There’s nothing I like better than settling down late in the night, whiskey in hand – actually, I don’t have whiskey in hand, I’m painting pictures – and musing on the social, historical and political reasons why Howard the Duck was a box office flop. It’s a philosophical hour.
James Gunn clearly has Howard on his mind, too. The Marvel Comics character has already had cameo roles in both of Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies, as well as making a brief appearance in Avengers: Endgame (which I totally missed). So, fans now want to know if will Howie return in the filmmaker’s next effort, The Suicide Squad.
That remains to be seen, but Director Gunn – that makes it sound like he’s about to order an attack on Alderaan – gave this tease of a response on Twitter this week:
Putting Howard in at the last minute is my specialty.
Buckle down Duckheads, as your next aquatic fix of the avian variety could well be coming in 2021. That’s when The Suicide Squad is set for release. I probably already implied that, though. This is a syntactic rabbit hole, of which the only out is a horribly jarring paragraphical leap. Brace yourself.
Howard the Duck made his cinematic debut in 1986 and the more I read about it the more interesting it gets. Bare with me if everything I ramble about here is already common knowledge, but the film, which flopped (as mentioned), starred a Marvel Comics character in a movie produced by George Lucas. There’s some wonderful symmetry in the way things have turned, eh?
30 years ago, a Marvel Comics character was brought into the arms of George Lucas, and 30 years later, George Lucas sells his biggest nest-egg to Disney, who own Marvel Studios. The wheel turns, down is up, east is west, everything changes but in a way, nothing does. Didn’t I tell you this was a philosophical hour?
