Saturday Splash Page #182

"Thinking Inside the Box," in Sensational She-Hulk (vol. 1) #14, by Steve Gerber (writer), Bryan Hitch (penciler), Jim Sanders III (inker), Glynis Oliver (colorist), Jim Novak (letterer)

John Byrne was writer/artist for 27 issues of Sensational She-Hulk, but what about the other 33? The answer is, it's a real mess. The book had 10 different writer (or writer teams) over those issues, and 10 different pencilers. I don't know if nobody particularly wanted the job, Marvel couldn't find someone they liked or what. There's a lot of one-offs, although the writers seem to pay attention to what each other were doing. Scott Benson does a fill-in for #51, where She-Hulk is desperate for a story for the issue, and jumps into an inventory issue from her Savage She-Hulk days, and only makes it through with some help from Tommy, the lone Marvel intern at the office. Sholly Fisch brings back Tommy in issue 58, now trying to be Jen's costumed sidekick as she fights an Electro so drunk on power he thinks he's an "electrical elemental." 

Most attempts at stability didn't last. After Byrne left the book the second time, Marvel went with Michael Eury and Zach Britton as writer/artist team. Eury wrote a 6-issue story about an enemy trying to drain the gamma radiation from Jennifer's blood and nearly getting her killed, but Britton only drew the first issue (where she fights Titania in a lingerie store), then vanished, with most of the remaining issues being drawn by Pat Olliffe.

The only two who stick around for any length of time are Steve Gerber, who wrote a total of 16 issues (3 of those with Bruce Dixon), and Bryan Hitch, who drew 13 issues. The two mostly overlap, which is nice. Gerber maintains some of Byrne's status quo, Weezie Mason and the flying car Jennifer got after a trip to outer space. (Also the bit about Jen having sexy dreams about Hercules, though it's Simon Furman who writes an issue where Herc finally shows up.)

However, Gerber kicks her out of the District Attorney's office (though she's back at that job in the last few issues of the book) after a defendant argues her actions saving people from a falling communications tower unfairly prejudiced the jury. Dan Slott would also use this in She-Hulk volume 1, and Mark Waid did something similar in Daredevil. Gerber focuses more on his typical social commentary/satire stuff. His first arc involves Jennifer being enlisted by a shadowy figure Byrne hadn't fleshed out, who turns out to be "Lexington Looper." Lex is in danger from a former employee who stole a device that can project whatever images you wish to a person or persons and make them feel or believe whatever you want. Perception as reality, facts are irrelevant. So "Pseudoman" projects the image of a train bearing down, and Jennifer is terrified. Jennifer tries a flying tackle, but he projects himself as powerful and immovable, and she gets tossed blocks away.

After that, Dr. Angst (see Sunday Splash Page #343) reverses a black hole via giant, magical plunger, so that it starts spewing matter into the universe, essentially filling it with other universes until only the most dull, mundane places are left for he and his old associates to rule, everything else smushed together and out of existence. The only one aware of it is an offshoot of the Watchers, called the Critics. He ropes Howard the Duck in, because he can't get too involved and Howard's got experience with this sort of crap, then sits back and critiques how things are going.

With that approach, it's no wonder Gerber declines to have She-Hulk break the 4th wall. Any more broken walls, the entire book would collapse like an imploded sports arena.

Hitch is still in his Alan Davis-lite era, which, to be clear, I prefer to his style from Ultimates to the present. And it better suits stories like these, with their absurd or comic tones. He's got to draw a talking duck in a universe of nothing but cold cuts and tomatoes, that does not call for a photorealistic look.

I wouldn't say the non-Byrne creative teams do away with the fan service. Like I said, the lone Eury/Britton issue involves a fight in a lingerie store (complete with the Thing helping out while being embarrassed about being there and wondering how women fight in so little, which ignores that he fights in his underwear.)But they aren't devoting pages specifically to She-Hulk doing sexy poses or jumping rope, I guess.

