Howard the Duck is not for the birds! Buy complete set (1977) at the massive Meadowbrook Garage Sale in Brighton. Live streaming!

Howard the Duck is not for the birds! Buy complete set (1977) at the massive Meadowbrook Garage Sale in Brighton. Live streaming!
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Fans flocked to Howard at his pre-sale drop-in rally at Schoen Place in Pittsford 5/17/16

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Gripping the Talker staff from “More poems from the Mystic” at the site of the sale, 155 Avalon Drive

In Buy Orbs at Sotheby’s in Brighton: the Meadowbrook Garage Sale, we invited you to the Meadowbrook Garage Sale in Brighton this weekend where you can meet the Talker staff at 155 Avalon Drive. And, as promised, Dean is working on live streaming the event.

The annual Meadowbrook neighborhood sale is rated one of the stronger “first ring” suburban sales in Monroe County. The sale is considered a family outing destination. Families with young children often make a day of the event, strolling and biking through the leafy, sidewalked boulevards with its early to mid twentieth century architecture.

Meadowbrook ...a great neighborhood

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see “Buy Orbs at Sotheby’s in Brighton: the Meadowbrook Garage Sale”

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see “Buy Orbs at Sotheby’s in Brighton: the Meadowbrook Garage Sale”

The annual Meadowbrook Garage Sale is very well attended by eager shoppers. Selling? Clear out some stuff and raise a little cash. Buying? One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Either way, you’ll have some fun and meet some new neighbors!This year’s Garage Sale is slated for Saturday and Sunday, May 21th and 22th, 2016. The sale will run from 9 AM to 3 PM, rain or shine. The Meadowbrook Neighborhood Association will place ads in local newspapers and post signs at major intersections. If you are interested in participating, there’s no need to sign up. Simply put your treasures out on the lawn, driveway, or in your garage. Residents are expected to make their own arrangements for unsold items and to clean up their property at the conclusion of the sale. Questions? Contact Meadowbrook Director Adele Buettner, who is coordinating this year’s event for us.”

As for those balls at our Get Some Balls kiosk, they are perfect for softball and baseball teams stocking up for the season. The bargain prices put Walmart to shame and beat Play It Again Sports. A group of Mennonites once bought a bag full for a baseball team they were forming. Turns out the church elders approved of baseball as a wholesome, if not godly, pastime. And enough tennis balls for a herd of dogs and a whole summer of matches at the Cobb’s Hill courts.

Before you think we are just capitalist tools, in an article about Lynda Howland’s good works with the people of Nepal and Cuba, I wrote:

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The Cuban flag at the site of the Meadowbrook Garage Sale, 155 Avalon Drive

Lynda once brought supplies to Cuba: toothpaste, brushes and medicine, as well as baseballs and softballs I gladly contributed. . . I am donating [to Lynda’s Nepal earthquake relief fund] because I can afford at least a dollar — which is all it takes. More so, I am giving because I still imagine — especially now that Cuba and the US are nearing full reconciliation — boys and girls using my baseballs and softballs on a Caribbean field of dreams as blue dolphins play in the waves.

As for that hard-to-come-by complete Howard the Duck collection, my father bought the series one by one in 1976 and 77, enamored with its puckish, bookish, lady slaying hero, Howard. The rarest issue is the British version of #1, purchased by Eugene for 9 pence.

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Complete set of Howard the Duck (1977), including the British #1 version.

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Eugene and Howard, summer 1977 [Photo: Carol]

Right now, Eugene’s hope is that Howard lands in a pond with a good family who appreciate his graphic genius. For a pre-sale public pep rally, Howard visited Schoen Place in Pittsford for a “book dropping” appearance, greeted by fans from as far away as Canada.

