Howard T. Duck

A cigar-smoking duck from Duckworld, pulled across the universe into Cleveland by a laser.

Status: Alive
Species: Duck
First in print: Adventure into Fear #19 (1973)
On screen: 1 entry

Who they are

The 1986 film is the first Marvel property to get a big-budget live-action release and it is remembered as a catastrophe, mostly fairly. What survives is the animatronic itself — eight performers in a duck — and a genuinely strange final act involving a possessed scientist and a Dark Overlord of the Universe.

Connections

Variant of

Howard the Duck
Character

Appearances

Canonical timeline · 1 entry

Notes are veiled until you track what you have watched, or switch spoilers off in the header.

Pre-MCU Marvel

A separate universe, in its own order

Howard the Duck
1986 · Major role

Beyond the screen1 from the comics · click to open

From the comics

Steve Gerber’s satire, not a mascot

Howard began as a one-panel gag in a swamp story and became Steve Gerber's vehicle for satirising 1970s America — an existentialist in a duck suit who ran for president in 1976 and lost. The film adapted the character and none of the register, which is the whole problem.

Adventure into Fear #19 (1973) and Howard the Duck #1-31 (1976-79), Steve Gerber with Val Mayerik and Gene Colan