This April, Howard the Duck celebrates his Marvel Comics comback by appearing in multiple “What The Duck” variant covers.
Howard The Duck is primed to make a huge comeback in the comic book world, thanks to a surprise Guardians of the Galaxy cameo and a new Marvel Comics series this March. According to Marvel, the fan response has been enormous and overwhelmingly positive, prompting the company to spread Duck love to other series. And I don’t mean in a shared storyline kind of way (although that will probably occur eventually). Instead, Marvel is making April “What The Duck” month where the character appears in no less than 20 variant covers.
These aren’t even “Howard shares space with the title character” kind of variants, by the way. These are covers where Howard completely replaces the central hero while parodying moments from art and film history. Not that comic readers will necessarily mind – they’re great fun to look at, and the standard covers are still available if you prefer them. It’s just an interesting promotion to get Howard the Duck fans looking at other Marvel Comics, and vice versa.
“Response to the announcement of the new Howard the Duck series has been staggering,” Marvel senior vice president of Sales & Marketing David Gabriel explained. “There were so many talented artists eager to take a quack at drawing a Howard cover we couldn’t resist building an entire variant month around him. This April is going to be WTD certified!”
Four preview images have been released so far, with more to follow. Two are inspired by famous paintings – Amazing Spider-Man‘s cover is replaced with a duck version of “American Gothic”, while Uncanny Inhumans traps Howard in “The Scream”. The other two are drawn from historical pop culture, with Howard meeting a moon landing astronaut in Rocket Raccoon or dangling from a silent-film era clocktower in All-New Hawkeye.
Whether “What The Duck” is successful or not remains to be seen, but the covers are certainly impressive in their own right. Howard the Duck‘s regular series, meanwhile, will launch on March 4, 2015.
- All-New Hawkeye #2 – WTD Variant Cover by Francesco Francavilla
- Amazing Spider-Man #17 – WTD Variant Cover by W. Scott Forbes
- Rocket Raccoon #10 – WTD Variant Cover by Rob Guillory
- Uncanny Inhumans #0 – WTD Variant Cover by Christian Ward
- All-New Captain America #6
- All-New X-Men #41
- Ant-Man #4
- Daredevil #15
- Deadpool #45 (a.k.a. Deadpool #250)
- Guardians of the Galaxy #26
- Hulk #14
- Inhuman #14
- Legendary Star-Lord #11
- Ms. Marvel #14
- S.H.I.E.L.D. #5
- Silk #3
- Spider-Gwen #3
- Superior Iron Man #7
- Thor #7
- Uncanny Avengers #4
