Howard The Duck: The Movie #2 - Marvel Comics

HOWARD THE DUCK: THE MOVIE No. 2, January 1987

If Danny Fingeroth’s script for Issue Two of “Howard the Duck: The Movie” is anything to go by then it’s abundantly clear why the 1986 American superhero comedy film was “widely panned by critics” at the time of its release, and “made about fifteen million dollars domestically compared to its thirty million dollar budget.” There just doesn’t appear to be any rhyme, rationale or reason as to why “Of Ducks And Men!” lurches from set-piece to irreconcilable set-piece, nor any underlying golden thread which gels together even the simplest of scenes. It certainly must have been difficult for this three-issue limited series’ audience to relate to the feathered fowl when he is unreasonably growling at “a world dominated by hairless apes” one moment, and then inexplicably working as a “water expert” at Hot Tub Fever the next..?

This unfathomable plot only starts to make some semblance of sense, once the “new breed of hero” has had his night-time titillations with Beverly Swiztler interrupted by Doctor Walter Jenning, the man “in charge of the whole spectroscopic laser program.” The scientist’s explanation that Howard has accidentally been brought to the Earth as a result of an experiment’s deviation, and can therefore send the alien home to Duckworld by ‘reversing the process’, at least gives the book an apparent aim and end goal. Yet it sadly soon steers off-course once again by depicting the anthropomorphic "funny animal" being strip-searched by Aerodyne Laboratories’ security guards and then literally placed upon the menu at Joe Roma’s Cajun Sushi diner..?

How anyone, especially director Willard Huyck and producer Gloria Katz, who co-wrote the screenplay Fingeroth adapts, thought any of this would make for an entertaining narrative is incomprehensible, especially when such codswallop was supposedly penned to generate a thrill-a-minute adventure full of tension and endangerment. True, Kyle Baker’s incredibly charismatic rendering of the titular character is remarkably well-drawn and dominates the vast majority of frames within which he appears, such as the action-packed bar-room brawl where he terrorises Ginger and Ritchie with an ice cube pick. But even a pleasantly pencilled “duck from outer space” isn’t enough to save the horrifically illogical and choppy storyline of this motion picture adaption.

Script: Danny Fingeroth, Art: Kyle Barker, and Colors: Glynis Oliver