2 out of 5

Guh.

So: I’ve only ever owned one issue of HTD magazine, due to its dubious ties to creator’s rights and what not (I was reading Howard for Gerber… I don’t really just follow characters around), but, as with my browse through the oeuvre of “Strip,” I think I’ve seen enough excerpts from other issues to get the gist.

Which is: that Mantlo didn’t.  And seriously – I tried to look at this as a separate entity from Gerber’s Duck, because I’m sure that’s how Mantlo was handling it also, but if anything, that makes it more grating.  As a follow-up to Steve, you could say this was a writer trying to blend cynicism with social commentary in the vein of Gerber but with their own interests and I guess, yeah, that’s what it was, but the cynicism turned to unimaginative humor (Steve’s offense at Howard’s origin being tied to a Duckworld out of principle is fine, but actually try reading the thing – it’s like the Scary Movie of comic parodies.  Why would they use the phrase “it’s a duck eat duck world” in a world full of ducks?  And having celebrities appear in duck form is not really funny the first time… nor the hundred times after) and the social commentary turned into a soapbox.  Steve would definitely tip the scales sometimes into preaching (the whole MAX series, for example), but Howard – and Gerber – were at their best when it was soul-searching, and that’s not something Mantlo does very well.  Instead, there’s a big hippie vibe to the mag (and the back-ups), so instead of opening a dialogue about freedom of thought, it’s the force-fed “open your mind” b.s. that’s actually just another load of “open your mind to my way of thinking.”

Now I am, in part, being hard on Mantlo.  Given the extra pages, Mantlo’s pacing is better than the norm for the era – scenes mostly lead logically from one to the next – and while the dialogue might be pretty conceptually base, it’s no worse than your average 70s / 80s semi-pompous comic voice, and occasionally rolls into a more natural sound.  Still, technically doing something a right way doesn’t mean it’s the best way, and in writing, it doesn’t make the stories automatically interesting.  So the mag is a fail.  There’s a new logo, perhaps in an attempt to differentiate itself from the Howard of yore (not to mention the fun timing of being required to put the duck in pants), and it feels dated, instead of the bold forward momentum of the original Howard logo – and then there’s the pointless use of Howard himself – he could be anybody in the book – Bev could be any girl, they’re just empty constructs that happen to be in the story.  I suppose that if I didn’t have the original character to compare to, I would just brush this off as a funny animal book written by a long-hair.  So you’re right, I can’t completely separate it from Gerber’s version.  But I would like to be clear that I’d be brushing it off either way.

I’m allotting this an extra bump to 2 because of the art – between Gene Colan and Val Mayerik and Mike Golden – there were just some great lookin’ stories in here with some really unique layouts, and the magazine format had a pretty deep scale for its black and white printing, meaning that the range on the inks really brings the images out in a way that older 70s color books sometimes didn’t, especially now with age on the page.

Mehh.