As as excerpted from wikipedia below, Howard is read as a comic existential hero who disrupts all normal conventions of the comic book genre. Some speculate that one of Howard’s nemesis’ Dr. Bong is one of the first gay comic book figures. Others think Howard may be a metaphor for Jewishness. The name Howard is derived from Hebrew. And the themes of exile and, in duck terms, “a strange fowl in an even stranger land,” run deep in the jewish narrative tradition. As Manny, Patrick and Jessica commented on the internet:

Printable Tire This is indeed a great collection- and his “origin” is so bizarre. I always felt Howard the Duck was like Woody Allen in a lot of ways. I never finished this and should read it again.

message 2: by Manny (new)

Manny Patrick wrote: “I always felt Howard the Duck was like Woody Allen in a lot of ways.”

Hey, you’re right! I’m amazed I never thought of that before. Superficially small and ugly but in fact irresistible babe-magnets, whiny, neurotic, always ready with a quip in the face of Death… it’s astonishing.

So are we to conclude that Howard is also Jewish? That would explain a lot…

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Jessica is typical of the hot babes who fell for Howard’s charms.

Jessica@TheJessicats 19 Jul 2011

Howard the Duck was totally Jewish. Look at the nose.

As seen in the excerpt, one of Howard’s more memorable adventures was running for President in 1976 as a dark duck third party candidate. Not unlike the Donald (hmm, two duck names), Howard ran as an anti-establishment outsider beholden to no special interests who eschewed political correctness. But Howard’s goose was cooked when he was caught in an interspecies sex scandal. Rumor has it Howard is planning an electoral reprisal in the Fall, a true October Surprise.

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Jimmy was peanuts compared with Howard.

Howard the Duck, as his name suggests, is a three-foot-tall anthropomorphic duck. He generally wears a tie and shirt, and is almost always found smoking a cigar. Originally, like many cartoon ducks, he wore no pants; Disney threatened legal action due to Howard’s resemblance to Donald Duck, and Marvel redesigned that aspect of the character by writing into the script that Howard was the target of anti-nudity protests, and was forced to do business with “Wally Sidney”, a failed cartoonist who made his fortune through a chain of conservative clothing retailers known as “Sidney World”. Howard tries on various outfits, to include ones akin to Donald Duck’s sailor uniform and Uncle Scrooge’s coat and top hat before settling on his new attire of a business suit complete with trousers. Although Howard sulks that he has lost, Beverly reassures him that she does not want him to be a victim of a mob, and loves him no matter what he wears.

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Howard deftly manipulated the media who covered every word out of his bill.

Howard has an irritable and cynical attitude to the often bizarre events around him; he feels there is nothing special about him except that he is a duck, and though he has no goals other than seeking comfort and to be left alone, he is often dragged into dangerous adventures simply because he is visibly unusual. His series’ tagline, “Trapped in a world he never made”, played off the genre trappings of 1950s science fiction. A common reaction to meeting Howard the first time is a startled, “You…you’re a DUCK!”

His near-constant companion and occasional girlfriend is former art model and Cleveland native Beverly Switzler. Like Howard, Beverly wants an ordinary life but is frequently singled out for her appearance, though she is a beautiful and sexy woman rather than a duck. Their only other friends are Paul Same (a painter who briefly became a sleepwalking crime-fighter) and Winda Wester (a lisping ingénue with psychic powers); he has worked with Spider-Man and the Man-Thing and associates on various occasions.

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Note the pun on “Down.” No doubt today’s political wags could twist “Get Down” to apply to the 2016 campaign.

Howard found himself on Earth due to a shift in “the Cosmic Axis” from a world similar to Earth, but where there are “more ducks” and “apes don’t talk”. In the black-and-white Howard the Duck magazine series, writer Bill Mantlo theorized that Howard came from an extra-dimensional planet called Duckworld, a planet similar to Earth where ducks, not apes, had evolved to become the dominant species. In 2001, Gerber dismissed this idea, calling it “very pedestrian” and ‘comic-booky’ — in the worst sense of the term.” He believes Howard came from an alternate Earth populated by a variety of cartoon animals. A panel in Fear #19, prior to Howard’s introduction, depicts Howard or someone like him near an anthropomorphic rat and an anthropomorphic dog, in a hypothetical panel about other dimensions. Destroyer Duck was depicted existing in such a world, and in Howard the Duck vol. 2 #6, Howard mentions that Moses is believed to be a moose in his world and Yeshua a flying squirrel.

