¶ Howard the Duck
Howard the duck , the character , the comic and the movie Nate . What do you know about Howard the duck , the comic , the character and the movie ?
I know he exists . He was big back in the day . I remember seeing the movie . I remember duck boobs . I remember , yeah , some of the comics . I remember when I used to , when I used to frequent comic shops , I would often see Howard the duck comic on there and I'd be like , oh , look that , go and look at it .
And then I'd put it down to pick up my next comic .
Yeah , you look at it and the guy'd be like , hey , that's 20 bucks because that's from the 77 , and you're like , oh , never mind , yep , yep . I remember that . I remember seeing to me like , hey , that looks like it would be fun , but never actually reading it . The few runs .
I was like you know , I have Well over two , three thousand comics . Yeah , I haven't collected comics in , oh man , at this point , 20 years , you know I just the 90s is when I was doing all this and I think , hey , they had some .
I'm pretty sure they said Howard , they had some Howard the comics back then , or maybe it was just in a case , but I mean I was all about some like age of apocalypse when I was like that's the last time I read the big X-Men series . Really , truly collecting comics for a reason like oh , I'm doing this .
Yeah , it's because Marvel told us to , because they put it really shiny stuff on all the covers . Oh yeah , limited edition , so , but I think we mentioned all this about the comic collecting of the 90s . You know all the fancy . You know Steel covers and this and that , um , Howard the ducks kind of responsible for some of this .
We'll get into that in a couple minutes . Actually , Awesome yeah .
I mean , I definitely got sucked in by that stuff and mean , and I was part of the reason , no , I take it back . I was not part of the reason why they went what they crash went bankrupt . It was collectors who were buying like I'm doing buy this one to read , this one to keep it was them .
I knew people who did that too . I at least read the comics I bought . Thank you very much . Yeah , I also got a lot of flak from the same people , like you're getting fingerprints on . It'll be worth nothing . I'm like well reading it dude shut up .
I will admit I did that for a few of them , like the ones , I had a feeling that they would be big . I would have had and grab a second , yeah , which is turn , I did the same thing .
When it turns out , everybody else had the same thoughts , so they're not worth anything because everybody has them exactly .
Is that weird ?
one obscure Casper comic , the Casper Wolverine crossover , something weird like that . It's worth money . Yeah , I remember all the same thing about Howard the duck as you do movie comics , duck memories , all the fun stuff , weird clips from the movie that just kind of traumatized young children and kind of that dumb song that they played .
The end , howard the duck , which is , oddly enough , made by an all-star writing team . Also , it's gonna be Howard's 50th birthday coming up soon , in November , I believe . So hey , happy birthday , howard . Oh .
He shows up in the latest guardian in Galaxy . I mean , I know he showed up in them . The stinger at the end of the first one was the first one .
Yep , he actually showed up in the first one , second one and the third one and he was in Marvel's what if ?
Oh , he definitely was Marvel's what he was . He had expanded like it was lots of a cameo , more of like he was a character in that , but he wasn't the whole episode , but he was there for a bit .
Part of it . When I was it to challa was talking to him in his little cube Yep .
Yeah , seth Green , yay , seth Green .
Yay , seth Green , we'll get talking to about Seth Green in the role as well . So here we go , nate . We're gonna talk about Howard , his comics and the 1986 movie which well , not good is actually the first ever Marvel feature length film released in theaters . Heck , by the end of this podcast you'll see a psychopath mailing bird bones to the Marvel headquarters .
Led to the story toy story franchise . More on that later as well . So this episode is actually gonna be somewhat similar to a turd ducking .
At the center of this is gonna be the movie , or the duck , and then surrounding this duck will be the production story behind the movie , or the chicken , as it were , and finally the comic books in the story Will be the turkey that surrounds everything . Got it Maybe ?
I'm just hungry .
I don't know Ha first to touch on Howard and his comic book origins . He was created by the original Gerber baby , steve Gerber , back in 1973 and first appeared in the series man thing , who is not quite a man and not quite a thing , but boy , howdy do those who know fear burn it is touch .
Howard the duck was basically a side character to just popped up randomly and was a wisecracking detective duck . He hung around for a few years in the series until Marvel editors reared their monstrous head and said , hey , we're not really a fan of this comedic duck being in this horror series . This is a horror series , scrap the duck .
So Steve Gerber , disappointed , did it though , and in one issue they literally just have man thing and some barbarian walking along with Howard and Howard just falls off Cliff , and that's the end of them . They just looked down like well , he's dead , bye , and they never spoke about him . Spoke about him again .
However , it turns out readers were not very happy about this . They really liked Howard . They like the fact that he offset that horror and he had some nice wisecracks and he was a well-written character in the series .
¶ Howard the Duck Comic's Success and Downfall
So an angry letter writing petition started , with one fan even sending duck bones through the mail to the editors to make their point and Apparently that worked Well . Probably not the intimidation part , but seeing there was a lot of money to be had , marvel was all on board to get Howard back into the story . Yeah , more of this story . Mail bones to editors .
If they cancel stuff you don't like , maybe it'll work . Maybe I'll work with HBO or Netflix . They cancel something . Mail them bones . See what happens . Don't tell them . I told you to do it right .
Yeah , well , that was also back today with writing letters meant something .
Yeah , yeah . Nowadays people just go on Facebook and complain instead , which nobody cares about there . Well nobody cares about until it gets big enough . Yeah , true .
