Destroyer Duck Day!

Steve Gerber was born on tomorrow's date in 1947. Gerber made his fame with his creation of Howard the Duck in the pages of Man-Thing for Marvel. Howard was a sensation in the mid-70's, even putting forth a satirical run for President. (I prefer him to the mope currently malingering in the office.) Gerber famously sued Marvel for some financial considerations for Howard's success when the company attempted to get into the movies. This effort was supported by other professionals, lead among them Jack "King" Kirby who was having his own battles with the House of (Mostly His) Ideas. 

One of the grand comic books of the 80's was the totally in-your-face satire named Destroyer Duck. The comic started out as a method by which like-minded talents (Jack Kirby, Alfredo Alcala, Mark Evanier, Joe Staton, Sergio Aragones, among others) donated their time and talents to produce a story written by Steve Gerber who at that point in time was in a legal dispute with the Marvel machine over the ownership of Howard the Duck.

The debut story is about that struggle directly and hilariously as we meet Duke Duck, an ally of the "Little Guy", a small duck who gets sucked into a distant dimension where he is exploited and killed by Godcorp. Duke ends up going to this other world and kicks Godcorp butt. After this one-shot though it was deemed smart to do more Destroyer Duck stories and Gerber and Kirby and Alcala kicked out four more issues before seven issue series was taken over by Buzz Dixon and Gary Kato. Duke has showed up  a few times since, in the pages of Total Eclipse in the late 80's and the Image one-shot guest-starring with Savage Dragon in the late 90's. Surely there's an audience for these bizarre tales of the "Marauding Mallard of Vengeance".

But that's not all. 


Above is the envelope featuring the great artwork of Jack Kirby and Alfredo Alcala. This holds some dandy artwork. Here's a description from the website The Gerber Curse:

"In 1982, Dave and Deni Sim published a portfolio called "F.O.O.G.", which stood for "Friends Of Old Gerber," to help raise funds for Gerber's legal battle. The project, which was initiated without Gerber's knowledge (he says he hadn't even met Dave and Deni Sim), featured 10 black and white plates (11" x 14") by Bernie Wrightson, Mike Kaluta, Charles Vess, Wendi Pini, Jeff Jones, Barry Smith, Marshall Rogers, Frank Thorne, Gene Colan, and Dave Sim, which came in a Duke "Destroyer" Duck envelope illustrated by Kirby and Alcala."

Below are some scans of that artwork. I am lucky to have one of these portfolios. It's a real bit of comics history. Note that the scans are pretty much as is, and do not expand much when you click on them. Sorry about that.

Dave Sim
Barry Windsor-Smith
Mike Kaluta
Gene Colan
Berni Wrightson
Marshall Rogers
Jeff Jones
Wendy Pini
Charles Vess
Frank Thorne
Hubba Hubba!

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Kong The Untamed!

Prehistoric cave folk fascinate us. We only know them from fragments of their bones and in some cases a few remnants of tools and drawings on cave walls. That said, there have been quite a few cave man heroes over the years. Kong the Untamed was DC 's 70's attempt to give life to the genre. Under a fantastic Berni Wrightson cover, we see the birth of Kong and the tragic expulsion of his mother and the babe from the Cro-Magnon tribe. 

The saga of Kong was written by Gerry Conway and drawn in its first three issues by Alfredo Alcala. It's his usual lush style and well suited to this type of story. Kong the Untamed was just one of several titles that DC launched in the mid-70's to take advantage of the popularity of Conan the Barbarian at Marvel. 

Where Kong went an earlier effort by Howie Post had walked before. DC's most famous caveman is Anthro and in later attempts at continuity he is linked to Kong. Anthro's stories were much more light-hearted than the savage story Conway and Alcala tell. 

The 70's proved an interesting time for fans of cave man lore. Charlton had been publishing Pat Boyette's Korg:70,000 B.C., which was based on a TV show of same name. 

As mentioned with the passage of time, Kong the Untamed is one of the few characters from this wave of adventure comics to get a page in DC's Who's Who. 

Kong is a resilient young man, who is able to do something no one in his former tribe had been able to do --make fire. But that was small comfort for the pain of losing his mother and his banishment. As it turns out the Neanderthal who is prominently featured on the first cover becomes a fan of Kong and the two team up to live in the cruel outside world. Berni Wrightson drew both the first and second covers -- both outstanding. 

Kong and Gurat find a hidden valley after an earthquake and in that valley. they find dinosaurs. This undermines the realism but amps up the action. Bill Draut takes over the cover art duty. 

Kong is now living with a more advanced culture, but one ruled by a cruel matriarchy. Something in Kong's noggin thinks this is not right. Gurat turns up again. But issue four though Alcala was gone and was replaced by the team of Tony Caravana and Jo Ingente Jr. 

The story takes an even more dramatic turn when the dino-riders who rescued Gurat attack the matriarchal culture that is drawing so much disdain. David Wenzel and Bill Draut draw the final issue which isn't a cliffhanger but does leave many of its long-term plot threads unresolved. 

Kong the Untamed was a pleasant surprise. The Alcala art is always great, but the story was unusually reasonable, though as with any series there are lots of coincidences to make the machine hum efficiently. Conway seemed to be headed somewhere with this one, but it's hard to tell how far down the road he got. 

