Prior to this essay, the only HOWARD THE DUCK issue I pegged as a mythcomic was issue #11, for the story "Quack-Up." In fact, I noted that the story was part of a longer arc, one that did not hold up as a mythcomic-narrative, which I still believe. I further asserted that I didn't think that HOWARD's superordinate creator Steve Gerber had emphasized the mythopoeic potentiality as much as the didactic and dramatic ones.
In the case of "Swan Song," the story immediately preceding "Quack-Up," I've given it a more sustained look for this essay. I've decided that though there is a lot of didactic content in "Song" -- on the second page, the hapless mallard protagonist begins a rant about "socialization"-- there are also a fair number of myths in the mix as well. In this case, the two potentialities reinforce one another, as with the Silver Surfer tale I discussed in FORMAL AND INFORMAL EXCELLENCE PT. 2.
So "Song"-- most of which is entirely in Howard's head after he suffers a traumatic mental breakdown-- begins with him emerging, fully adult (and unclothed except for his stogie) from an oversized egg. A giant hand tries to smash him, so he flees into a room and immediately begins discoursing about the socialization common to all societies, which Howard views as pure indoctrination. He takes refuge in an unfurnished room and encounters a bunch of miniature humans ("hairless apes," in Howard's parlance). The symbolism isn't that clear-- I guess the mini-humans are beings who have surrendered to indoctrination, and accepted a barren, confined existence.
But the next symbol could not be clearer: "Indoctrination in the Form of Monstrous Monetary Dominance," a.k.a. "Kong Lomerate," a.k.a. Gerber's publisher Marvel Comics-- though in 1977 we're a long way from that company being anything akin to a real conglomerate. Anyway, when Howard expresses surprise that a hairy ape could claim to be the owner of all these mini-humans, Kong voices the interesting sentiment, "It's because I'm not human that my word is law! I only exist on paper!" Of course, this is also true of Howard in 1977, and when Howard gives Kong backtalk, the gorilla-boss shows his authority by "cancelling" the abrasive drake.
(Fun interstitial fact: HOWARD wasn't cancelled while Gerber was on the feature, but after he was fired from the company, neither the color comic, a subsequent black-and-white magazine, nor a comic strip lasted past 1981. Talk about killing the duck that laid the golden eggs.)
Howard's next dream-scene takes him to a mountain hut, seeking some motivating wisdom to carry him through his own cynical vision of existence. He meets another Gerber character, the short-lived superhero Omega, and they exchange a few inconclusive pleasantries.
Another quick transition takes Howard to one of the main sources of his consternation: his maybe-girlfriend Beverly Switzler. But alas, it's not the Beverly he knows, but Surrealist Beverly, on loan from Rene Magritte perhaps. While Real Beverly only indirectly obliges Howard to act heroically, Surrealist Beverly exists to torment and humiliate him with her carefully contrived absurdity.
Then Howard thinks he wakes up, but no, it's as he says: "Welcome to my Nightmare Part 2." He meets "your friendly neighborhood Piano," almost surely selected as a precursor to the mallard's crisis of socially generated guiltiness. Spider-Piano suggests that Howard read a book-- the 1975 bestseller WHEN I SAY NO, I FEEL GUILTY-- but Howard, being something of a snob, refuses to accept counsel from pop psychology.
But Howard's a Marvel Comics character, so despite his estrangement from the heroic code of other characters, his nature keeps leading him back that way. First, he meets his own private "rogues' gallery." Then he meets another wisdom-dispensing acquaintance, Doctor Piano (who went by the name "Strange" when Howard met him in a DEFENDERS tale). But Howard rejects the doctor's advice re: altruism, and as if in reaction to Howard's pessimism, his counselor disappears. In his place appears yet another of Howard's adversaries, the Kidney Lady, who by no mean coincidence the duck will encounter in the real world of "Quack-Up."
He also encounters LeBeaver, the goofball super-villain whom Howard refused to fight to defend Beverly. This time Howard tries to battle the evildoer, to perpetuate a "masculine stereotype"-- and as a result he ends up in a hell of his own creation, mocked by his old foes and Surrealist Beverly.
Does Gerber's screed against socialization stand in terms of making a good didactic argument, a "formal proposition?" No, since I think Gerber posed questions and didn't answer them. But as an "informal proposition," which conjures with the chaos of random correlations, this particular song was one of Steve Gerber's strongest.
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