So with dollar signs in their eyes , marvel goes back to Steve Gerber and says hey , steve , baby , you want to go from being a freelance writer to a full-time Marvel talent under contract writing Howard the duck . Steve said , of course I do . That's good money , that's job stability . Of course I want to get a contract and work for you , marvel .
So he goes from freelancer to full-time and starts writing Howard the duck number one in 1976 . This contract thing is gonna be important later too . By the way , we're building a story .
Yes , I'm taking . He didn't read the whole contract .
He did not read the whole contract and , yeah , kind of bites him in the butt . 1976 is Howard the duck . Issue number one was a massive , massive success , selling out almost instantly in comic stores and at the time was a best-selling number one issue of a comic not based on a movie .
Apparently , the only series of selling nearly as good of him in the late 70s was Star Wars , when it came out about like 79 comics books . So how are the duck extremely popular in the late 70s ? Also , what helped the popularity was the scarcity of it , the fact Marvel didn't anticipate how popular he would be .
They only printed 275,000 copies and neither did the money grumbling collectors that were out to make a buck . There's a story about a comic store owner in Cleveland deducted that Howard the duck number one would be super popular in Cleveland Because that's where it took place .
So he followed around the comic delivery truck to each store and immediately bought out their entire stock and and netting them around 900 copies to sell at his own store . Which wasn't a bad idea because by the end of the first year the comic was selling for an average of $12 and 50 cents , with a high of $25 in some places .
And that's not bad , since there's a 25 cent covered , 25 cent cover price and a lot of people say that this might be where the Whole collecting and gouging things started . To all , all from one dude named Jim Kovacs . He should be shamed for these actions . Boo him , I say boo .
Oh yeah , but also he rumor is he might be the person who will popularize the comic book long box . You know those long cardboard boxes that you stack comics in . He's one to popularize that weird .
Well , I mean .
Yeah , just fun side things you learn , you win some .
You , lisa , like that guy .
Yeah , yeah , fuck that guy Cuz . Yeah , he literally apparently just spent the entire day . He learned that the publication truck that is dropping off all the comics at the various stores , you know 7-elevens and whatnot just followed them around like , hey , I want to buy all those off you right now .
And of course you know employees , you didn't get it just like , whatever dude wants to buy these makes it easier on my job .
Yeah , last I heard that more recently I mean recently , being relative when I worked at GameStop . When the weeds came out , man , like parents , would follow the UPS truck and like ask him how many weeds they were dropping off of places .
It was so just , it was so in demand and I remember , like people we will put out there , hey , we're only expecting four weeds . And there'd be ten people outside . I'm like do you not see the side ?
We put these sides up for you .
Like anything for first , four people come up , they buy . I mean it's like sorry , but as the sign said , yeah , we only ever .
Five is like well . We had no way of knowing . It's like well , there was a sign on the window and they would always get mad it's like dude , I mean GameStop was loving it , though it's like they were . Yeah , cuz they'd probably buy stuff all they were waiting to . You know , the occasional soda or other game .
Well , that the gates all over , just because it was profits like the , you know the cell in those we they got cut of that and so they were just like making money hand over fist , which actually screwed them later because you know the them .
So those weeds , like that was messing with the metrics , cuz once you know was the weeds kind of fell out of fashion and it wasn't in the man anymore , according to you know the graph , you know it was the . The line was going up , up , up in 2019 or whatever it was . A baby was just 18 is what ? Up , up , up and all of a sudden it crashed .
No , I'm not going back far enough .
I might know yeah , 2014 or something .
Thank you , maybe , yeah 2009 , maybe , cuz I thought there was a nine on there . I'm gonna I try to avoid you Google , let me see .
Nintendo was released in 2006 in North America 206 . Yeah , so it must be up yeah , okay , okay , 2006 .
Man , I can't believe it's been so long since I worked GameStop I forget sometimes . So so 2006, . Even going into the next year like dude by God . Profits were amazing , so it must have been 2006 . 2006 . And they're like this graph .
This graph chart is obviously going to continue in this exact same pattern for the rest of time .
And that's the thing about , like I'm not sure if it's American , american business or all business across the world , but you know , basically it's like the whole premise is beating last year . It's always about beating last year and I was there's corporation mentality .
You got to get them shareholders happy .
And I always get frustrated and I was like , look , there's only a finite amount of people out there , like it's just you're .
Then you narrow it down For the people who actually looking for this product you sell and then , depending on the product you sell I mean , people are buying this all the time , people are buying a weave and come back later and buy another week .
This is a work that way and then you bring your hand , you bring that up in the salesman's , like , well , that's your job , sir , is to sell them a second . We and you're like that's not how this works , dude , yeah .
And so , man , I just remember that we got all upset . They're like oh , our profits are down . Like , yeah , no shit , your profits are down because no one's buying the we anymore .
Yeah , everybody has one now .
And man , I still . I saw the death of GameStop along before I left . I love saying I left because that's true I , but that doesn't mean that doesn't like comply , that's fired , which I was , but when ?
I can't fire me .
I quit , right , and the thing was I got fired over such bullshit reasons . I mean , ultimately it ended up a good thing , like I'm glad I'm not GameStop anymore . It's just they were very exploitative . I didn't really realize how bad it was until I was out . But man , yeah they .
