be used for Marvel’s upcoming Secret Wars event, in which the publisher is blending a whole bunch of strange concepts together under one umbrella from different Universes. This Nexus creates a gateway to different worlds, which caused Howard and friends to slip through after reality was broken. This all happened when Jennifer Kale opened up a book of the occult magics that summoned a monster known as Thog the Nether-Spawn. Kale is a slender teenage girl that finds herself paired up with Man-Thing when she unlocks the world of the occult. Thog is a demon that lies below beneath the surface of Kale’s occult-based findings.
It’s interesting to note how little of these concepts have been explored since these original stories were introduced in the Marvel Universe. This of course might change, especially after considering how Marvel is now bringing up some of Rocket Raccoon’s backstory into the comics with the recent series. Most of the mythology integrated into the film, including Duck World, is actually still relevant here. An important idea that has stayed relevant across all forms of Howard the Duck media is how the character always contains some sort of trademark utilized from this first appearance. Even in his short Guardians cameo, Howard is saying something appropriately sassy. His new design introduced in the film is quite a ways away from his original look, where Howard sort is dressed like a detective archetype, which is now more than appropriate considering the upcoming comic book series that we reported on a few days ago that puts him in the private investigator position.
No discussion of Howard’s origins are complete without mentioning the duck’s arch-nemesis Dr. Bong.
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