James Gunn once revealed why he made a cameo with Howard the Duck in the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY franchise

Howard the Duck is one of the strangest Marvel characters around. It makes sense that the 1986 film was not well received, as the character is strange and the story and the duck’s costume itself were even stranger. Although it seemed aimed at children, the humor and sexually charged scenes meant the film landed with no particular audience, and the character was mostly left in the 1980s.

We finally saw him return as a cameo in the director James Gunn’S Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, which makes sense since Howard is an alien and most of the films were set in space. It didn’t have a major role, but it was always visible in every film, as in a quick shot of the big battle in Avengers: Endgame.

Why bring back such a strange character for this series of cameos, you might ask. But that’s simply because Gunn was a big fan of the Howard the Duck comics as a kid, and he saw the movie and felt the extraterrestrial detective needed a good shake-up.

During a 2017 interview with Yahoo! News, where Gunn was promoting Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2talked about his Howard the Duck fandom and was asked point blank what he thought of the original film. He explained:

“I’m a big fan of Howard the Duck. […] For those who don’t know, I’m a huge Marvel Comics fan. But Howard the Duck was perhaps my favorite character as a child. I loved Steve Gerber’s “Howard the Duck.” I went back and collected all those comics, I had every comic he had ever appeared in. […] I was young and I was so excited about it. […] I wasn’t hip with Caucasian eyelids. This shocked me. Because they had the puppet, and it was a duck, and instead of having feathered or white eyelids, it had Caucasian eyelids, and it was creepy.”

Gunn summed up his feelings by saying, “That movie sucks.” Yep, that’s pretty much everyone’s thoughts on the matter. It’s nice that he was able to bring Howard the Duck back and make it look like he imagined.

via: /Film