Oh, and there is an anthropomorphic squirrel with little retractable claws called Weapon II (get it? Eight down from Weapon X?) Howard and Squirrel Girl seem like a natural team-up given their silly conceits, but not sure Zdarsky and his co-writer Ryan North (who writes the Squirrel Girl book) do very much of interest with them. I am not saying it is nonsensical, just silly, and makes frequent use of that meta-Marvel universe humor common to both books to make fun of the Beast and a sad sack Kraven the Hunter who repents his hunter’s ways. In fact, I think HtD #6 could have opened en media res without the previous issue and still made about just the same amount of sense. I bought and read the Squirrel Girl issue, but it doesn’t feel necessary to give any exposition (especially given the opening panel’s exposition heavy balloon). Instead every page not dedicated to an ad is dedicated to the second part of a crossover story named “Animal House” that began in The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vol. Anyway, the fact that “Disco Duck” is a disco craze cheap cash-in (and one of my favorite songs at age 5) aside, the “death to disco” movement has its origins in racist appropriation of black music into “white” rock.
Oh, and one last thing about the letters in issue #11, one of them sent in by “The Phantom of the Turntable,” suggests that Howard “lift a wing to help the most valid of all causes…rock n’ roll,” He goes on to declare, “Death to Disco” and that Howard needs to do battle with Disco Duck! Now for those unfamiliar, “Disco Duck” was a 1976 novelty song by Memphis DJ Rick Dees, who transformed its unprecedented success into a series of appearances on TV shows like Diagnosis: Murder and hosting Solid Gold (replacing Marilyn McCoo) for part a season of the syndicated Top 40 show. I may not have seen what these readers saw in those first eight or nine issues of Howard the Duck, but I will say this issue-despite some of my usual qualms about Gerber’s annoying affectations-may be the best yet, 6, #8 to see Bev in the current day again. We’re going to have to wait til Howard the Duck vol. In the letter that follows, a reader from Perkasie, PA calls Howard the Duck “what underground comics should have been.” By this I guess he doesn’t mean “not racist,” but simply “funny,” since he goes on to rave about how funny the Howard the Duck Treasury Edition issue was, saying it was “a beautiful parody of the superhero genre.” His letter actually makes me want to seek out the issue, but I worry it is out of my price-range. In other words, being the subject of scholarly criticism is no indicator of quality.
I don’t write this to disparage those projects, but rather to give a sense of the range of cultural features and practices that are open to critical examination and scholarly interest. 1 #11, a reader named Howard, who is also from Cleveland, writes in to laud the comic as the kind of thing people will be writing their master’s thesis about, which may be true, but people also write theses about public school lunches in the 1950s, Bazooka Joe comics (you know the kind that comes with the gum), and the history of stadium grounds crews trying to give their home team an advantage. In the letters page of Howard the Duck vol. Inks: Joe Rivera, Marc Deering and Joe Quinones Way back in WAUGHs #1 I linked to a version of this that existed on the Hooded Utilitarian, but this one on Martin’s own site is expanded and revised. The overview’s focus is their dealings over Howard the Duck. Martin’s fantastic overview of the history of the editorial and business relationship between Marvel Comics and Steve Gerber. Before we begin the latest installment I want to direct your attention to R.S.
Welcome to If It WAUGHs Like a Duck, the series where we examine both the original volume of Marvel’s Howard the Duck, and the newest series now in its second volume (6th volume overall I know, confusing) – a pair of issues at a time.