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In 1976 America was less tolerant of interspecies relations.

His antagonists, who usually appear in a single story each, are often parodies of science fiction, fantasy, and horror characters, and sometimes political figures, but include ordinary people simply making life difficult for Howard. The chief recurring villain, Lester Verde, better known as Doctor Bong – modeled on Doctor Doom and writers Bob Greene and Lester Bangs – is a former tabloid reporter who has the power to “reorder reality” by smashing himself on his bell-shaped helmet; his main goal is to marry Beverly. After several issues, she agrees to marry him to save Howard from Bong’s evil experimentation, and remains married to him for some time. Doctor Bong would reappear in issues of She-Hulk and Deadpool in the mid-1990s. Other recurring villains include the Kidney Lady (S. Blotte) who has been convinced by her former lover that the soul is in the kidneys and attacks anything she sees as a threat to them, and Reverend Jun Moon Yuc and his Yuccies, a parody of Reverend Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church “Moonies”. Another important villain was the Sinister S.O.O.F.I. (Save Our Offspring from Indecency) organization, whose leader was implicitly Anita Bryant, though she looked like an old, fat Elvis Presley with a smiley face/orange on her head.

Other Marvel Comics characters occasionally appeared, including Spider-Man, Daimon Hellstrom, and the Ringmaster. Omega The Unknown appeared to him in a dream, as did the founding members of the rock group, KISS, and Spider-Man, whom he had previously met for real, unlike Omega.

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Back in 1977, OJ was on the top of his game.

Seemingly an autodidact, Howard at various times references Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Albert Camus (whose angry novel The Stranger Gerber considers the principal influence on the series), the Brontë sisters, and other figures of philosophical and political significance. In a parody of the Marvel comic character Shang-Chi, he was trained in the art of Quak-Fu. In the 2001 miniseries, as a mocking gesture toward Disney’s mascot Mickey Mouse, he was turned into various animals, primarily a mouse.”lincoln

As promised, Dean, also a local philatelist, is right now exploring options for his live streaming production of the sale on Saturday at 155 Avalon Drive between Westfall and Winton.

The local philatelist also offers just a little tease of his merchandise. In keeping with Howard’s spirit, a limited edition Angry Birds will be auctioned.  Howard himself is not an angry bird, except when he was robbed of ussrthe presidency in 1976.

Also, Dean offers two competing artifacts. One a shameless symbol of mercenary capitalism profiting from an assassinated President; the other a symbol of the noble lost cause of communism. Also, a coin of indecipherable origins that may have been left on the Earth by alien space travelers.coin

SEE ALSO

Talker staff demands royalties! Buy orbs at Sotheby’s in Brighton: the Meadowbrook Garage Sale. And meet the staff

Iconic America at the Brighton Little League Parade

About The Author

dkramer3@naz.edu

Welcome to Talker of the Town! My name is David Kramer. I have a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. I am a former and still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History and a Storyteller in Residence at the SmallMatters Institute. Over the years, I have taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. I have published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Rochester Patriot, the Providence Journal, the Providence Business News, the Brown Alumni Magazine, the New London Day, the Boston Herald, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, the CITY, Lake Affect Magazine and Brighton Connections. My poetry appears in The Criterion: An International Journal in English and Rundenalia and my academic writing in War, Literature and the Arts and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Starting in February 2013, I wrote for three Democratic and Chronicle  blogs, "Make City Schools Better," "Unite Rochester," and the "Editorial Board." When my tenure at the D & C  ended, I wanted to continue conversations first begun there. And start new ones.  So we created this new space, Talker of the Town, where all are invited to join. I don’t like to say these posts are “mine.” Very few of them are the sole product of my sometimes overheated imagination. Instead, I call them partnerships and collaborations. Or as they say in education, “peer group work.” Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.

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