Lea Thompson Reunites with HOWARD THE DUCK in New Comic
Back in 1986, Lea Thompson starred in Marvel's awful big screen adaptation of Howard the Duck. You'd think she wouldn't want to have anything to do with the property ever again after that disaster of a film, but she is reuniting with the character in the upcoming comic Howard the Duck #8.
According to THR, Thompson will be playing herself in the comic, "in a story that harkens back to her role as Howard’s girlfriend Beverly in the 1986 movie." In regards to joining the comic the actress said:
"My career goes into a 100 different directions, and I embrace them all. They asked me to appear in the comic and I was like, ‘Sure, why not?'”
The upcoming comic was written by Chip Zdarsky with art by Joe Quinones, and it focuses on Howard as a private eye and his offbeat cases. The latest story is described as a "doozy," and the reports offers the following description:
Thompson, appearing in the comic as herself, shows up at his door to hire the diminutive duck for a missing persons case. But the missing person is her! It turns out that she has been losing amounts of time over the years and can’t account for her actions or whereabouts. The answer to the mystery ties Thompson to her appearance to the 1986 movie.
According to Zkarsky, they've been planning this two-issue storyline for over a year, and the comic has been building up to this moment since its relaunch.
“We started planning this over a year ago, and a lot of the current storyline has been building toward this appearance, so it makes sense in-story and isn’t just a stunt.
Regardless of how bad the first movie was, Howard the Duck has had a resurgence of popularity thanks to his brief appearance in Guardians of the Galaxy. Thompson starred in the film a year after she had her breakout role in Back to the Future, and it was a major flop. The movie has gained a cult following over the years, though. Thompson says:
"So many people have come up to me and said, ‘I’m the only one that will come up to you and say that Howard the Duck was my favorite movie.’ And there have been thousands of these people.”
Zdarsky is one of those fans of the movie, which is why he wanted Thompson to be involved with the comic. When talking about the actress and the film, he said:
“She was at the center of two pivotal movies for me growing up, the one where she sleeps with a duck and the other where she tries to sleep with her time-traveling son. I lived in a small town, and my friend Terry and I would rent the VHS tape over and over…. We both agreed that the titular song played at the end of the movie by Lea’s band Cherry Bomb was the greatest song ever, so we used a microphone to record it from our TV speakers so we could listen to it whenever we wanted.”
Thompson didn't really care for the movie at all, and she said that it was "painful." But after going through the experience she admits:
"Things that seemed bad had turned out to be good in the end. It was a pretty demented movie, though.”
Howard the Duck #8 hits comic book stores on Wednesday.