I'm not 100% certain myself of the exact date but many folks out there are telling me that forty (40) years old today, the first issue of Destroyer Duck went on sale. I may be biased but I think this was a very important event in comic book history. My pal Steve Gerber was locked in a lawsuit against Marvel Comics over the ownership of the character, Howard the Duck…and it was also about the terms of his severance from his character and that company.
Lawsuits, as you know, can be very expensive and Marvel Comics, of course, had a lot more money than Steve did. At one point, the judge in the case actually fined Marvel a large amount for certain tactics that, he said, were deliberately intended to drive up Steve's legal bills. Alas, even that amount did not cover his costs so a bunch of us got together and produced a benefit comic book to raise money for the cause.
Steve and I edited the book and he wrote the lead story which was drawn by Jack Kirby and Alfredo Alcala with the aid of Tom Orzechowski and Steve Leialoha. Jack drew the cover which was inked by Neal Adams with a title logo by Tom O. Other stories were contributed by Shary Flenniken, Dan Spiegle, Gordon Kent, Martin Pasko, Joe Staton, Scott Shaw!, Carol Lay, Sergio Aragonés and me. The comic was published through the good offices of Eclipse Comics — Dean and Jan Mullaney and Cat Yronwode.
None of us took a cent for our contributions. The money all went to Steve…or rather to the law firm representing Steve. His lawyer, Henry W. Holmes, knocked a big chunk of dough off the bill in exchange for appearing as a character in the Destroyer Duck story.
I can't help but note that a person then on staff at Marvel Comics — and not even at a particularly high level — took the comic as some sort of hydrogen bomb aimed at the company that issued his paychecks, loudly declaring that no one who worked on it would ever in a million years work for Marvel again. And of course, any of us who wanted to, did…in some cases, quite a lot.
How this comic impacted the changes that occurred within the industry, moving to a more creator-friendly approach, is a discussion for another time. I just wanted to note that the 40th anniversary of Destroyer Duck #1 is also the 40th anniversary of the debut-in-print of Groo the Wanderer.
That was Sergio's contribution…and I hasten to point out that it was not mine. I talked him into letting us print the first Groo story in the book — and it took him all of three seconds to say, "Certainly!" But I did not work on that first Groo story. Attention all who refer to me as the co-creator of Groo: I am not. Give Sergio all the credit or blame. (Or maybe divert a smidgen to the late Gordon Kent, who did the coloring.)
That short story spawned a demand for more and that's when Sergio asked me to join him in what has now been a four-decade adventure which shows no sign of letting up. We have another mini-series coming soon and a bunch of other projects. I'll tell you more about them in due time.