When walking out of James Gunn's 2014 film "Guardians of the Galaxy," the 10th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this author heard several other audiences members talking about the film's post-credits stinger. In the epilogue, the vaguely villainous Collector (Benicio Del Toro) sat destitute among the ruins of his collection or rare cosmic antiquities. Only a few of his beloved baubles has survived a cosmic blast, including a dog from Earth. The dog, wearing a Soviet space suit, was clearly salvaged from the 1960s Russian space program wherein canines were sent up in rockets to test their safety. The dog in "Guardians" is not Laika, but a fictional dog named Cosmo. The Collector had been keeping it in a cage on a distant planet for decades.

As Cosmo gives the Collector a sympathetic lick, a voice from off-screen (Seth Green) immediately points out how gross the dog is. A hard cut revealed the speaker to be none other than Howard the Duck, a spoof Marvel character created in 1973 by Steve Gerber.

Howard the Duck was conceived of as a wise-cracking, crass, hardboiled version of Donald Duck, meant to serve as an absurd counterpoint to the dignity of your average Marvel superhero. Infamously, in 1986, Willard Huyck adapted Howard to the big screen in a widely derided, openly annoying feature film. Because the "Howard the Duck" film bombed so hard, the character became a punchline, dismissed by many movie fans for decades. It seemed everyone hated him. That is, until Gunn dug him out of mothballs for a cameo.

Howard was rebooted in comic book form in 2014 by author Chip Zdarsky, the artist of "Sex Criminals." In an interview with CBR, Zdarsky admitted that Gunn's Howard cameo was directly responsible for giving his career a boost.

Not Brand Echh

It was unusual to witness people immediately begin to care about Howard the Duck as a result of James Gunn's film. It's like 28 years of Howard hate didn't happen. Prior to "Guardians," only a few comic book fans cared, while the rest of us still recalled the scar left by the 1986 film's massive failure.

Chip Zdarsky recalled the swift timeline of events that led to the 2014 Marvel Comics reboot of "Howard the Duck." Gunn's film opened, it was hugely successful, and Marvel almost instantaneously put several new "Howard" comics into production as a result. Zdarsky was called and immediately got a gig at one of the world's biggest publishers. In his words:

"I wouldn't be working at Marvel or DC if it wasn't for James Gunn. After he did 'Guardians of the Galaxy,' the weekend after it opened, a Marvel editor contacted me and said, 'Hey, did you watch Guardians of the Galaxy? James Gunn put Howard the Duck at the end! I think we have a shot at launching a Howard the Duck series now.' That was my first gig at Marvel."

In 2014, Zdarsky was nominated for his first Eisner Award for his work on "Sex Criminals," and would be nominated for six more in the next five years. He would also would go on to write "Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man" in 2018, and create "Batman: Black and White" in 2020. He's also written for "Jughead," "Daredevil," and the new series "Public Domain." He even stepped in to write a revival of "Not Brand Echh," Marvel's MAD Magazine-like spoof comic.

'I Don't Give A S*** About James Gunn'

As one might imagine, someone who writes and draws for "Howard the Duck" and "Not Brand Echh" has something of a sense of humor. Chip Zdarsky, feigning arrogance, declared openly that Gunn means nothing to him, saying sarcastically: "I don't give a s*** about James Gunn until he mentions my work, frankly. Once he does, he'll be my best friend." Zdarsky, of course, immediately walked that back because Gunn, after seeing that his film more or less relaunched "Howard," was careful to talk up the new books with enthusiasm on his Twitter account.

Naturally, Zdarsky was flattered, not being used to getting attention from high-profile Hollywood directors. The author became frank, saying:

"The funny thing is, I got that job and I wrote 'Howard the Duck' for a good amount of time. Then James was like one of the first [of the] higher ups people on Twitter to actually, like, go out of his way to publicly talk about Howard the Duck, and that he enjoyed it. I'm like, 'Oh, well, that's really nice.' So yeah, I actually owe my career to James."

Other authors present for the interview expressed a similar boost to their careers as well, all thanks to "Guardians of the Galaxy." Tom King said his work on "The Omega Men" was facilitated by the success of "Guardians," and Tom Taylor felt that his work on "Suicide Squad" was given exposure when Gunn directed a "Suicide Squad" movie. Gunn's films have been largely well-received, often praised for their quirky sense of humor. He also seems to be the tide that raises all ships.

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