I just remember going to the conference and they're just like , look at this graph . They even they were kind of like well , we understand , it was because of the we , but we really need to meet these numbers . Like well , you're not gonna .
Yep , sorry about that You're probably going to lose your job for sending them numbers a little too high , buddy .
Yeah , like , and I always say that , ok , here's our projection , here's our stretch goal . Like , our projection is this and it's fairly reasonable , here's our stretch goal . It's like unreasonable , yeah . And then they're like well , we got cut back , we didn't hit our budget . Like , well , because you're insane .
Yeah , we thought you'd sell almost double that you did last year .
You projected you're going to make 30 billion this year and you only made 8 billion . You know .
Yeah , I mean pay attention to the number , like , look at , look at more the graph . Y'all pull your heads out of your asses and look around . Yep Zoom out a little bit on the graph . Yeah , it's . I mean , pay attention to your . Who you're selling these to . It's just it , doesn't it infuriate me ?
¶ Marvel's Mistake and Howard the Duck
Of course , the whole model is selling used games . That's where the bread and butter was , and I always , I always hated , because when I went in there I assumed that the , the companies in 10 . Oh so , sony , they would get a small percentage of used games .
No , no , like they , the only got a cut of their new game and after that , like all the profits going to GameStop . So I don't know , man , this is when they low ball people for like $2 game and then turn around some for 15 . And I know what you think I'm like . Oh , poor games or poor Microsoft . I'm not saying that at all .
I'm saying poor creators , because Microsoft sure got a cup of soda , the creators who made the game . They don't gain it . Nope , you know , they sell them used , so yeah , back to creators .
Steve Gerber wrote a comic storyline in 1976 where Howard the Duck ran for president , and there's a story that this whole storyline got Howard enough vote right in votes on the ballot . That actually showed up in the polling processes . Stanley even said so in one of the comic letters to the editor section .
However , some research shows that that's actually kind of a lie , turns out Stanley might be a little bit of a fibrinate , so yeah , it's just something . Marvel threw it out there for exposure .
There's no evidence Howard the Duck got enough right in votes to make it on the polls , but I do assume that people did actually write in for him , at least if you did .
Yeah , I mean , I say awesome , I just ironically awesome because , you know , as someone who enjoys a good laugh and he's a nerd , you know I like the idea of like oh , howard , the Duck on your ballot , but yeah it's like these people who are voting Howard the Duck on their ballot , then , like the other person wins , like the person no one won to win , you
know , unless it's just like oh wow , I guess lay whoops .
My vote would have counted this time .
Yeah , this monster won by only a few votes and , only like you , threw your vote away .
Yeah , that's that probably how it'll work out someday .
I gave a friend of mine a lot of guff . I don't try to leave this vague . They voted for a third party and they stood by that vote of third party and we should live in a world where your vote for that third party should count . Let's like I yes , you should be able to vote your conscience .
But that being said , the other two first and second parties , they're one of them's going to win your third party . They're just not gonna . There's not .
Yeah , the electoral college kind of takes care of that .
Yeah , like that third party you're voting for isn't even on all the ballots of the other states , so don't do it .
And so the only way third party seems to win is on the local level , like up to you know governors . Maybe , if you're lucky , Right .
And so then the like so if that person would have had to vote for a one or two , they would have voted for one and not two . Well , two one , like well . And so I would tell her . So you ? She's like , oh , I vote for this third party . I'm like , oh , so you mean you meant you voted for the second party . She's like no , I vote the third party .
I'm like , yeah , but your vote actually helped the third party she gets so mad .
Just like King Kodos said way back in the day , I'll vote third party . Sure , throw your vote away . Ha ha , ha , ha ha . And it's Simpson's reference , king Kodos running for president . Pause , pause , pause pause .
Let's pause . Okay , are you there ? Yes , I was standing up and you probably didn't even hear , but , like I was , as I was sitting up , I yanked the cord out of my headphones , so all of a sudden it went dead silent and I couldn't hear anything , gotcha .
Nope , I don't think I was saying anything important during that time either . To be honest , cool 1977 . Howard is popular as hell and all of a sudden , disney comes calling with their Donald the Duck trademark in hand and says uh , we're here to sue . How about that Long story short ?
Uh , disney didn't like the fact that you know , two-legged talking duck was a little close to Donald , so they told Marvel that they need to change him up a little bit . And Marvel did eventually agree to follow a set of rules when drawing to Howard so he didn't look so much like Donald .
Uh , essentially they wanted Marvel to put pants on Howard and change the shape and color of Howard's head , bill , feet , eyes , toes and feathers so pretty much everything . Marvel said , okay , we'll do that . And that same year , actually , the glossy was going on . Howard the Duck is still incredibly popular .
So Marvel wanted to strike while the iron was hot and green lit Steve Gerber to do a comic strip for the newspapers . So right now we got a comic book and a newspaper strip that Steve Gerber is doing , and while this was good for fans of Howard the Duck and Steve Gerber because he got more money it was eventually going to be his downfall .
Because , you see , steve Gerber was not good with deadlines and was prone to turn in his work at the last minute possible . And while Marvel was able to work around this with the comic books a little bit , newspapers were absolutely unwilling to work with the late thing because they need to be on a very strict schedule .
Oh yeah because they got to be out daily at 6 am in the morning . They basically the newspapers went to Marvel and said this ain't working , get rid of that guy . So they did .