Both Gerber and Eury do stories where she switches between different looks. Big and grey and monosyllabic, ala early Hulk, or her Savage persona, or back to mousy Jennifer Walters. I don't know what either writer was trying to say with that. Maybe they just wanted to shake things up. Byrne basically left her as is, minus the Christmas issue where she briefly transforms back into Jennifer as a gift to her dad (courtesy of her team-up with a lecherous Santa Claus in issue 8.) Man knew what he wanted to draw.

Sunday Splash Page #343

"A Duck's Defenders", in Marvel Treasury Edition #12, by Steve Gerber (writer), Sal Buscema (penciler), Klaus Janson (inker), Marie Severin (colorist), Joe Rosen (letterer)

I own one issue of Marvel Treasury Edition, courtesy of the first volume of the Howard the Duck collection. Set between issue 7, when Howard accidentally becomes the Presidential candidate of the All-Night Party, and issue 8, when he starts his ultimately unsuccessful campaign, Howard is targeted for assassination by Dr. Angst, master of mundane mysticism, and a pack of losers he gathers with promises that they'll become well-known (also wealthy) if they pull this off.

Except he also promises them "mettle spheres" which will boost their strength, if they help him defeat Dr. Strange, who Howard has by this point encountered after Beverly makes a wrong turn trying to get them to a friend's house for the night. Strange gets kayoed after Angst makes a bunch of tennis balls explode from the Orb of Agomatto, forcing Howard to don the sorcerer garb and fight Angst, while the Defenders and Beverly get teleported into a football game to fight the rest of the crew.

Howard (with Strange's astral guidance) busts out all the classic spells, your Seraphim Shields and whatnot, while Angst is sealing the entrance of the Sanctum with a giant cereal box ("boxed" in), or conjuring a set of 6-ply tires to send at Howard. Angst's goons are beaten in about 3 pages, because the mettle spheres don't actually do anything, except perhaps trick these dopes into having confidence in themselves. Howard's really just hoping Strange can send him home, preferably before Beverly comes back and he has to deal with any awkward good-byes, but by the end of the fight he's so tired, he ditches the notion entirely, settling for a nap, and hopefully cab fare.

Sunday Splash Page #327

"Intersection," in Man-Thing #1, by Steve Gerber (writer), Val Mayerick (artist), Sal Trapani (inker), Dave Hunt (colorist), John Costanza (letterer)

The only issue of this I own, courtesy of the first volume of the Howard the Duck Complete Collection. And Howard's only in this for a few pages, as the story carries over from Adventures Into Fear (formerly just Fear.)

Drafted in by the wizard in the pointy hat up there to protect Jennifer Kale, a young girl with immense magical power, Howard, Man-Thing, and the barbarian with the Thor-knockoff helm are hopping from one rock floating in a void to the next. Howard gets a little too lackadaisical and falls into the void, and that's it for his involvement. He'd next appear in Giant-Size Man-Thing, now trapped in a world of hairless apes he'd love to escape.

The rest of the little troupe continue on their way, with the wizard always seeming to have the answer to their problems, just in the nick of time, at least until they run into a big fiery demon (who was previously disguised as an anodyne white guy in a business suit) The swamp monster basically shoves the fire guy in a moat of "pure" water, and that's that. Would that all problems caused by guys with MBAs and oversized egos could be resolved so neatly.

Man-Thing ends up back in his swamp and quickly forgets the entire experience.

Sunday Splash Page #252

"Portrait of an Irritated Avian," in Howard the Duck Annual #1, by Steve Gerber (writer), Val Mayerick (artist), Jan Cohen (colorist), Joe Rosen (letterer)

Set right after Howard releases himself from an insane asylum - with an assist from the demonic half of Damion Hellstrom's soul - and right before Dr. Bong bursts on the scene, Gerber and Mayerick put Howard and Beverly back in Cleveland, sharing a place with Bev's friend Paul and Winda, a girl Howard met in the asylum.

The three "hairless apes" return with some new furnishings, including a carpet. Which turns out to be a flying carpet that whisks the girls off to the isolationist city of Bagmom. Howard and Paul win a radio contest with the help of a smart-alecky magic lamp that nets them two tickets to that same city, and away they go. Bagmom turns out to be in a power struggle between the traditional, religious, isolationist sultan, and his Westernized son (who sold the carpet and the lamp as college furnishings he didn't want), who is making deals with Roxxon to get the country's oil.

