Process XVII

"Hello, Cleveland."
Alters #4
(Aftershock Comics, 2017)

We’re reading the Paul Jenkins/Leila Leiz comic Alters for class this week, the third notable comic to take place in Cleveland, Ohio, after American Splendor and Howard the Duck. It is also notable in that the protagonist is a trans woman superhero, named Chalice.

Last week we took in the Iceman comics which delved into his life as a gay man, which was queer as in strange (as they say.) It is often an odd fit when an long-established character is rewritten to have a sexual orientation contrary to previous expectations.

So, yeah. We’ve moved onto queer superheroes. When I was a teenager, reading X-Men was in its full flower, working as an aggressively overwrought metaphor for any marginalized group. This came to its obvious conclusion in the X2 when (coincidentally) Bobby “Iceman” Drake reveals to his parents as being a mutant. The metaphor is played for comedy.

His mother asks, “Have you tried ... not being a mutant?”

In the Iceman comics he has to come out to them a second time, this time as gay. No more symbolism, this is attempting to reflect the real life experience.

Alters had the advantage of starting fresh, a new “universe” with a different power dynamic between superpowered humans, which I enjoyed more. In spite of its unique and sympathetic protagonist, and leans harder into the lives of marginalized people - not only trans, but disabled, homeless, people of color - it still falls into a several traps, including a queer-coded arch villain and the cringey depiction of a single black mother anmed Sharise.

Is she realistic, are there people like Sharise? I guess. But knowing it comes from the mind of a white, male writer, the situation and vernacular were a little difficult to take.

And then there’s the Cleveland thing. Just as Steve Gerber, who never visited Cleveland, chose our hometown as the setting for the adventures of Howard the Duck, the British-born Jenkins made this Chalice’s home without really knowing anything about it. Where the hell is “the city center”? The least bit of research could have made it more believable. As it is, Cleveland is simply a stand-in for “Not New York.”

As for me, I am spending this weekend creating a twelve-panel comic adapted from my short play The Negative Zone, which takes place in a comic book shop in the mid 1980s.

Howard the Duck (comic strip)

On June 6, 1977 Marvel began publishing a daily comic strip of their hit title Howard the Duck. For almost a year, in addition to the monthly book and additional responsibilities (the legendary KISS comic book, anyone?) Steve Gerber scribed this daily attack on the sensibility of the conservative Plain Dealer reader with his demented commentary on daily American life.

Thank God he had Gene Colan and Val Mayerik to work with, or there would not have been a chance in hell of cramming HTD's signature attention to absurd and gritty detail into those tiny little panels.


Letter to the Editor of the Toronto Star, August 1977:

"The idea of anyone getting one ounce of enjoyment out of (this strip) is more than I can bear ... there is no reason for you to continue printing this strip." - Simon Ives, President, Howard the Duck Hate Club

I am not unfamiliar with hate mail to the editor.

Less than a year later, as Gerber's relationship with Marvel was unraveling, due to his extensive workload, (see HTD ish #16) he was pulled from the book and also the strip. From that point on the execrable Marv Wolfman was given writing responsibilities for both, and illustration for the strip was handled by Alan Kupperberg, whose work is simply horrid.


I have a hazy memory of this guy, a TV character on Channel 8 (I believe) who did the intro to Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman or something, which ran after the 11 o'clock news. He would read that day's Howard the Duck comic strip out of the Plain Dealer like some kind of Mayor Laguardia. If anyone can clear flesh that out for me I would appreciate it.

The comic strip was discontinued in October, 1978 after a sixteen-month run.

Sources:
nemsworld.com

Howard the Duck covers

I know making a video like this looks like a colossal waste of time but really, it only took 10 minutes.

The death of Howard the Duck

I got on the HTD train late. My first issue was #25, released in June 1978. I was about to turn ten. In those days, my parents would let me hop on the 55C RTA bus (by myself) at the corner of Dwight and Osborn, which wound its way onto Lake and then Clifton and into Lakewood. I got off at Wagar and walked south to Detroit to a comic book store whose name I forget. The owner was a dick, he hoarded every copy of HTD he could and jacked up the price. They were in demand in Cleveland because theoretically they took place here. I paid, however, and worked my way back through the series.

I got to enjoy three, first-run Steve Gerber penned issues. Issue #27 ended on quite a cliffhanger, with Howard and friends in Skudge, PA (don't ask.) He watches helplessly as Paul is hit by a stray bullet and in another part of town Winda is beaten comatose by some low-life. I didn't notice the change in author, but the next issue is simply from another planet — the Planet of Crap. It makes no sense whatsoever, it is like a cross between a Playboy Magazine comic and a Warner Brothers cartoon.

Beverly, who had gone off with Dr. Bong several issues earlier is inexplicably present, and Howard is set on some mission without any prodding at all, which is entirely out of character. The artwork is hideous. It's just a lame, lame book. It's followed by another guest writer, trying to "get" the HTD style. What had been a brooding, quirky, hip book had instantaneously become a funny aminal comic.

