harkins (04/19/83)
whatever happened to "Howard the Duck," which was one of the best...??
oz (04/20/83)
What happened was that Steve Gerber had a fight with the folks at MARVEL and no longer worked on the book. Gerber felt that since Howard was his creation, he should be able to make the decisions as to where the char- acter (duck) should go, and should have all rights to the Duck. MARVEL disagreed and a law suit followed. Steve Gerber then did DESTROYER DUCK a jab at big business (and MARVEL in particular in the first issue) with Jack (King) Kerby doing the art work (and a damned good job too). One of the nice things to come out of this was the formation of such things as FIRST COMICS where the creator DOES retain all rights to his/her creations and has the right to take it to another comic company if they want. After Gerber left, Howard was just a shell of his former self, which nobody can deny, whoppie (Marx Bros quote). The early issues are certainly worth looking over. Interesting thing that I thought of while writing this: there are very few creative women in comics. The only one that I can think of off hand, is Wendy Peni of ELFQUEST fame. Any others that y'all can think of? Is this a topic worth discussion? Thought I would bring it up. FOOC (friend of old CEREBUS) OZ seismo!rlgvax!oz
tim (04/20/83)
Does anyone know if there was some specific issue that caused the Gerber- Marvel split? I mean, did Gerber want to do something that Marvel didn't want him to do? Marvel's new Epic Comics line, by the way, gives creators the rights to their characters. This can't be done in the Marvel universe, really. The connections between characters and the need to be faithful to the mega-storyline rule out total creative freedom. I admire Gerber very much, but when he decided to tell a story in the Marvel universe, he knew what he was getting into. You can't have the cake of a well-developed background with existing characters and eat it by changing that background at whim too. Destroyer Duck was pretty good. It's the only Kirby I've liked in years. Tim Maroney
oz (04/21/83)
I have to disagree with Tim's statement that people (writers) cannot have freedom in the Marvel Universe. I agree that Gerber could not change things wholesale when he wrote Howard. I mean he couldn't just suddenly have Curt Conners grow feathers, a comb and call himself the "Chicken Gizzard," but people have created their own subset of the Marvel Universe supposedly without approval from Jim Shooter (bow three times towards NYC, YAS MASTAH, I'SE A COMIN'). After all, the whole invention of the alternate world where Howard came from was a change in the Marvel Universe. I think that Starslayer demonstrated nicely how a comic could change from one publisher to another without major hassels. Grell finished the storyline under Pacific Comics, and now the same characters, the same situation will be used for First Comics. We the readers are the major benificiaries of this policy. I certainly trust an artist like Grell over a manager like Shooter. It WAS nice to see a place where Kirbys art looked right, wasn't it! Proud to say he has an autographed CEREBUS #1 OZ seismo!rlgvax!oz