Howard's mood swings wildly in this issue. He starts depressed, then blows up at Winda and Beverly when his coffee gets spilled. He's irate at the Roxxon guys for not being concerned the sultan has abducted two Americans, but is willing to humor the sultan when he's presented as one of the strange mysteries of the West that could be theirs, if only they play ball with the delightful Roxxon Corporation. When the prince escapes in a biplane with the girls as hostages, Howard is oddly willing to leap on a modified horsey-ride statue with wings and engage in air combat.

It's hard to really tell what's going on with him. It seems like he's still capable of rising to the occasion when an immediate problem presents itself, but he might be reaching his limit, hence the cycle of low points and explosions. Two issues after this in the monthly book, Gerber spends an entire issue having an existential crisis about the meaning of his work, portrayed through a series of conversations with Howard. So maybe they're both wondering what the heck they're doing.

Sunday Splash Page #251

"A Talking Duck Walks Into a Diner," in Howard the Duck #10, by Steve Gerber (writer), Gene Colan (penciler), Steve Leialoha (inker), Jan Cohen (colorist), Jim Novak (letterer)

After his team-ups with Man-Thing and some early solo adventures in Cleveland in Giant-Size Man-Thing, Steve Gerber got the go-ahead for an ongoing series for Howard the Duck.

Gerber continually gets Howard mixed-up in adventures that are somehow both bizarre and mundane. In the first two issues, a sorcerer tries to gain control of the universe, but really he's more of an accountant trying to balance - or perhaps cook - the universe's ledger to grant him that power. That adventures is also where Howard makes his friend real friend among the hairless apes, in the form of Beverly Switzler, who was there for what she thought was a modeling gig but turned out to be a human sacrifice.

From there, even as Howard and Beverly try to find some way to handle stuff like paying bills or finding some measure of satisfaction in life, he keeps running afoul of a mentally ill woman who accuses him of wanting to steal her kidneys. When Howard finally hits his boiling point and they get in a fight, it ends in court where she appears as an entirely reasonable and ordinary woman who was brutally attacked by this crazy duck. Later on it's Dr. Bong, who is really just a yellow journalist who made a career off writing headlines that weren't technically lies, but were phrased so people would take them in the worst, most salacious manner. He's also had a fixation on Beverly and resents Howard because of it.

Instead of a bell over his head, he oughta be wearing a fedora.

Howard's in a world he never knew, but one where he can recognize many of the things he (or Gerber) think are wrong with it. But he can't seem to grasp it well enough to avoid nearly constant pitfalls. Or maybe he just has too many principles to let things slide. Gene Colan, who takes over as the regular series artist with issue 4 and remains on the book up through issue 31 (minus a couple of fill-ins and a two part reunion of Gerber and artist Val Mayerick), is a good fit. With the swirling shadows and slightly distorted expressions, there's a nightmarish quality to the world Howard inhabits. It's a big, dark, crazy world full of things that try to harm a duck just wanting to get by with sanity intact.

Somewhere around the time Howard is anointed a third-party presidential candidate, I start to feel like I'm watching a slow-motion picture of Gerber having a mental breakdown. Howard grows steadily more frustrated and irritated and cynical until finally, when confronted with a nutty Canadian that ruined his campaign (now wearing a beaver-themed exo-armor), Howard simply walks away. He can't take any more, and he sort of drifts for the next year of the book. He gets sucked into things, or things happen to him, and Howard just reacts, survives, and keeps shuffling along.

It's during this stretch where Klaus Janson takes over as Colan's regular inker from Steve Leialoha. Personally, I think the book looks better with Leialoha. Janson's inks solidify the characters and the world too much, the shadows recede. Given Howard in this stretch really seems beaten, just going through the motions with his head down, content to forget about Beverly, to simply hope Dr. Bong will be content with his victory and leave a poor duck in peace, it feels the world ought to be more terrifying. Howard's surrendered, he's vulnerable.

But I guess you could argue that by not fighting the madness he's broken some of its terror on him. He doesn't care any longer, so why should it bother him? Your mileage will vary.

