HOWARD THE DUCK MAKES NO SENSE DIVORCED FROM CONTEXT

[breakinglight11]

Apparently they're going to be making a Howard the Duck TV series? Really, Marvel? You don't have enough going on that you have to go to THAT well too? UGH.

I've never been a fan, but that's not why I think it's a dumb idea. I was so annoyed when he showed up in that Guardians of the Galaxy stinger. I grouse about this any time anybody talks about the idea of the character being brought back in a modern work.

Howard the Duck is designed to be a parody, specifically of the "Funny Animal" genre of comics, of which characters like the Looney Tunes are examples. Llike many parodies, the central conceit of Howard relies on having that very specific cultural context in order for the satire to "read" or make any kind of sense. But we have so little presence of "Funny Animals" of the style Howard references in our current media— it's very much OUT of style now —I don't think most people are still familiar enough with it. The only real presence it currently has in modern pop culture is Mickey Mouse and his crew; in fact, I think Donald is the most direct inspiration for Howard. But even they've grown past a lot of the old conventions of their genre such that I don't think most people really recognize them.

Maybe the resurgeance of the new Duck Tales show will re-ground people in it. Though again, everything in present pop culture that grew out of the "Funny Animal" genre has changed a LOT. What the fuck would Howard even be about without that element of parody? I mean, a HUGE chunk of the joke was mocking the convention of "why is this person randomly an animal and nobody thinks that's weird" you so often found in the old comics? My guess is that it'll become a generic parody of children's cartoon media, like Duckman kind of was. But that seems dull to me; Howard isn't that interesting a character, and that just seems like a recipe to play up the crassest aspects, falling back on "Haha, isn't it funny that this guy who looks like a children's character is horny and swears and smokes cigars?"

So I really don't know what artistic perspective they could have for the character that's going to make sense. Do enough people really like fucking Howard the Duck to make it worth doing as a cash thing? Because I can't imagine what VISION somebody would have for him at this point. Comedy is the fastest of all forms to age, and parody goes with it once people forget what's being parodied. (See: Gilbert and Sullivan's "Patience," which if you've never understood that musical, that's why.)

Comments

[lillibet]

I don't have a duck in this race, but I wonder what you think about the new Pikachu movie with Ryan Reynolds doing a similar schtick--cute "animal" who's actually a hard-boiled horndog if you could only understand what he's saying.

[jducoeur]

Soooo, as a passionate fan of the original (comic, that is, not the idiotic movie), which was a formative experience of my early adulthood, I have to disagree with you pretty strongly here.

HtD, in its original conception, had precious little to do with funny-animal comics or shows -- maybe a *little* more to do with Looney Tunes, but only because Looney Tunes was more subversive than folks give it credit for being. The relationship was strictly incidental, though: there was never much indication that those comics were relevant aside from a little initial inspiration.

At heart, Howard was very strongly *political* and *cultural* satire, with a strong element of satirizing the comics of its day, blended with a level of absurdism that had never really been seen in mainstream comics before. (And not often since.) Plain and simply, it was the *weirdest* thing being published, as well as just about the most *adult* thing being published in the mainstream at the time. Comparing it to kids' television almost entirely misses the point: there's a reason they tried switching it to an R-rated magazine for a little while. (The only other book to receive that treatment was Dracula.)

Funny Animal comics were pretty well dead at the time when Howard first came out, but using animal characters for satire was very much in: for example, Howard is roughly contemporaneous with Cerebus the Aardvark, which (for its first 114 issues, before Dave Sim lost his mind) was one of the sharpest satirical stories being told. It was never really comedy in the funny-haha sense; it was satire in funny-ouch sense -- definitely some humor, but typically pitch-black.

As for his funny-animal-ness, that was kind of the point: Howard was the eternal outsider, stuck in a world that he didn't belong to, acidly observing the bizarre ways of the hairless apes he was surrounded by while trying not to admit that he wasn't really any better himself. He was the truest of misanthropes, with a privileged position for that attitude.

So if they're smart, they will remember that Howard has always been there for *satire*, not parody. It should be absurd, acidic, satirical of the current state of Marvel, and sharply aimed at human foibles in all their glory. (Basically a sharper and less bonkers version of Deadpool, which is the only thing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that remotely feels like classic Howard.)

Mind, I *expect* that it'll be terrible, and is probably inspired mainly by the recent, softer-edged version of Howard in the comics. But there's a real niche for a great show there, if they were to do it right...