Destroyer Duck #1 - It's Got the Whole World...in Its Hand!

DESTROYER DUCK #1 is a bit of an angry comic. With good reason, given that writer Steve Gerber was engaged in a lawsuit with Marvel regarding another Duck (for which profits from this book benefited), and Kirby was had his own issues with the company.

But clearly anger works as a motivating force, since this is a really good story. The analogy is obvious enough, with Duke "Destroyer" Duck going on a mission of vengence on behalf of "The Little Guy", a talking duck who was exploited, cheated and ultimately killed by the monolithic GodCorp. Kirby's got an interesting funny animal style that he only had a few chances to use in his career, and this is a nice mix of that and his traditional action art. That works well with the slightly off-kilter, cynical satire of Gerber, who's rarely been better than he is here.



DESTROYER DUCK is one of the most wholly successful of Kirby's 1980s books, and well worth picking up. It would be nice to some day see a reprint of the whole series.

The inking on the story is by Alfredo Alcala, and it's really good. I wouldn't have thought the combination would work, since Alcala can be a bit of an overpowering inker sometimes, but the end result is very nice, with a bit of an echo of the linework style from the S&K work circa 1950. The cover is inked by Neal Adams.

Published 1982