Bill Mantlo's actually the one who writes Howard's eventual big showdown with Dr. Bong, concluding in issue 31, which is where the collections I have ends. The way I understand it, Gerber had fallen out with Marvel by then, and he didn't write the book again, although he did use Howard during his stint on Sensational She-Hulk (which I think I prefer to Byrne's, honestly). 

Howard was I think persona non grata in Marvel for a long time, or smply didn't fit with the '90s, Image-ized Marvel. I guess after Keith Giffen, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning brought Rocket Raccoon back out of mothballs (and ignored Peter David apparently turning Rocket into a trophy, which, good call), Marvel figured, what the heck, why not the angry talking duck that hangs out with Man-Thing? Chip Zdarsky and Joe Quinones gave Howard an ongoing series as a private detective in the mid-2010s, though I only read the parts where he interacted with Gwenpool or Squirrel Girl. My impression is, rather than use Howard to comment on our society like Gerber did, Zdarsky commented on the world the superheroes inhabited.

Sunday Splash Page #206

 

"Comics from a New York City Jail Cell" in Giant-Size Man-Thing #5, by Steve Gerber (writer), Frank Brunner (penciler), Tom Palmer (inker), Glynis Wein (colorist), Annette Kawecki (letterer)

The single most joked about title for a comic series in history, and likely not be the last we see of Howard the Duck this year. I own two issues of this, and probably just parts of each. The comics pick up where Howard's previous appearance left off, with him falling through some inter-dimensional space after mistiming his jumps on a bunch of floating rock platforms. If this came out ten years later he would no doubt have enough experience from playing his world's equivalent of Mario Bros. to avoid making that mistake.

He ends up back on the world of talking hairless apes where he encountered Man-Thing, but in Cleveland rather than the Everglades. So a reeking swamp either way. That would be Howard's home for at least the first part of his ongoing series, which starts up about six months later.

Gerber doesn't get started on Howard's supporting cast at this point, as the duck is still just trying to adjust to his unfortunate circumstances. Howard does demonstrate more of a heroic streak than even he might expect, trying to protect a couple of kids that help him out from someone who turns himself into a giant talking frog. Later on, he tries to pursue a career in law enforcement by capturing what turns out to be a vampire cow, but gets no traction because the cops, who accept he's somehow a talking duck, just walk away when they see him the next time.

The vampire cow seems like an example of the sort of absurdity Gerber would use more of during the ongoing series. You could probably add the fate of Garko to that. He tried to make himself into a power, and ended up squashed under the wheel of a car.

When he was pondering the fact that the only use of power is to gain more power, and then use that power to be rid of enemies, so why waste time conquering the world, I expected Gerber to have him chuck his "potion". because what's the point of power for power's sake? Then it would change some unsuspecting schlub Howard would have to contend with. Instead, Garko decided he should take the potion and get right to the "killing people" portion of his plan. Maybe if he'd shown up later Gerber would have gone the other way.

Sunday Splash Page #146

 

"Don't Get My Hopes Up, Norriss", in Defenders Annual #1, by Steve Gerber (writer), Sal Buscema and Klaus Janson (artists), D. Warfield (colorist), John Costanza (letterer)

This is effectively the end of Steve Gerber's run on the Defenders. There was one more issue of the ongoing after this, but this wraps up all of what Gerber had been doing with the Headmen, with the strange "Bozo" movement, and with Jack Norriss' abrupt departure a few issues earlier.

Norriss somehow got it in his head that at a point when the Defenders had knocked unconscious by the Headmen in a previous fight, they were given subliminal commands to make them do seemingly bizarre, random acts of destruction or mischief. These would instill fear and unease in the populace, and help the Headmen conquer the world through economic and political means. So he got a bunch of money out of Nighthawk to go try and play secret agent. Complete with knockout gas cuff links. Which prove entirely ineffective against Ruby Thursday. Great hustle, Norriss, ya putz. 

Meanwhile, you've got Nebulon the Celestial Man convincing everyone they're bozos and should abandon individuality and free will to do what he says, granting him control of the world.

