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Destroyer Duck: Twenty-fifth Anniversary Collection
What happens when the mad genius behind Howard the Duck teams up with the artistic visionary who brought us Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Hulk?
Destroyer Duck!
In 1982, when Steve Gerber was suing Marvel over the rights to Howard the Duck, he teamed up with artist Jack Kirby to create a landmark comic to raise funds for that fight. They spun the tale of Duke "Destroyer" Duck, who takes on the villainous GodCorp to fight for his friend, the Little Guy. The creative duo followed that up with a Destroyer Duck series. This silver anniversary edition collects for the first time the complete Gerber/Kirby run of the series, five issues worth of anger, satire, and slam-bam action. Writer Steve Gerber provides new introductory material.
Destroyer Duck!
In 1982, when Steve Gerber was suing Marvel over the rights to Howard the Duck, he teamed up with artist Jack Kirby to create a landmark comic to raise funds for that fight. They spun the tale of Duke "Destroyer" Duck, who takes on the villainous GodCorp to fight for his friend, the Little Guy. The creative duo followed that up with a Destroyer Duck series. This silver anniversary edition collects for the first time the complete Gerber/Kirby run of the series, five issues worth of anger, satire, and slam-bam action. Writer Steve Gerber provides new introductory material.
128 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2007
31 people want to read
About the author
Steve Gerber
642 books66 followersSteve Gerber graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in communications and took a job in advertising. To keep himself sane, he wrote bizarre short stories such as "Elves Against Hitler," "Conversion in a Terminal Subway," and "...And the Birds Hummed Dirges!" He noticed acquaintance Roy Thomas working at Marvel, and Thomas sent him Marvel's standard writing test, dialoguing Daredevil art. He was soon made a regular on Daredevil and Sub-Mariner, and the newly created Man-Thing, the latter of which pegged him as having a strong personal style--intellectual, introspective, and literary. In one issue, he introduced an anthropomorphic duck into a horror fantasy, because he wanted something weird and incongruous, and Thomas made the character, named for Gerber's childhood friend Howard, fall to his apparent death in the following issue. Fans were outraged, and the character was revived in a new and deeply personal series. Gerber said in interview that the joke of Howard the Duck is that "there is no joke." The series was existential and dealt with the necessities of life, such as finding employment to pay the rent. Such unusual fare for comicbooks also informed his writing on The Defenders. Other works included Morbius, the Lving Vampire, The Son of Satan, Tales of the Zombie, The Living Mummy, Marvel Two-in-One, Guardians of the Galaxy, Shanna the She-Devil, and Crazy Magazine for Marvel, and Mister Miracle, Metal Men,
The Phantom Zone
, and The Immortal Doctor Fate for DC. Gerber eventually lost a lawsuit for control of Howard the Duck when he was defending artist Gene Colan's claim of delayed paychecks for the series, which was less important to him personally because he had a staff job and Colan did not.
He left comics for animation in the early 1980s, working mainly with Ruby-Spears, creating Thundarr the Barbarian with Alex Toth and Jack Kirby and episodes of The Puppy's Further Adventures, and Marvel Productions, where he was story editor on multiple Marvel series including Dungeons & Dragons, G.I. Joe, and The Transformers. He continued to dabble in comics, mainly for Eclipse, including the graphic novel Stewart the Rat, the two-part horror story "Role Model: Caring, Sharing, and Helping Others," and the seven-issue Destroyer Duck with Jack Kirby, which began as a fundraiser for Gerber's lawsuit.
In the early 1990s, he returned to Marvel with Foolkiller, a ten-issue limited series featuring a new version of a villain he had used in The Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown, who communicated with a previous version of the character through internet bulletin boards. An early internet adopter himself, he wrote two chapters of BBSs for Dummies with Beth Woods Slick, with whom he also wrote the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Contagion." During this period, he also wrote The Sensational She-Hulk and Cloak and Dagger for Marvel, Cybernary and WildC.A.T.s for Image, and Sludge and Exiles for the writer-driven Malibu Ultraverse, and Nevada for DC's mature readers Vertigo line.
In 2002, he returned to the Howard the Duck character for Marvel's mature readers MAX line, and for DC created Hard Time with Mary Skrenes, with whom he had co-created the cult hit Omega the Unknown for Marvel. Their ending for Omega the Unknown remains a secret that Skrenes plans to take to the grave if Marvel refuses to publish it. Suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis ("idiopathic" meaning of unknown origin despite having been a heavy smoker much of his life), he was on a waiting list for a double lung transplant. His final work was the Doctor Fate story arc, "More Pain Comics," for DC Comics'
He left comics for animation in the early 1980s, working mainly with Ruby-Spears, creating Thundarr the Barbarian with Alex Toth and Jack Kirby and episodes of The Puppy's Further Adventures, and Marvel Productions, where he was story editor on multiple Marvel series including Dungeons & Dragons, G.I. Joe, and The Transformers. He continued to dabble in comics, mainly for Eclipse, including the graphic novel Stewart the Rat, the two-part horror story "Role Model: Caring, Sharing, and Helping Others," and the seven-issue Destroyer Duck with Jack Kirby, which began as a fundraiser for Gerber's lawsuit.
In the early 1990s, he returned to Marvel with Foolkiller, a ten-issue limited series featuring a new version of a villain he had used in The Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown, who communicated with a previous version of the character through internet bulletin boards. An early internet adopter himself, he wrote two chapters of BBSs for Dummies with Beth Woods Slick, with whom he also wrote the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Contagion." During this period, he also wrote The Sensational She-Hulk and Cloak and Dagger for Marvel, Cybernary and WildC.A.T.s for Image, and Sludge and Exiles for the writer-driven Malibu Ultraverse, and Nevada for DC's mature readers Vertigo line.
In 2002, he returned to the Howard the Duck character for Marvel's mature readers MAX line, and for DC created Hard Time with Mary Skrenes, with whom he had co-created the cult hit Omega the Unknown for Marvel. Their ending for Omega the Unknown remains a secret that Skrenes plans to take to the grave if Marvel refuses to publish it. Suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis ("idiopathic" meaning of unknown origin despite having been a heavy smoker much of his life), he was on a waiting list for a double lung transplant. His final work was the Doctor Fate story arc, "More Pain Comics," for DC Comics'
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 30, 2012
Must read this again! Irony is rife and Gerber and Kirby are much missed. Inker/embellisher Alfredo Alcala is well and truly missed. Godcorp is pushing comics movies, and the best comics are comics in all their glory, with all the strength of the medium, all the language of the comics. Here's a one-off satire for a fundraiser that became a four-or-five off. Bring back to print, please!
July 14, 2014
Destroyer Duck on the rampage against global capitalism!
O Steve Gerber, how your poor heart hurt and how thirty years later Godcorp would only seem a thousand times stronger. I may not possess Destroyer Duck's crusading powers against savage capitalist excess ... but for what its worth, here is my own crusade:
http://corjesusacratissimum.org/capit...
O Steve Gerber, how your poor heart hurt and how thirty years later Godcorp would only seem a thousand times stronger. I may not possess Destroyer Duck's crusading powers against savage capitalist excess ... but for what its worth, here is my own crusade:
http://corjesusacratissimum.org/capit...
August 3, 2020
The first issue is nice, biting satire of Gerber's issue with Marvel and the rights to Howard the Duck... then there are six more issues.
For more tune in to Comic Book Coffee Break. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu61J...
For more tune in to Comic Book Coffee Break. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu61J...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews