- I love intricate heists.
They're at the center of some of my favorite
movies, TV shows, and yes, comic books.
What if I told you that the character of Howard the Duck
was stolen from Marvel comics almost two decades ago
and nobody noticed?
And the plan was brilliant.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Comic Misconceptions,
the show that takes you into detail
about the things you think you know about comics.
I'm your host, Scott Niswander.
And Howard the Duck has made a recent splash again
in the media thanks to something
that I'm not going to spoil for anybody.
But I probably just did by insinuating
that it was a spoiler.
Look, I gave you guys a couple weeks.
Just yell at me in the comments.
And in this video I wanted to talk
about one of my favorite stories
from behind the scenes of comic books:
the time that Howard the Duck was stolen from Marvel.
Before we get started though, a quick heads up,
I will be talking about characters that could be considered
a little more obscure than normal.
So to make it as simple as possible,
I'm going to just not touch on anybody's back story
'cause that could take one forever, I could be here all day.
But also, that would be a little bit
more confusing than we need.
You really just need to know names
and what people look like, we'll show you pictures.
We're just gonna simplify our lives
so we can enjoy the wonderful story
of the great Howard the Duck heist.
Howard the Duck is a Marvel character that was created
in 1973 by Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik.
He's a walking, talking duck from a planet
known as Duckworld which exists in an alternate dimension
which is similar to ours, except that ducks
evolved into be the dominant, intelligent form of life.
He's also mainly synonymous
with the 1986 Lucasfilm movie of the same name,
of which critics are saying, "It really is that bad."
But it's important to note that
if you create a Marvel comic book character,
it doesn't matter how much work you put into it,
Marvel owns it, not you.
So it wasn't long before co-creator Steve Gerber
had a conflict with Marvel about who owned
the creative rights to the character.
To fund his lawsuit against the comic book giant,
Gerber went to Image Comics,
which is a publication for creator-owned comics,
and created Duke the Destroyer Duck.
Ultimately, the rights of Howard the Duck did go to Marvel,
and Steve Gerber stopped working for them altogether.
We now jump to the year 1995 when Steve Gerber
hadn't really written a Howard the Duck story
or even a Destroyer Duck story in many moons.
He was actually getting ready to reintroduce Destroyer Duck
into the comic books when he got a call from Marvel
asking if he wanted to do another Howard the Duck story.
This time he would be teaming up with Spider-Man.
Gerber enthusiastically replied, "No."
You see, he was worried that the Spider-Man/Howard the Duck
crossover comic book would overshadow
the Destroyer Duck/Savage Dragon crossover comic book
that he was hoping to soon put out.
But Erik Larsen, the creator of Savage Dragon,
coaxed Gerber into it by offering the idea
that it would all be one giant crossover.
So Spider-Man and Howard the Duck
would crossover over here at Marvel,
and then Savage Dragon and Destroyer Duck
would crossover here, and then they would all meet together
in one giant crossover.
Neither one of them thought that Marvel
would actually agree to this, but they did!
And Gerber went on to write an awesome crossover
that crossed between two different comic book publishers.
Sounds exciting, right?
Well, here's where the problems start to set in.
Gerber caught wind that after his triumphant return
to Howard the Duck, Marvel would sanction other stories
involving the character to be written by other people.
Gerber was furious that Marvel would just use him
to bring the character back onto the shelves,
only then to dump him for other writers.
So he and Larsen came up with a genius idea
to steal back the character of Howard the Duck
using the very comic book that Marvel asked for.
So in the comic book crossover event,
the villain of the story is Melf a.k.a. the Elf with a Gun.
It's an elf with a gun.
Don't question too much about it.
In the Marvel comic book, Melf goes to the home
of another Marvel villain known as Ringmaster.
He uses a hypnotic disk on his top hat
to mind control people.
Melf shoots Ringmaster to steal this hypnotic disk,
but he doesn't grab it, and instead it's sent to evidence
when the police show up to the crime scene.
But there was a shipping error in evidence,
and the hypnotic disk was sent to Chicago
to Savage Dragon in the Image Universe.
Melf calls Dragon and asks him to meet him
in a warehouse in Cleveland and deliver the disk.
Dragon agrees under the condition
that he can bring Duke the Destroyer Duck along.
Meanwhile in Cleveland,
Howard the Duck and his girlfriend, Beverly,
are planning on going to a circus.
The same circus that Spider-Man came to Cleveland
to investigate due to the Ringmaster being shot.
The same circus that takes place in a warehouse
that Melf asked Savage Dragon and Duke to come to.
So you can kinda see how everything is coming together now.
They're all at this one warehouse.
The conflict plays out pretty much the same
in both comic books, just from different perspectives.
Except one thing.
In the Savage Dragon/Destroyer Duck comic book,
Duke and Howard bump into each other
and notice that they're both ducks.
This prompts Melf to start spawning hundreds and thousands
of anthropomorphic ducks inside of this warehouse.
In the chaos, everybody gets away
and kinda goes their separate ways.
But here's the brilliance of it all.
In the Marvel comic book, we see that Spider-Man
leaves the warehouse with Howard and Beverly.
But in the Image comic book, we see that Duke
grabbed the real Howard the Duck
and says that Spider-Man actually took off with a clone.
Dragon and Duke whisk Howard away to the Image Universe
where he dyes his feathers, changes his clothes,
and enters the witness protection program
under the assumed name of Leonard the Duck.
Let me just explain it again really quickly,
in case you're not understanding
how genius this actually is.
So characters from the Image Universe
go to the Marvel Universe, take Howard the Duck
back to the Image Universe, leaving a clone in his place.
So that means that after this story in 1996,
every appearance of Howard the Duck afterward
has been a soulless clone.
That is amazing!
Steve Gerber took back the character
that he fought so hard for,
and Marvel likely didn't even notice.
Then in 2008, Steve Gerber died.
Probably from laughing so hard
at what he'd just accomplished.
Since then, Marvel has not gone back
to take the real Howard the Duck from the Image Universe.
Probably because they don't accept it as canon.
I cannot tell you how much I enjoy this story!
But I wanna know what you guys think about it.
Is this an awesome, sweet heist?
Or maybe, in your opinion, does it not count
and Howard the Duck is still in the Marvel Universe?
Let me know in the comments.
And as always, if you liked what you saw, please subscribe.
We do comic book videos just like this every Wednesday,
and we don't want you to miss out on any of it.
And why not go check out the NerdSync Podcast.
This week, we interviewed Arris Quinones from Variant
and found out he's just the coolest guy.
Go check that out on iTunes, Stitcher,
and right here on YouTube.
Once again, I'm Scott.
You can find me on Instagram and Twitter,
and we'll see you right here next week
for more things that you thought you knew about comics.
See ya!
Peter is outraged and rightfully so.
He had gone his whole life believing in alien life
only to be ridiculed, and now that he finally has proof,
he's still treated like garbage.
So he decides to take the mantle of Star-Lord by force.
A lot of force.
He gets cornered and the guards all shoot at him in unison.
When the smoke clears, they believe that the lasers
have vaporized Peter Quill out of existence.
But that is not the case.
The moment they shot at him was the same moment
that a Star-Lord had to be chosen.