Yeah , it's like look man , we have deadline . We , you know we're not gonna stop the stop the presses because Howard the duck's late , yeah , yeah right , and you know Marvel .
They're only printing , you know , few hundred thousand issues or something . You know the New York Times , who's waiting for Howard the duck , is printing millions of issues , so that's very understandable . There's a lot of money there in the newspapers , especially back in the 70s , but that's where the last time was profitable .
Yeah , honestly , actually , what really killed off newspapers ? Craigslist . And that's because people start advertising on Craigslist instead of the newspapers , because the newspapers classified huge source of revenue for the newspapers , massive , yeah , yep . Advertising .
Newspapers back in the day was super expensive to like 100 bucks for a weekend ad in the Seattle Times kind of stuff . But that's what you had to do back then because there wasn't much else . Then Craigslist came along .
You could list all that stuff for free and newspapers send well shit because , yeah , apparently , from what I've heard , they made more off of the classifieds than they did off their advertising usually . Well , that makes sense . Gerber is released from the comic strip .
Gerber was pissed , so he decided to go make a big public stink and tell everybody how dumb that was and how much he hates Marvel for it . In fact , he made such a big stink about this that Marvel said you know , let's screw it , you're out of here to we're done with this by and they fired Gerber .
Gerber was even more pissed over this and only four more issues of Howard would run with Gerber gone . People apparently said that the quality of the series took a major nosedive and that's pretty much reason got canceled . Same with the comic strip .
It would get canceled shortly thereafter as well , and Howard the Duck would basically just hang on in 1979 for brief nine issue magazine series that ended 1981 . And then it would be another five years before he'd show up in another comic book . This magazine also is the first time he had sex with a human being . Fun side why ? Why ?
Because it probably sold a lot of issues People want to see . Duck on woman action .
Want to see something that's kind of bestiality , but not really .
Yeah , exactly , I mean going back to that John Waters episode . People were going up there to see , you know , educational sex films of people giving birth . So I mean I guess it's something . Hey , gotta see something , I guess . Well , all this was going on .
You know who became a huge fan of Howard the Duck , nate , the one and only master of the middle Chlorians , george Lucas . He was a huge fan of the character in the comics and he loved the humor .
He just loved the whole aesthetic of it and he read all the comics big fan got a Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill into it and thought to himself this would be a great movie , do excellent as movie . I would love to take this character and make it into a movie . In fact , after he's done doing Star Wars , george Lucas had two movie ideas he wanted to work on .
One was the Howard the Duck movie . The other one was a movie about an archaeologist who finds the Ark of the Covenant . Sound familiar ? Yep , he was down to two choices Howard the Duck or Indiana Jones . Why not ? Which one he picked first ?
The world will never know yeah actually he picked Howard the Duck first and wanted to do Howard the Duck before Indiana Jones . So he went to Marvel and said , hey , I want to get the rights to Howard the Duck . And they said we already sold those so many , buddy , sorry .
Turns out Marvel in kind of a dumb way because , you know , they didn't really know their licenses were really primed for movies back then . This packaged up a bunch of characters and sold them to Universal Studios , who's gonna make a series of made for TV movies and TV shows .
This package of characters was Howard the Duck , thor , hulk , miss Marvel , power man , iron Fist , doctor Strange , submariner , captain America and the Human Torch . The only movies that came out of this were the made for TV movies that you remember from the 70s that were just god awful .
You can find clips of them on YouTube that are just bad , and the only thing that really actually made it out of this whole package deal was the incredible Hulk TV series with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno . Back in the day , that sad watching movies , which , looking back , are also kind of bad , but I mean they're it was bad , but it was popular .
So , Right , I mean yes , yeah , and I remember watching it and being like Ooh a Hulk TV show neat as a little kid and watching and being like this is boring and dumb . I don't like this . But also I wasn't really the target audience .
I don't think back when I was seven , I didn't see , I think I missed a lot of the TV shows . I did see the TV movies , though the TV movies they did weren't great , but they also were better than the TV show . Yeah , the TV show is like . I still remember who was it ?
This one where we was a movie too Hulk went on trial and he had to , like they put Bruce Banner , or was it ?
That was , that was like the trial of Hulk in like 85 or something like that , that's how it was a movie Okay . Yeah , I think it was like a made for TV movie
¶ The Fate of Howard the Duck
.
I mean some of those , some of these . I mean some of the shows were just like oh , I want to buy a used car . This guy's kind of a dick to me . I'm going to Hulk now and throw a bunch of stuff around and it's like as much as Lou Ferrero is impressive . I mean I would be . He would handily hand me my ass , but he's not .
He's not something you're going to run in terror from the instant he gets mad . Really .
Yeah , I mean if he shows up , if he showed up in New York now as Lou Ferrigno , like Hulk , like , let's let's full green Hulk , Lou Ferrigno from the 70s , he started rampaging downtown . It'd be very unimpressive , it would be extremely unimpressive . He flipped the car .
Oh no .
He broke apart that particle board .
Oh no , he threw that water cooler at somebody . Oh no , look at the strength . He threw a 30 gallon jug of water , Whoo .
Yeah , I mean I again , they did what they did . They did what they could with they had back in the day . It's just mean yeah .