There was finally an explanation, regarding Mr. Gerber and how he was leaving the comic, for reasons they said were "complicated." The fact is, the difficulties Gerber recounted in issue #16 had finally caught up to him: he was chronically behind deadline on not only the book, but the companion comic strip and every other project he had his hands in. They pulled him off the strip, he sued Marvel and so left the book itself.

The final two issues of HTD (amusingly, the editor reassures fans in the penultimate issue that the monthly color comic will never go away!) are thankfully drawn by Gene Colan, and in two issues preemptively ends the Doctor Bong saga in a sock-pow, and largely unsatisfying conclusion.

Interestingly, the final issue (#31) includes the only actual, literal reference to the city of Cleveland. In one panel, Bev holds up a copy of the "Cleveland Plain-Dealer." Other than that, the entire series could have taken place in Detroit and you wouldn't have had to change a thing.

Precious

Howard the Duck
Seven-Eleven Marvel Comics Glass
(1977)

Mine broke in 2006.
I miss it very much.

* * *

Precious
by The Pretenders
from their 1980 LP release
"The Pretenders"

I like the way you cross the street
'Cause you're precious.
Moving through the Cleveland heat,
How precious.
Taking rides and all the kicks:
You're so precious.
But you know I was shittin' bricks,
'cause I'm precious.

Made me wanna, made me wanna,
You made me make it.
You're so mean

East 55th and Euclid Avenue
Was real precious.
Hotel Sterling comin' into view
How precious.
Pity that you bruised my hip
'cause I'm precious.
You shouldn't let your manners slip.
You're too precious.

Made me wanna, made me wanna,
You made me make it.
You're so mean

We went around and round and
round and round and round the Shoreway
We was a duet duet duet duet
do it on the pavement
Oh maybe maybe
I'm gonna have a baby
We was a duet oh we do it all night

Made me wanna, made me wanna,
You made me make it.
You're so mean

I was feeling kind of ethereal.
'Cause I'm precious.
I got my eye on your Imperial.
You're so precious.
Now, Howard the Duck and Mister Stress both stayed
Trapped in a world that they never made.
But not me, baby - I'm too precious.
Fuck off!

Howard the Duck (comic book)

Howard the Duck changed my life, but I never realized in what way nor how much until I began to re-read them this week. My entire childhood was colored by my exposure to this Marvel comic book, the way I spoke, the way I wrote. This was not necessarily a good thing, I do not recommend letting anyone under high school age read this comic book. I began when I was only nine.

Back up ... Howard the Duck is known to most as a terrible film produced by George Lucas from the mid-1980s. I won't bother going into that. The character debuted in 1973 in Marvel's pulp title Adventure Into Fear, a minor character originally written by Steve Gerber and drawn by Clevelander Val Mayerik. He resurfaced in a few issues of Man-Thing before landing in his own title in 1976.

Prior to Giant Size Man-Thing #4 (an annual) this duck, from a world Gerber never gave a name (though later writers formally named it Duckworld, which is irritating because we don't call Earth People Planet) where ducks are the dominant life-form is summoned with others to a nexus in the cosmos to fight some evil entity, whatever. Trying to get home, he is accidentally dropped on Earth, in the city of Cleveland.

Why did I become attached to this comic at such an early age? My brother was reading Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four (we were strictly a Marvel home — always the underdogs, we Hansens) I was trying to find a storyline that I could own. A talking, sarcastic duck? In Cleveland? Sweet! The fact is, I didn't understand half of it, and therein lies the problem.

As conceived by Gerber, this book was pure satire, or parody. Depended on the issue. The villains were a mash-up of pathetic professional types empowered with bizarre and punny abilities. A lot of them are artists. The night watchman who can't get a book published is possessed by a turnip from space — the man, locked in his head wants an outlet for his imagination, the root vegetable from outer space (just writing that makes me smile) wants to know the pleasures of the flesh. Every issue, Howard encounters a character like that, and has to deal with it, often rising to heroism he did not know he had.

Because Howard is a curmudgeon. A cigar-chomping misanthrope who just wants to go home, and is stuck in 1970s Cleveland, the only city at that time worse off than New York City. But even Cleveland is not Cleveland. I cannot find any evidence that Gerber ever lived here, or even spent any time here (he died in 2008) — but original HTD artist Val Mayerik did, even once creating work for Harvey Pekar's American Splendor. But an advertisement for a martial arts course in issue #3 prominently lists the address as the corner of "Oak" and "Elm." Either Gerber was crossing his fingers, hoping Cleveland, like most cities, has streets bearing these names that intersect (we do not) or he didn't care. Cleveland, like everything in this comic, is a symbol for something else. Howard had to end up somewhere unsexy. Cleveland it is.

The main problem with my reading it at such a young age was that I did not understand what was being commented upon. An evil wizard accountant? Becoming a candidate for President for the All Night Party? I acquired a language for sarcasm and acidity without having anything to direct it at. Howard disdains hypocrisy, fads and fashion, rude people ... but his constant barrage of attitude against these mundane evils just struck this child as being disgruntled, and that, to me, equaled funny. I missed Howard's compassion, his acts of kindness — he's a good guy, he's just sick of everybody's shit.

The first issue of Howard the Duck debuted in 1976. So did the first issue of American Splendor. Discuss.