Howard

When you’ve been a comic book fan for as long as I have, you start to see the repetition of ideas and concepts within the medium; it’s just inevitable when you have a never-ending publication cycle. As such, events like “Civil War II” usually make me tune out because I’ve been there and seen that before. So, when a book like Chip Zdarsky and Joe Quinones’ “Howard the Duck” rolls along, I’m drawn to it like a duck to wet bread. Since page one, the creators have given us some of the most bizarre and offbeat stories at Marvel Comics, throwing a friendly middle finger to the convention of modern comics publishing while finding a way to humiliate Spider-Man in almost every issue. The series is chock-full of the unexpected, and it continues that tradition in “Howard the Duck” #9, where Lea Thompson guest stars as herself and helps Howard fight Mojo. If that sounds insane, that’s because it is. Zdarsky and Quinones are out in left field, and they’re owning it. The first volume of the serie

Zach Howard has been producing art for some of entertainment’s biggest companies, working on projects like Shaun of the Dead, Spiderman, X-Men, G.I. JOE, and Batman along the way being nominated for an Eisner award and multiple indie awards. In this series, fans get a behind-the-scenes look at his process of creation. Volume 1 focuses on the critically acclaimed series Wild Blue Yonder providing pages of preliminary pencils and finished inks. “Zach Howard…just crush(es) it. Wild Blue Yonder is stunning beyond belief. The dirt and grit of the world clings to the characters. This is a lived-in universe, a place where you can see the wear and tear on nearly everything.” –IGN

Join Chip (Zdarsky) and Joe (Quinones) as they say goodbye to Howard in a Very Special Issue that is still priced as a Regular Issue! Can Howard outwit fate? Can any of us? Or is the concept of predestination just shorthand for the near-infinite factors in play that are guided, at their core, by free will? Guest-starring Spider-Man, probably.

• The person behind all of Howard’s troubles is revealed! Who could it be? Is it Spider-Man? Wolverine? Thor? Ms. Marvel? Am I just mentioning these characters on the off chance that some retailers will just skim the catalogue looking for character names and will accidentally order this? • Who knows???

• Howard is back in NEW YORK CITY! And on his strangest case yet: A missing person! His client? The missing person! WHAAA-? • Join us as Howard encounters aliens, Brooklyn and network television with a SPECIAL GUEST STAR so SHOCKING that I am STILL SHOCKED that we’re ALLOWED TO DO THIS. • SERIOUSLY.