Unexpected Comic Strip Creators - Steve Gerber

Howard the Duck, October 12, 1977

There's a lot to this one, so buckle in.

Steve Gerber was a writer for several Marvel and DC comic books, but his best known creation is the satirical "funny animal" character Howard the Duck. Howard was originally portrayed as a Donald Duck-esque character, but with a much more abrasive personality. In fact, Howard's appearance was so similar to Donald Duck that at one point Disney contacted Marvel Comics requesting that they change the design. Marvel agreed to give Howard a pair of pants, something that Donald absolutely never wears, so as not to infringe on Disney's copyright. Gerber was none too happy about this, and wrote a story about Howard forcibly being given a pair of pants that he subsequently removes. Howard wore no pants for the remainder of the time Gerber wrote him, though the pants were added after Gerber was replaced. I'm not sure how much it matters now that Disney owns Marvel, but I digress.

Howard first appeared in the Man-Thing backup feature in Adventure Into Fear #19 in 1973. He co…

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Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, December 30, 1951

Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, December 30, 1951

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Tom Corbett shows us that, even in the far-flung future, people still don't do very well at keeping their New Year's resolutions. So don't feel bad if you don't do too well on yours. Countless humans have done and will continue to do the same.

Happy New Year, everyone!

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Pogo, December 28, 1966

Pogo, December 28, 1966

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Recently I saw a discussion online about why people who create fantasy worlds continue to use Latin and Latin-esque words in their stories. It was pointed out that the reason why is because people associate Latin sounding words with glory, grandeur, and a sort of ancient splendor. One person was skeptical, asking how people could think that after the empire that first used Latin, the Roman Empire, fell. It does seem odd, but Latin has been used in the Catholic Church for liturgical purposes for centuries, and Latin is still used in scientific circles for many things. In fact, Isaac Newton first laid out his laws of motion in a treatise he called Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (usually shortened to just Principia). It was written entirely in Latin, and was published in 1687, 1200 years after the fall of Rome.

So, writing your New Year's Resolutions not only in stone, but also in Latin, would definitely lend an air of importance to them. I don't know if…

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Tiny Tim, December 30, 1951

Tiny Tim, December 30, 1951

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Tiny Tim and Dotty are, as they should, making resolutions for the new year, but I feel like they laid a sort of trap for Paddy. I think if they were better friends to Paddy, knowing that he wanted to stop eating peanuts, they would have made sure that Paddy didn't see them, or distracted him somehow. Loudly pointing out the giant pile of them was not helpful.

All of this is moot, of course, since peanuts are actually very good and healthy for pigeons such as Paddy, at least in their raw, unprocessed form. Paddy will not want to cut them out of his diet completely, but I guess if he's eating a very large amount he can cut back a little bit.

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Toonerville Folks, December 26, 1923

Toonerville Folks, December 26, 1923

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I wrote a bit about Fontaine Fox last year. One of the things I love the most about his strips is the expressive style, and this is another great example of that. I love how, with just a few lines and a few panels, he can show such a range of emotion on both the father and the child.

It's also kind of amazing how differently children and adults perceive time. We can only think of time in relation to the amount of time we've already lived, and a year in relation to only 3 or 4 years of life is quite a long time. Adults have lived many more years than that, so we don't think of a year as being nearly as long. I think we try very hard to fool ourselves into thinking it's a long time, though.

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