Howard the Duck

Pulled from his homeworld of Duckworld by a disruption in the Nexus of All Realities, Howard found himself stranded in a Cleveland, Ohio far weirder than he ever imagined — a world dominated by 'hairless apes.' Armed with Quack-Fu and boundless cynicism, he navigates a reality he never asked for.

Few characters in Marvel's history arrived as unexpectedly — or as unforgettably — as Howard the Duck, who waddled onto the scene in Fear #19 in 1973, the brainchild of the brilliantly offbeat Steve Gerber and artist Val Mayerik. A true Bronze Age original, Howard carved out a singular niche in the Marvel Universe as a sardonic, world-weary outsider whose own ongoing series became one of the era's most celebrated and unconventional reads. Over more than five decades of publishing history — stretching all the way to 2026 — he's racked up 152 catalog appearances and seven key issues that collectors prize, rubbing feathers with the likes of Spider-Man, Thor, the Hulk, and Captain America along the way. Whether you're a longtime Marvel devotee or a curious new reader drawn in by his sheer strangeness, Howard the Duck rewards the dig: a character so genuinely unlike anything else in superhero comics that his longevity feels less like survival and more like inevitability.