Howard the Duck #26

Howard the Duck stands center stage under a spotlight — dressed in his signature red coat and hat, microphone at the ready — declaring "Okay, folks — it's Happy Time!" while a cast of watchful, unsettling faces lurks in the shadows around him, and a sinister top-hatted figure looms in the upper left. The cover teaser "Did You Hear the One About Sudden Death?" hints at some very dark punchlines ahead in "Repercussions...!" Gene Colan's pencils and Klaus Janson's inks give the scene a moody, theatrical tension that perfectly captures Howard's absurd predicament as Marvel's most existentially put-upon waterfowl, still gloriously "trapped in a world he never made.