Talk:Howard the Duck/Archive 1

This article needs split into two articles
One about the comics, another about the box office flop, and a disambigous page added. Joncnunn 17:58, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Technically, there could be three articles: the books, the character, and the film.--StAkAr Karnak 23:12, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Support. I see no reason why this should be a single article. (Ibaranoff24 20:37, 24 June 2006 (UTC))

Davros77: There really should be no change, there should be links to it on the relevant pages, but splitting it up stands for no purpose.


 * Oppose "I see no reason" doesn't give a reason. The motion picture is a minor movie, and explaining the Howard the Duck back-story all over again is redundant. As well, it's consistent with countless other comics articles with a minor movie or a TV show spinoff to have the latter as a section and not a separate article. -- Tenebrae 18:46, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Oppose. I have to agree with Tenebrae on this one. --  M  (speak/spoken) 03:04, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Howard the Duck's 1976 Presidential Campaign
I remember vividly the early days of HTD, with issues three, four and five being exceptionally clever. However, Howard's Presidental campaign, in my opinion, did not live up to the promise of the earlier issues. The big problem was with the writing. Specifically, why was Howard running for President? At that point in the series, the character of Howard was kind of an Everyman (sic) who pretty much hated everything and everybody--but still was always thrown into situations where he was saving people.

During his Presidental run, Howard dumps his image consultants, chosing to go his own path, ie running as a fiery, plain talking independant, beholding to no one! So far so good. But an independant what? Was Howard a hot blooded environmentalist, determined to make ecology the issue for our time? Sort of: he dumps a load of non-returnable desposit cans on the lawn of a soft drink manufacturer. Does he stand up to the Military-Industrial Complex, and re-address Federal spending priorities? Not particularly. He does sheepishly suggests that the military build their newest fort in a cave. Or was Howard a cranky libertarian, claiming that the government that governs least governs best--in a word, Get Out of My Face! That might have been more consistent with his character--but because I was (and still am) a leftist, I wanted a pro-environmental, anti-military HTD. But I could have understood (and lived with) a rabid right-wing (sic) pro-gun, pro-smoking, across the board tax cutting, anti-welfare crank, and (taking a page from Hoover's FBI) railing against "sob sister judges" who always seemed to be letting super villains go free. But Howard the Presidential candidate was none of those things.

What disappointed me was that Howard the Candidate was just the kind of insincere, amorphous mealy-mouth he hated: someone who demanded a platform to say something--only to have nothing to say. The Presidental campaign degenerated into a few wacky assassination attempts...and then the photo scandal of Howard and Bev supposedly bathing together--which never stuck me as particularly scandalous...but then again, 1976 was the same year where then Governor Jimmy Carter created a scandal by actually ADMITTING to have looked at other women with lust in his heart. He didn't do or say anything about the lust; he just looked, and kept his feelings to himself, in his heart.

I guess it wasn't just Howard's campaign that was particularly disappointing--but that's the subject of another article.

71.222.41.87 09:10, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Who cares what you wanted? The fact that you'd write this about a comic book might make one think you're a troll, but that wouldn't be assuming good faith. --70.142.42.81 01:43, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Ignoring the above, I have created an image of the 1976 campaign button for possible addition to the Memorabilia section. However, I have never uploaded an image before, so I need to study the policy and procedures before trying to add it. Richard K. Carson (talk) 00:19, 15 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I have uploaded "File:Howard the Duck 1976 campaign button.jpg", but will leave it to more experienced people to determine whether it can be used and, if so, how best to put it into the article. Richard K. Carson (talk) 04:29, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Bill Mantlo and status quo
There's a passage here that's been bugging me for awhile, because it sounds an awful like like POV. It read as:

"Mantlo, beginning with Issue #30, returned the series to its former status quo, bringing Beverly back into the picture and having her divorce Doctor Bong, and getting Paul, who has been shot by the Ringmaster, out of the hospital."

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but that statement reads to me like it was written by someone who preferred Gerber's direction and was upset to see this status quo restored. I've rewritten it as such:

"Beverly came back into the picture and divorced Doctor Bong, and got Paul, who has been shot by the Ringmaster, out of the hospital."

If we prefer the text the old way, it can always be brought back to where it was. :) 204.153.84.10 (talk) 17:27, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, like I said, keeping that line the way it was is fine... however, blanket reverting the rest of it was not appropriate. I added a number of details, and a whole lot of sources.  I'm going to restore it bit by bit to make the differences clearer; if you want to undo any of the changes I make, please look at them one at a time instead of undoing all arbitrarily. 204.153.84.10 (talk)  —Preceding comment was added at 16:39, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

video games
Im pretty sure howard has not been announced for Marvel Ultimate Allience 2 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.30.40.122 (talk) 14:51, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Speaking of video game, the article doesn't mention Howard the Duck - Adventure on Volcano Island for the Commodore 64. 142.162.146.64 (talk) 09:44, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Section Fictional character biography needs way more sub-headings!
The way I see it, the Fictional character biography currently is a huge wall of text. I guess readability could be improved a lot by adding further sub-headings for the main eras of Howard. I consider that means that most of the existing sub-headings in that section will need to go, as they have more to do with the rest of the Marvel universe than with the Howard saga itself (Civil war, for instance).

My problem here is that my Howard knowledge is limited mostly to the b/w Mantlo series and the much later Marvel Max sequel written by Gerber himself, as the rest (mainly the original color comic) is barely readable for me due to the lower art (and partly printing) quality, or too obscure and scattered bordering on the apocryphical, so I can't tell what eras quite a lot of the material would belong to.

Anyway, here's my rough outline for sub-headings making the section much more readable:

--79.193.39.11 (talk) 17:54, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
 * First appearances (1973-1976)
 * The color comic and newspaper strip (1976-1979)
 * The Mantlo-Colan b/w magazine (1979-1981)
 * The movie and scattered appearances after the magazine (1981-1997)
 * Howard the Duck Holiday Special (1997)
 * 6-issue Howard the Duck Marvel Max series (2002)
 * Templeton-Bobillo limited series (2007)
 * Other appearances

September 8: Howard The Duck day?
The film identifies September 8 as the day HTD arrives in Cleveland, although it is not clear (yet) what year. Does this date have supporting references from the Gerber works and if so is there a specific year? 69.23.142.50 (talk) 18:55, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Infobox image
The infobox image is plainly inappropriate. According to guidelines, they should be full-body shots with as little background clutter as possible. Replacing with an image more in keeping with guidelines.--Tenebrae (talk) 18:42, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Tenebrae, how is that one any better? It's just slightly less inappropriate than the other image. Just as much clutter and the only thing it has over the old image is the full-body shot. Overall, the new image is a small improvement but they are both unsuitable for the infobox and I'm sure there's something out there that would be much more appropriate. —DangerousJXD (talk) 22:29, 1 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree completely. This is just what I could find readily, abetted by the fact it's a #1 issue, which makes it historically significant. But I'm all for having an even more appropriate image than this one in the infobox. --Tenebrae (talk) 16:30, 3 April 2016 (UTC)