Sunday, January 15, 2023

Sunday Splash Page #253

 
"Sky-High Prices," in Howard the Duck Magazine #1, by Bill Mantlo (writer), Gene Colan and Dave Simons (artists), Mike Higgins? (letterer)

After Howard and Beverly beat Dr. Bong and were reunited in issue 31 of his monthly series, Marvel switched Howard's stories to a black-and-white that came out roughly every couple of months for 18 months. I only own the first issue, because it's all that's included in volume 2 of the Howard the Duck The Complete Collection.

The Mantlo/Colan team from the last few issues of the ongoing series are still the main creative team here, although Michael Golden and Klaus Janson are the art duo on the first of the three stories in here. Mantlo sends Howard and Beverly back to Cleveland with her uncle who Howard randomly met and befriended in New York, but has decided to open a cab company back home.

Mantlo brings back a couple of Howard's earliest antagonists in Pro Rata, the Financial Wizard, and the Kidney Lady. Except he makes the Kidney Lady into a sort of witch, who tries using magic first to drive Howard nuts and incite the public against him, then has a demon possess a chair of some such nonsense to try and kill the duck.

I feel like that misses the point of what Gerber was going for, that she was a mentally ill woman who fixated on Howard as the source of her fears and woes because he was different, and managed to mess with his life because she refused to leave him be. But hell, it means Colan gets to draw a possessed easy chair, so take the good with the bad.

Mantlo also writes Beverly as a bit more action-oriented than Gerber did, and I don't just mean because the last page basically says she and Howard get freaky in the sack. She seems more involved in the fighting Howard gets caught up in than she did before. Could argue that after Howard left her stuck with Dr. Bong for however long that ended up being - he escaped from Dr. Bong in issue 18, and didn't end up fighting him until issue 30, and that was more because Bong came looking for him - she doesn't feel like waiting around to be saved.

Reading summaries online, it looks like Mantlo sent them back to Howard's world for a while before bringing them back to Earth, then had Beverly break up with Howard in the last issue and the duck becomes a private detective. Which might explain where Zdarsky got the idea to go that route with Howard 35 years later.

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