Howard the Duck #18

Marvel's most existentially exhausted duck faces something truly unsettling in this November 1977 issue, as the cover — penciled by Gene Colan and Dave Cockrum with inks by Klaus Janson — erupts in a swirl of purple and pink energy showing multiple overlapping versions of Howard mid-transformation, his expressions shifting from alarmed to monstrous. A red-haired woman reaches toward him in apparent horror from the foreground, while chains and machinery crowd the lower left, and the cover copy warns that "Howard undergoes the most disgusting transformation of all." With Steve Gerber writing and Gene Colan on interior art, "Metamorphosis" promises exactly the kind of weird, heartfelt chaos that made Howard the Duck one of Marvel's most genuinely singular series of its era.