Howard the Duck Magazine Ad - Marvel

Marie Severin rules, even when drawing a sexy chick with a duck's face.

Howard the Duck Magazine Ad - Marvel

A nifty ad, promoting the short-lived Howard the Duck b/w magazine.

I love that weird-looking(even by Howard standards) guy on the lower left giving us all the a-ok sign.

Howard The Duck #1 - Marvel

Marvel figured that Howard the Duck's audience was older than their standard color line, so why not go after them more precisely and make Howard a magazine star? They cancelled the color comic in May 1979 and debuted this a few months later.

The cover painting is by Gary Hallgren, and there's an inside pin-up by Peter Ledger, which does double duty as part of the cover logo.

The opening tale is "Fowl of Fear" by Bill Mantlo and the unusual art team of Michael Golden and Klaus Janson. You wouldn't think that Golden's smooth, cartoony style would mesh well with Janson's rough, scratchy inking style, but to my eyes they make a superb team; Janson gives Golden's look a little tougher edge(along with some beautiful wash work), and yet Golden's inherent superb storytelling abilities still show through. In fact, Golden and Janson manage to make the incredibly silly story look as dramatic as any Marvel-style epic:
The story involves Howard, his buxom girlfriend Bev, and their friend Lee just after their run-in with the villanous Dr.Bong(in Howard The Duck #31) as they stumble upon a host of weirdos that would've fit quite well in a Preacher storyline.

There's a second chapter, entitled "The $64,000 Desperado", written by Mantlo but with art by Gene Colan and Bob McLeod. Here they meet Jackpot, the one-armed supervillain, who is just barely sillier than a lot of the "straight" villains running around in Marvels at the time.

Colan and McLeod make a great team, and McLeod adds a wonderfully detailed realism to Colan's work, so that you end up with panels like this one--a beautifully, realistically rendered talking duck.

Chapter Three is called "From Hell It Cometh...Chair-Thing!", by Mantlo, Colan, and Dave Simons, where they meet a giant evil, sentinet couch. Mantlo was hitting for the fences with these stories, and he maintains a light-as-air tone here, so that all this silliness seemed inspired instead of tiresome.

I had never read these issues before, and while I knew that Marvel had always pushed the envelope in regards to the, er, close relationship between Howard and Bev, here they decided the hell with it:
Can you imagine DC or Marvel trying to get away with this now? I think if the Howard the Duck movie had worked this angle, it would've been the smash hit of 1986.

A really fun issue, with a fun story, great art, and beastiality. Excelsior!