Review of Howard the Duck (1986) by Sanford R — 26 Aug 2009

When Howard T. Duck (Gale/Zien) is teleported to Earth from his homeworld, this human-sized, talking bird must find out how to live in a a completely alien world. And while he's adjusting, he must also thwart an alien invasion.

"Howard the Duck" is one of the many tragic examples of someone in Hollywood paying good money for the rights to adapt a creative property to film and then showing they completely missed the point that made the original unique and even worth adapting to the screen in the first place. Howard the Duck, the comic book created by the great Steve Gerber for Marvel Comics, was full of great satire and dark humor, but none of that made it into the film adaptation. Nor did any of the series ongoing subtext of isolation and alienation truly transfer to the screen.

If the writers involved had stayed faithful to the tone and characters present in Gerber's original tales, this could have been an excellent movie. Instead, it is a piece of junk that well-deservedly failed at the box office.

For some masterful satirical tales that hold up well despite the 30 years that have passed since Steve Gerber originally wrote them, pick up one of the two omnibus collections of the Howard the Duck series that Marvel Comics has released. (One is a very affordable black-and-white reprint, while the other is a deluxe, library quality hardcover edition.) But don't waste your time on this film. The source material is so very much better. It shows that "comics for adults" were being written decades before it became a trendy marketing point.