It's not like this was a high budget thing . This was very yeah , yeah , I mean say what I didn't see very much of that whole show . I saw maybe three episodes and I was like , yeah , I just remember and the whole goal and showed up for like maybe five minutes at the end . Usually there's usually a big speed walk around trying not to get mad .
Then he got mad and it's like but Lou Ferrero out there . Yeah , yeah , I mean , it's like well , we don't like you when you're angry , but we're not really terrified of you when you're angry either We'll just like jog away , because you don't look that fast .
So Howard's rights are wrapped up with Universal Studios , and Lucas turns his attention to Indiana Jones instead . Naturally , his fate has it . Almost right after Lucas gives up on Howard , his rights become available again . Universal Studios had major shifts in management . As a cost cutting measures , they gave up on the Marvel licenses .
So Marvel's got all these licenses back , and they know their some interest in Howard the Duck because George Lucas came asking about it . So they immediately flipped that license over to celluloid productions Celluloid spelled with an S , not a C , like you would think .
They were known for , apparently , at this point , for two things how to teach your baby to read and how to teach your baby encyclopedic knowledge , which appear to be those deals with a flashcard you shove in your kid's face while tape plays in the background .
Remember those where you'll just like say this , say this , and then you're just staring at it like huh , yep . Apparently , that's all they're known for at this point , and here they have the Howard the Duck license .
They did have a plan for Howard the Duck , though , is to be an episodic radio show that would broadcast on syndicated rock stations across the country and would be soon be followed by a feature length movie . Who would play Howard the Duck ?
Why none other than Jim Belushi , who at this point was mainly known , for course , starring with Michael Keaton in the show Working Stiffs and playing Bert Dunkel on the Scott Beow driven . Who's Watching the Kids in the late seventies ?
Also , I just realized , if you say change the name from who's Watching the Kids to who's Watching the Children , it sounds a little more malevolent .
It does . Yeah , which blue she was ? This is the one that died or the other one ?
Nope , this is the less talented , more asshole he won Jim . There's some stories about Jim blue she not being a real nice guy to be around . It's the one that he died . No , john blue she , the one that died , apparently was a cooler one . They might have both been D bags , but yeah , jim is the one that was in canine and okay , yeah .
He's the one I'm more familiar with . Yeah , he's the one we're more familiar with because you know he was alive during the 80s and 90s and raw deal and stuff with Schwarzenegger Right . I mean he was entertaining in the movies as far as I know , but I was never like a huge fan of his oh by no means .
Yeah , I would never even give him a thought , until he just happens to come up with a conversation .
Yeah , he plays a good smarmy jackass usually , but that's kind of because he is a smarmy jackass in life , a smarmy jackass who gets the girl somehow yeah . Yeah , somehow right when Jim blue , she was hired for the party even did some test reads and rumor have it .
There's an , even an entire episode that was recorded but never released and no one can really verify that . It's probably been lost to history , would be my guess . Celluload was far enough in the process that they even hired a movie production crew , including hiring the dude that did the Wookie costumes from the Star Wars holiday special .
His plans were to actually make Howard the Duck at a full puppet . Actually , no , no person in costume , no real animatronics , just more of a puppet kind of like wandering around Close to like the T sort of thing .
Yeah , that's , that's pretty like risky for back , especially back then . I mean I know it's not like , you know in the time where we're not like , but it's only the 70s or whatever I mean , but it's only the 2000s . But I mean , come on Like I don't know why they thought they'd have the technology to make that any work convincing . Yeah , no one in there .
Yeah , especially with a small company like Celluloid . It probably doesn't know what they're doing , because you know George Lucas at least he's got some pedigree or some big studios .
But well , I don't even think they they want to do that now . They'd be like oh , why would we do that ? We can use CG yeah .
Yeah , nowadays it totally be CG , unless they're going for , like , some puppet aesthetic .
We would still like you know , to have a life like I'm not saying there wouldn't be . You know , I'm sure they'd make some amazing progress , but ultimately I can't imagine a fully working robot would be convincing enough to prove it's like an actual character . I mean , yeah , it's a duck , so there's going to be some suspension of disbelief , but I don't know .
I think they shuffled the stars and missed .
Yeah Well , project didn't make it that far anyway .
So because for reasons unknown , it went nowhere , project was canceled , everybody fired and the problem was like no , no , it probably just exactly what I said Like oh wait , this is awful .
Nevermind . Yeah , or maybe Jim Belushi slept with the producer's wife .
Who knows Allegedly .
Yeah , allegedly , allegedly We'll just throw that in case he's listening Around . This time Steve Gerber gets wind of the fact that celluloid has the rights to his character and he's like , hey guys , that's my character , I need either some money or some creative control , or both preferably . So go get him lawyers .
So he sent his lawyers after Marvel and celluloid and was like , hey , you know , I need to be part of this . And apparently this lawsuit actually was kind of the first of its kind where a creator was suing over a company doing something with the rights of his character he created against his will .
So basically the entire comic community was really interested in this whole lawsuit , in fact to the point where the comic creator community also chipped in .
And there is a group of artists came together to create the Foug Friends of Old Gerber and they sold art prints to help with his legal fees to fight against Marvel and get the right , you know , get some control over his character .
And even legendary Jack Kirby did a comic series called Destroyer Duck with Gerber as part of a lawsuit Special lawsuit benefit edition . And so everybody's rallying around Gerber Pretty cool . Also one thing , one kind of fun thing you know Jack Kirby knows Gerber .
