Lullaby of Duckland

As I've said before (and will say again, I promise) I love Howard the Duck. It's an unreasonable and unconditional love. I even have a certain fondness for the 1986 movie and, let's face it ... it's kinda crap.

Worse, the movie's failure essentially scuttled the Duck at Marvel for a decade. Even after he began his slow emergence his appearances were scattered. You have to really be paying attention to find out he had returned, at all. I mean, really ... how many people expected to see Howard and Beverly pop up in Generation X?

The Duck has also been victim of scare reprints. The inexpensive B&W Essential trade is out of print and in its place is a color (and very expensive) omnibus edition. I'm not sure if his various other appearances (such as the Ty Templeton mini) have ever been collected.

Lost in the shuffle are the Howard the Duck newspaper strips from the 1970s. Lucky for us some diligent folks have intervened. Here is a website where you can download most (if not all) of those strips in PDF and CBR formats. Folks like Steve Gerber, Val Mayerik, Gene Colon and Paul Kupperberg contributed to these strips.

Check them out!