Hey folks, Harry here... As many of you know... I was born into geekdom. My parents owned the first Pop-Culture Memorilbia Store in Austin, Tx... N.E. MERCANTILE COMPANY. It sold movie posters, animation cels, original art, props and comic books, pulps and all sorts of paper ephemera. From the youngest of ages - I have loved talking duck characters. I knew the Disney Ducks, the Warner Brothers Duck... and from the world of comics... the cigar-chomping, master of Quack-Fu himself.... HOWARD THE DUCK.

My father used to read me Barks' Uncle Scrooge stories - but as a card carrying lover of kung fu... when I saw this issue of HOWARD THE DUCK... I fell in love. This was Steve Gerber's greatest creation. HOWARD THE DUCK - not that piece of shit movie that George Lucas created half-heartedly. HOWARD wasn't a "man in suit" he was meant to be brought to life via Stop-Motion... until CG came about - but Howard didn't need to be a little person in a feather suit. He came out looking like a retarded Donald Duck. And he was yellow... not white feathers.

Anyway - Gerber's HOWARD was satirically brilliant - hilariously given life - He was one of the first character creators to fight for his creation and to demand rights as its creator. He wrote on tons of characters - and more than that - he was a great characters in person. I met Steve about a dozen times at various conventions from when I was 7 to about 6 years ago. Everytime I met him - I was just a fan of Howard the Duck. And he was always kind and cordial. Even as he was in the hospital in what became his final days, he was working on a new DR FATE story - and had worked a deal with Marvel to pen more HOWARD THE DUCK stories. He had so many more stories he wanted to tell. Tonight we lost a really wonderful and creative soul. Our best wishes go out to his family and friends. Me... I'm going to dig up my copy of HOWARD THE DUCK#3 - I love that ish!