They were working on Thundar the Barbarian back in the early eighties together , a show which Gerber actually created . The creator of how to the Duck created Thundar the Barbarian . Huh , yeah , want to tie it around even more . Thundar the Barbarian was done by Ruby Spears Studios , the same guys who did the Mr T cartoon we talked about in the Mr T episodes .
We loop it around even more . So yeah , but yeah , kind of interesting . Jack Kirby and Steve Gerber were in Thundar the Barbarian . However , this lawsuit would go nowhere . Gerber would lose it for a couple of reasons .
The main reason he actually did not hold any legal rights to Howard the Duck , that contract we talked about earlier that he did not read so well . Yeah , when he became a full-time comic book writer for Marvel , he signed over the rights to Howard the Duck over to Marvel . Marvel was like hey , see this contract , we own the rights .
And also another thing is Gerber might have been able to pull it out in the end , but also Marvel's got a lot more money to throw at lawyers and Steve Gerber's lawyer bills are reaching about 150 grand at this point when he gave up and the comic book benefit only raised about 30,000 for him .
So Gerber couldn't afford to keep it up in court and basically just had to be like well , fine , you win whatever , walk away . Even more pissed , however , because he did make a big stink . Marvel did give him a pittance to shut up and go away . They're like here , take this money and just leave us alone .
No one really knows how much it is , but if you listen to Gerber , some of the interviews around that time , it was not much .
Well , they probably just gave him enough coverage , lawyer bills , I mean , I was .
Yeah , somebody said that . I saw some dude theorizing that in the end maybe Gerber walked away with 10 grand in his pocket out of everything . After all , his bills and everything were paid . If he's lucky , which Right ?
Let us be a lesson to you guys Always read your contract , yep , always read your contract If you're not sure it's worth it to pay a lawyer to look it over too , because it might be expensive . But they know what they're doing .
I mean just for all the artists out there .
If you're an artist and someone wants you to work with them , read the contract , because I mean you know no , for like Disney , for instance , this might have changed , but this is back in the day , when I was going to animation school , it was very widely known that if you work for Disney , then they owned anything you did while you were , even every little
doodle you would do , even if you just like doodle on a napkin during your lunch break .
I think they own that Exactly .
They own that too .
So just you know , while you're working under their , working for them if you have a character in mind , you do not share that with anybody until you leave .
Right . So yeah , that's . That's basically the gist of it .
Yep , yeah , disney is not a great company to work for at times , unless you're like an A list celebrity or something .
Yeah , if you're like the grunt , it's just like , okay , just .
Yep , you're just thrown into the grinding machine . Speaking of a man that knows about the grinding machine , steve Gerber . It's 1982 and he's out of the picture . On everything , celluloid has given up the rice to Howard the duck , so they're available
¶ George Lucas Making Howard the Duck
again . And who should show up ? George Lucas , who just got done wrapping up Last Jedi and Temple of Doom and now he needs another project to work on Me . Which other Jedi ? Yeah , what'd I say ? Last Jedi , oh , last Jedi . Yes , I did my bad . I wrote down Last Jedi . So Lucas get , yeah , totally different movie .
I , yeah , we fast forwarded many , two years ahead , many years ahead , good , 35 years too far ahead . So Lucas gets together with his friends Hiken Cats , a married couple who had worked previously with Lucas as writers on American Graffiti and Temple of Doom , and they were also worked on Star Wars the original Star Wars as uncredited script doctors .
Apparently , it is well known that they are the ones who worked the majority of Princess Leia's snarky dialogue . So if you hear of Leia One-Liner , it was probably written by Hiken Cats . This because this trio has such a nice pedigree . You know it's George Lucas and his buddies who worked on Star Wars and American Graffiti and Indiana Jones .
They go up to Marvel and they're like hey , can we buy the rights to Howard Douglass ? They're like you guys are so talented and awesome and such a big name , we're just going to give you the rights and let you do whatever you want with the movie . Now go make us proud . And George Lucas was like , right on , I like this , I like where this is going .
And then the trio said , hey , we got these movie rights in hand . We're going to go see what studio would like to buy this idea off of us or , you know , agree to produce it . And universally immediately just pop out screaming us , us , us , for the love of God , please , let us do it . George Lucas , oh , for the love of God , we love you so much .
The reason that they were so excited over this is because they actually passed on Star Wars a few years prior because they were concerned about budget problems . So they're like nope , george , we don't want to do Star Wars . And they realized how big they messed up and they did not want to mess up a second time .
Yeah , right , it's the best to begin a different way .
Yes , they did . So they're yeah , they literally just like George Lucas movie . How can we go wrong ? Well , there's a few ways they could go wrong . First of all , george Lucas . He wanted to see the Howard the Duck movie made and he kind of wanted to be a little bit of a producer and help out with it . But he didn't really want to make the movie .
He was just having a lot of burnout because he just got done with Star Wars franchise and working on Indiana Jones and all sorts of other stuff , busy with a Skywalker ranch , and he basically just wanted to be like hey , I'm going to get this all set up , hand it off to my buddies hiking cats and let them do everything . It'll be their movie .
They can have autonomy . But Universal was like haha , haha , haha , haha , george , we need your name on this . This is why we bought this from you . We need your name here . And George was like All right , I really don't like this because it's going to cheapen my friends' contributions to all this . But I guess if we have to , we have to . All right , fine .
