Howard the Duck
I’ve mentioned before that I collect fanzines…and I just acquired another one this past week. It’s “Collector Issue No. 1” (I don’t imagine there was a No. 2) of The Wonderful World of Marvel, from 1976. Featured in this special “Howard the Duck Issue” —
- a three-color parody Warlock cover (“Warduck”) by Steve Leialoha
- Howard as Thor “The Thunder Duck” by Gene Day
- a three-page interview with Howard conducted by the editor, complete with photos of the editor (Doug Fratz, apparently active in comics and SF fandom in the 60s & 70s) with drawings of Howard pasted in, making it appear as if there’s a face-to-face going on
- The Comic Reader-style reproductions of forthcoming Marvel covers along with short news items (“In September, the Marvel seventeen page comics will go up to 30 cents.” Say it ain’t so!)
- and, of course, lots of ads (including a nice one for Bernie Wrightson prints)
An interesting artifact of this magazine is the discussion of the apparent scarcity of Howard the Duck #1…a whole page (with a black border, so you know it’s serious) is devoted to the controversy surrounding the comic’s faulty distribution and subsequent high prices. (It’s even mentioned in the Howard “interview!”) The article ends with “it has been speculated that if no one pays the inflated prices […] the comic will eventually become numerous and cheap.” Well, it did happen eventually…took a monstrous flop of a movie to do it, though.
