Broken Frontier

Steve Gerber’s greatest concept returns in an issue that, sadly, only underlines how pointless it is to divorce Howard from his creator.

Howard’s life in Cleveland hasn’t got any better since we last saw him. He’s driving a cab for a living while long-time companion Beverley Switzler’s acting career is the same mix of exploitation and fleapit theatres. While Howard runs afoul of two of the most incompetent duck hunters to ever fire a high-tech, GPS-enabled rifle, the forces of A.I.M. gather malevolently in the background…

Ty Templeton’s short Howard strip in Civil War: Choosing Sides #1, some months back, was a pleasantly-enjoyable diversion and, at the time, gave me hope that if anyone could make a decent attempt to capture the magic of Gerber’s HTD it would be Templeton. If this first issue makes a case for anything, though, it’s that Howard’s appearances really should be limited to cameos, and that I should stop getting my hopes up every time non-Gerber Howard the Duck material surfaces! This character is indelibly linked to one man’s vision and that means, however talented other creators may be, their Howard will always come across as a diluted version of the real thing.

Templeton’s comedy here is fast, furious but always fittingly-paced. In fact his panel-to-panel comic timing is excellent, particularly in the sequences involving the bungling duck hunters. The problem is that Howard the Duck was never just a humor comic per se, and that is never more evident than in the pages of this first issue. Templeton’s slapstick comedy is a poor substitute for Gerber’s biting social satire and, often angry and confrontational, stream of consciousness writing style. This is Howard played entirely for laughs without Gerber’s darker commentary and insight.

Perhaps the one aspect of Gerber’s Howard that Templeton does mimic well is his parody of existing Marvel characters (Dr. Bong being perhaps the most famous). The M.O.D.O.K.-inspired M.O.D.O.T. (Mental Organism Designed Only for Talking) is certainly not amusing enough to carry the issue but he does have his moments.

Juan Bobillo has a proven track record on She-Hulk when it comes to lighter-hearted comics fare and his style is well-suited for out and out absurdity. I have no idea though what constraints were put on him editorially in his depiction of the character but, if this is even possible when discussing an anthropomorphized duck, his Howard looks nothing like the Howard of Mayerik, Brunner and Colan. The cartoon exaggeration has gone and, while legal worries may have forced Howard to have to wear pants, couldn’t we at least have kept his hat and cigar?

Howard the Duck #1 sports extremely talented creators doing their very best to entertain. The bottom line though is that the shadow of the character’s creator and his unique voice ensure this project is doomed from the start. I can’t, in all honesty, recommend picking this up. Save the twelve bucks you might have spent on this miniseries and see if you can’t find a copy of Essential Howard the Duck instead. Maybe it’s finally time to leave Howard in the 1970s trapped in a world he never made, rather than trapped in one his creator didn’t…