Well , eugene , they should have seen that coming .
I mean the Universal , like you just said very clearly oh , we missed on Star Wars , now we went on this , we will on your next project , and so , yeah , I mean , if I were to Universal , I'd be irritated , like , okay , we signed this dude because of who he is and what he's done , and he's going to turn around and hand it to some other people .
That's fucked up . Yeah , pretty much .
Yeah , this universe . I could see how that would be too . Be like no , no , no , no . George Lucas , you're the one that sold it to us . Along with your friends , you're part of this . And also Universal was right too . That George Lucas name on the top of the marquee . That was gold at that point .
That was literally right up there with Spielberg's name being on something . You're just like Lucas movie . How can we lose ? Of course we'll go see it . It'll be great fun for the whole family , right and walking out what the hell are we to see . George Lucas just said okay , fine , put my name on there .
Trio sat down and decided to work out their idea for Howard the Duck . The first idea , best idea of all , sounded pretty awesome A fully animated , gritty , film noir style movie where Howard the Duck goes around solving crimes and making wisecracks along the way . Lucas , hiking , cast , all Great Howard would make the best as an animated movie .
No live action , all just completely hand-drawn , good , old-fashioned style animation . And their instincts were correct . Their instincts were 100% correct .
I would have loved to see that Because , as you're describing that , I was picturing how the duck in the style of the Spawn cartoon from HBO back in the day .
Oh yeah .
That would have been really good .
That would have been good . I was picturing almost like a Howard the Duck meets Sin City kind of thing in my head for some reason .
Well , even that , yes , the Spawn show wasn't that kind of show , but there were times when he was reading , like when Spawn was doing the inner monologue , it was that kind of thing . So yeah , you'd say , thing like Howard the Duck , you know , on top of building , on a rainy night narrating himself , kind of thing , Just like a really atmospheric , cool setup .
Yep , I dig it . That's what I pictured too , just something really nice and artistic flair . So Universal did not like this idea . They scrapped it right off the bat . Main reason because this was the first half of the 80s and animation was kind of at a low point of all time .
Here Disney wasn't making anything good really , don Bluth was just starting out and had secret of NIM , but you know , all dogs go to heaven was a few years out . Ducktales , quality , saturday morning cartoons was still a way off and we were still kind of rooted in the Hanna-Barbera level of animation that people were stuck in .
So that's kind of what everybody just associated cartoons with , was like , yeah , gonna be like a Hanna-Barbera thing . And Universal was like no , that sounds cheap , we don't want to do that . We need something that's going to be a big budget , a huge budget , something that'll allow people , and animation won't do that .
Plus , animation is expensive , we would lose a lot of money . Yeah , and another reason Universal wanted this to be live action , apparently due to a contract he signed in the early 70s . Lucas actually owed Universal a live action film .
Yeah , back in like 73 , he signed like a three picture deal with him and one of it was he had to release another live action film with him . So Universal pulled out that Uno reverse cars like , hey , look at this , you have to make this live action . So Luca said , all right , cool , we got to do some live action stuff .
Their next plan was to harness the power of Lucas's new computer animation division , the graphics group . Remember , graphics was kind of like a cool buzz term that made you think of computers . Yes , what's ?
the graph Yep , the graphics group was to bring Howard to the Duck to life as a CGI character alongside real actors and , as you can guess , the tech was not up to us enough for the time . In fact , the early CGI tests were so bad that the crew was fired immediately because they were just like this ain't working . Y'all get out of here and not terminated .
They were slet on fire .
They were literally let off fire . They were put in the parking lot , doused in gasoline , and the whole thing was recorded with a soundtrack put to it by John Williams , and they play that orientation ever since they had Lucas film studios . They're like you fail . This is what happens to you .
I was thinking more of the Yuckity Sack playing over .
As people just running around to park a lot on fire .
As they're writhing the flames .
of spit up , if you wanted a level of example of what CGI was doing back . Then you can check out the young Sherlock Holmes for the stained glass night scene . It was really cool for the time , but definitely not something you want to base a whole movie character around and literally that seems like 30 seconds or something like that .
Not something you want to do a whole movie with . Finally , their last idea was to call upon industrial light and magic and do the old fashion , to pop it up close and an actor in a costume route for far away shots Something they were quite familiar with .
After doing all them e-woks from Return of the Jedi , industrial light magic shows up and they're like all right , cool , we'll get working on a puppet Story . Wise , even though it was going to be like the puppet and live action people , they still wanted to stick with the gritty film noir style that they were talking about with the cartoon .
They actually wanted to shoot it in Hawaii and have it , as Howard already established , in the world as a crime . Solving duck Duck World wasn't going to be a thing because , well , duck World was actually something that came along later in the comic series .
So people who are like Lucas , who is a fan of the original run of comics Duck World wasn't really in their lexicon , so they're just like hey , you like the comics , howard's just going to be on earth . People are going to accept it as an established character and make it good that way . Oh and , side note , the producer Hike .
He admitted that they picked Hawaii just because they wanted to go to Hawaii for a vacation , shoot there and it'd be fun . So the movie was set in Hawaii . It was supposed to be set in Hawaii , or they wanted to go shoot it in Hawaii , but the actual movie takes place in Cleveland . But yeah , they never actually shot it in Hawaii , though , okay .