The Defenders end up in the middle, and mostly look like chumps, getting shrunk down and put in some tiny city under a dome. Then at the end, they manage to at least defeat the Headmen in a fight. Norriss naturally can't resist raining on the parade by pointing out it does nothing to undo all the damage the Headmen have already done. 

Nebulon gets driven off after Doc Strange does the old, "make him experience all of humanity at once" trick and Nebulon decides we're all too nuts to try and save and bails. Must be nice to be able to just jaunt off across the universe to get away from it all. I'm stuck relying on the blessed oblivion of unconsciousness.

Sunday Splash Page #144

 

"This is Your Brain on Steve Gerber Comics," in Defenders (vol. 1) #36, by Steve Gerber (writer), Sal Buscema, Klaus Janson and Mary Skrenes (artists), Klaus Janson (colorists), Joe Rosen (letterer) 

After Engelhart left Defenders, Len Wein was writer for about 10 issues, most notable for adding Nighthawk to the roster, plus the story where Magneto got de-aged to an infant (which got him off when he stood trial for his crimes later, on the grounds this was a different Magneto). He was then replaced by Steve Gerber, who had a roughly 20-issue run that seems to be the one all Defenders' writers are judged against. 

The Elf with a Gun being a popular part, that Gerber apparently intended to just be random, chaotic violence, rather than some big thing. There's also the Hulk possibly murdering a couple of hunters for killing "Bambi's mom." Which ultimately leads to a sequence where Chondu the Mystic's consciousness is trapped within the deer, while Chondu's brain is in Nighthawk's body, under the control of Jack Norris' consciousness, and Nighthawk's brain is floating in a bowl, going slowly mad.

Namor and the Silver Surfer are absent throughout, so the core roster is Dr. Strange, the Hulk, Valkyrie and Nighthawk. Or put differently, Dr. Strange and three children. Nighthawk's the rich kid who's never bothered to examine anything or think past the surface. Val isn't sure exactly who she is, and the Hulk is the biggest, strongest child in the world. Placid and helpful one moment, angry and lashing out at anyone who tells him "no" the next.

Beyond that, Gerber works in Hank Pym and Daimon Hellstrom off-and-on, and Luke Cage (who already showed up late in Wein's run) and the Red Guardian (world-class surgeon Tanya Belinksy, who I feel like Doc would have courted if this were written today) are constants for the last several issues. Which gives him the opportunity to explore different responses to societal issues, given Belinsky comes from the Soviet Union, and believes in collective responsibility and effort, and Cage has seen very little to suggest society is going to help him, and does his heroing on a cash basis.

And so the Defenders encounter racists, the need for prison reform, income inequality, housing discrimination, questions of individual rights and responsibilities versus the needs of society. And they are, of course, mostly ineffectual at combating these things outside an individual case basis. They're lucky if they can keep from getting hopelessly entangled in those problems, like Valkyrie helping incite a prison riot.

The drag on the run is the presence of Jack Norris, former husband of Barbara Norris, who makes up some part of Valkyrie. Jack seems to start thinking "Valkyrie" is just some weird phase Barbara's going through, and then switches to the notion it's like amnesia and she just needs the right jolt to remember and go back to being the woman he remembers. When he's not doing that, he's hanging around ostensibly as the audience (or perhaps writer) stand-in. Meaning he yells at the Defenders about how they're screwing up this thing, or not paying enough attention to this other thing he thinks is important.

I know comics bloggers prefer to rag on Terry Long as being some unholy abomination of a character. Not having read much Wolfman/Perez Titans I can't comment, but Jack Norris is just shrill and annoying. How he got away with this Peter Gyrich, pompous windbag act without getting thrown into orbit by the Hulk, I don't know. Credit to him for not giving up easy, but one of the high points was when I thought Nighthawk had gotten rid of the guy by paying him enough to get lost.

Sal Buscema's there to make the punching that happens occasionally to break up the talking look impressive. It seems a little strange to have an artist that excels at fight scenes where everybody's throwing haymakers on a title where the writer keeps emphasizing the limited utility of that fighting, but Buscema handles it fine.