I get that Howard the Duck is meant to be a “lame (duck) character” (sorry that was a Chip Zdarsky-level joke) but does his series have to be actually lame? The first Howard the Duck volume (numbered “Volume 0” because Marvel can’t do anything simply) wasn’t great but it was ok - this second one though (Volume 1)? Pee-yew!
Howard wants to go back to his home planet (shades of Poochie - if only) so he and his hipster sidekick go to a swamp and discover he’s a portal or something. A whacky space adventure follows involving The Collector, The Stranger, Galactus, the Guardians, and Howard briefly becomes the new Silver Surfer. Also, female Howard and Rocket because arbitrary diversity!
I couldn’t tell you what’s going on in this comic, it’s that boring and all over the shop. Howard putzes around, there are Marvel cameos galore, and then it’s done. Not even Galactus could save this one for me and I love the purple-hatted one.
I almost never abandon a comic book - no matter how bad, I can usually power through to the end. Not so with this one because of the two-part Unbeatable Squirrel Girl team-up that closes the book. It’s sooooooo fucking twee and precious and hipsterish. A couple of years ago I read Ryan North’s Midas Flesh comic and in the review I said he’s Matt Fraction minus the talent plus a severe blow to the head - and I still stand by that statement.
Squirrel Girl has tweets or texts and shit in the opening pages, she sits around smug with herself for doing nothing, talking about a new outfit or something, there’s creator commentary at the bottom of each page where Zdarsky and North witter on like the morons they are, puns are everywhere - I lasted half a dozen pages and gave up. They should call this series the Unbearable Squirrel Girl!
Unfunny, uninteresting, a comic of sheer agony from start to early finish, I’m never reading any more comics written by Zdarsky and/or featuring Howard the Fuck!
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