Yeah .
Universal did not okay the money to afford them to fly out to Hawaii . They're like no , you stay in California . Yeah , yeah yeah . Universal wasn't a big on the idea of the film noir aspect either . What they wanted was a big budget , special effects , latent comedy , adventure up with a big action finish .
Basically , they wanted to recreate Ghostbusters , which came out a few years earlier and blew up massively because Universal . They just sat down like , hey man , a Ghostbusters style movie with George Lucas heading it , that can only mean massive amounts of money , the likes of which we've never even thought of before .
Again , that did not happen , right , and they did . However , when developing the movie , they brought in Steve Gerber to give him some input on the movie , and here's kind of where vision is history kicks in , and this actually happens a couple of time with the movie .
Like before the movie was released , steve Gerber has some interviews like yeah , man , I'm working on this Howard the Duck movie , they're listening to my input , they're taking it all good and this probably going to be good . I can get behind this and endorse it .
After the movie's release , though , he would basically distance himself from the movie like no , no , no , no , no , they didn't listen to a damn bit of my input .
None of that is on me , that's all on them , which is kind of a something that happened with pretty much everybody involved in the movie , because everybody thought this movie was going to be a huge hit when it first came out to a large step back . Yep , exactly , no , no , no , no , no , no . I never thought that would be big . They all lied , though .
So , after everything is hammered out , in August 1985 , the movie was announced and , given a $30 million budget , which was the same as Ghostbusters , or about $80 million in today's cash , who is marketed as the next big thing is from George Lucas , indiana Jones , but with a duck .
And Lucas , again , wasn't a fan of this , because they're basically just making it sound like he had all sorts of control over it , which he really didn't .
Apparently , rumored stories vary , but I guess he was only on set for like two or three days and most of his work was just over the phone at advisement , them calling him and be like hey , you got any advice for this , george ? He'd be like meh , try this . So he really wasn't in that movie that much .
It's kind of like one of those things like let's call him up so we can say he's advised . Yeah , pretty much . Hey , hey , hey , george , should I wear my black shirt , jeans or shall I wear red shirt jeans Like oh I think you should do the black . Thanks , george .
Kill it , or possibly something even more banal like hey , George , in the meeting room , do you know where the coffee filters are ? I think you were the last one to have them the other day , oh no .
Well , austin , I'll send a courier over to give you some more coffee filters . Oh , thank you , executive producer .
¶ Production Crew and Casting Issues
So now on to the production crew and casting , which is a big ordeal by itself . First problem was Howard's animatronic puppet itself . See , the crew had been working on it for seven months and then , with three months left and shooting , they realized they had like nothing done on this puppet .
In fact they had a very yeah right , they had seven months and they still basically really had nothing . And they realized they had three months left and said , oh crap , we need to get a fire lit under us . Yeah , I don't know how you go . Seven months and barely have anything going ?
Yeah , but they weren't trying . Yeah , I mean , the only excuse I could say is like it wouldn't stop rampaging . Okay , yeah , I get it . I can see why you're having problems . But otherwise the costume is just kicking everybody's ass . We've lost 12 people so far . Let's media stop .
There's just this giant barred up door on the stairs . It's like don't open , duck inside .
Every iteration gets thrown in there . We don't , we don't deactivate it . We're hoping they eventually will kill themselves . I think they're starting to work together .
Yeah right , we think that they're actually making plans together . This isn't good . So this is actually where having George Lucas as a friend came in handy , as they actually this one time they called him up and like George help . So he sent out some buddies of his who were actually really good at working in puppets .
First was Tim Rose from the Star Wars franchise . This was the dude who's in charge of all the close up shots of Admiral Ackbar and Salacious Crumb and the oddly fuckable size noodles from the band and return to the Jedi . Second was another man who is an amazing animatronic creation .
I think that says more about you than Stas Doodles . Oh , it absolutely does . I think you just get you just leaked out what your type is .
Oh yeah , I know I just picture my parents back in like 1987 , be like , wow , you sure watching that one part of this movie a lot Damn . We're running low on lotion and toys all the time , sean , we're all the Kleenex going to good God . That was like a box in a day . Why is our tape worn out from rewinding it so much at this point ?
Hey , hey , check out this playboy I don't know For body was rounder and had longer legs and arms . I don't need her mouth to be a lot longer . She's trying to drink something far away . Yes , you're pretty much right on , actually .
So , moving on from my perversions , second man that Lucas summoned by his black magic was another amazing animatronic creator , ted Znosky , who created Huggle from Labyrinth a pretty awesome character overall . Oh damn , that's actually good yeah .
And basically Howard the .
Duck and the last man was put together by the dude who did Animal Act , bar and Huggle . That's , that's . That's that's that in all star team .
Oh yeah , I mean , I'll go bet ass . I love Huggle .
And they both use the exact same set that Howard the Duck did , which was , you know , puppets for like animatronic puppets really up close shots and a person in costume for far away , so these guys knew how to get that done .
I think this is a fun and dandy place to take a break with this episode , even in next week when we continue our Howard the Duck talk , where we discuss what Oscar winning actor was slated to play Howard , which cast member was set on fire Nate's favorite turtle and find out why one of the actors was banned from the movie premiere for the stupidest reason you
can imagine . You'll want to be here for that . It's really something . Trust me All , then . So much more on the next off off topic .