Next time we go to The Ends of the Earth with Wonder Woman. 

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Get Thee To A Rookery!

I was a Warren fan at just the right moment to latch onto The Rook by Bill DuBay and Luis Bermejo. As the collection notes, these are stories "from the pages of Eerie", a magazine which at this point in time shifting away from the one-off horror tales which had defined it as a younger version of Creepy. Eerie was giving the world offbeat heroes from across the span of space, time, and imagination, many with a decidedly anti-heroic nature. One of the good guys was Restin Dane, a handsome swashbuckling adventurer who just also happened to be a marvelous inventor and who became master of time travel.

(Gulacy's cover as published -- minus the fabulous details.)

The first stories of The Rook saga are far and away the best. In these stories, collected under an robust Paul Gulacy cover presented for the first time in all its detailed glory, we meet Restin and his ancestor Bishop Dane, his robot assistant Manners, and others who fill the rough and tumble adventures with heart and specific character. These stories have the whipsaw charm that time travel stories can deliver with twists and turns coming at a breakneck pace.

If you read no other Rook stories, read these presented in The Rook Archives Volume 1. These are the ones which fixed the character into the popular imagination. He would become arguably for a time Warren's most popular character and his run only ended when his creator Bill DuBay left Warren for other climes.

The second volume of The Rook Archives is quite good as we continue to follow the temporal-challenging adventures of Restin Dane and his cohorts. But the gloss is beginning to come off the creation just a bit. There is a certain formula which is settling in to the story telling which cuts against the freshness which had marked the earliest issues. Also attempts at comedy fall a bit short of hitting the mark and that always leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Among the highlights in this tome are a beautiful story drawn by the incomparable Alex Nino. Also quite strong is the final story entitled "Quarb and the Warball" which revives the uncanny sense of time travel  and also is based to some extent on fan ideas. Luis Bermejo does an absolute fantastic job on Bill DuBay's script.

The crossover with the Vampirella magazine is a focus of this volume and it's a perfectly good story, but not the best in the volume by any measure, save for the ability to look at the lovely Vampi and her associate Pantha.

With the third volume of The Rook Archives we see the end of the first phase of Rook adventures. Luis Bermejo leaves the strip and to my eye much of the charm which he brought to the characters especially the lovely ladies is lost. Stepping in to fill that void are capable artists like Alfredo Alcala, Jim Starlin, and Jim Janes, but none of these captures the fragile essence of the Rook. We get instead stories which seem interchangeable in many sci-fi comics.

Also there becomes a fixed story telling notion that Restin Dane, the titular Rook will act alone while in a parallel story his elder Bishop Dane and his robot Manners travel lines that will ultimately intersect with the primary story, if not directly then thematically. Frankly it seems that after establishing the cast in the earliest stories, Bill DuBay doesn't quite know how to manage them all. He clearly wants to move on from the Alamo stories, but can't seem to drop the cast. The girls especially have almost nothing to do and disappear entirely in certain tales.

The advent of Lee Elias is a good move as his lush black lines go far to recall the Bermejo original artwork. But for most of this volume he  is not present. It's fun sci-fi with that specific Warren flavor, but nothing in these stories really says "Rook".

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Destroyer Duck - Graphite Edition!

As it did with Captain Victory and Silver Star, Twomorrows Publishing has created a "Graphite Edition" of one of Jack Kirby's oddest 80's comics. In conjunction with Steve Gerber who first created Destroyer Duck, Kirby and Alfredo Alcala produced the pages in the original comic to help Gerber defray his legal expenses. 

He needed the money to continue his lawsuit against Marvel Comics for a piece of Howard the Duck. The lawsuit had been percolating for a time and Gerber was going to have to abandon it for lack of funds until some of his colleagues got together created a "Special Lawsuit Benefit Edition". 

And so, we get one of the grand comic books of the 80's, the totally in-your-face satire named Destroyer Duck. The comic started out as a method by which like-minded talents (Jack Kirby, Alfredo Alcala, Mark Evanier, Joe Staton, Sergio Aragones, among others) donated their time and talents to produce a comic with various features, but headed by Gerber's and Kirby's Destroyer Duck. Goo the Wanderer by Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones debuted in this little Eclipse comic too.

The debut story is about that struggle directly and hilariously as we meet Duke Duck, an ally of the "Little Guy", a small duck who gets sucked into a distant dimension where he is exploited and killed by Godcorp Ltd., a soulless organization which lives up to its credo of "Grab it all! Own it all! Drain it all!" (Remind you of anyone we know?) Duke ends up going to this other world and kicks some Godcorp butt. 

(Kirby with Neal Adams embellishment.)

After this one-shot though it was deemed smart to do more Destroyer Duck stories and Gerber and Kirby and Alcala kicked out four more issues before seven issue series was taken over by Buzz Dixon and Gary Kato. Duke has showed up a few times since, in the pages of Total Eclipse in the late 80's and the Image one-shot guest-starring with Savage Dragon in the late 90's. Surely there's an audience for these bizarre tales of the "Marauding Mallard of Vengeance".

 (Frank Miller)

Destroyer Duck is far from prime Kirby comics, but even his worst have charm. Tomorrow, something different. 

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