In the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, we got to see a split-second cameo from Howard the Duck. We got to see him again in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume II. All this led to the character gaining popularity. But the biggest surprise is that he had appeared in the final battle of Avengers: Endgame. I don’t know if everyone saw this, but I definitely didn’t. I found it out on YouTube and it really was a blink-and-miss scene of him holding a giant gun and stepping out of a portal.
Howard’s Comic History
Howard the Duck was created in the 1970s by Steven Gerber. He was created as a side character in the Man Thing comics, Marvel’s counterpart for DC’s Swamp Thing.
Howard hails from a planet where evolution affected ducks, which gave them human-like character traits. However, through a shift in the cosmic axis, Howard ends up in Earth, in Cleveland, Ohio. He has a series of adventures in Earth, which he describes as “trapped in a world he never made”, gets a human girlfriend named Beverly, has many run-ins with the Kidney Lady, becomes a Quck-Fu master, constested for presidency, among other things.
Comics made during the 1970s were very satirical in nature and writers always expressed their take on the world through their comics. We can say that Howard is the alter ego of his creator Gerber and Howard’s views on the world was what Gerber had.
He made his solo movie appearance in 1986’s Howard the Duck but the movie bombed and it affected his comics for a while. He has since been brought back and occasionally makes appearances as a private detective in comics.