Howard the Duck fans will recognize a familiar face when the series releases its eighth issue this Wednesday.
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That face is none other than Lea Thompson, who played Beverly in the much maligned Howard the Duck feature film directed by George Lucas. The film was panned by both critics and general audiences when it released back in 1986, but Thompson is excited about returning to Howard’s side of the universe.
In an interview with THR, 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?’ “
Chip Zdarsky, who currently writes the Howard the Duck comic series along with artist Joe Quinones, wants fans of the book to know that the two issue story isn’t just a one-off stunt. “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.”
Her part in Howard the Duck revolves around Thompson (playing herself) hiring Howard to help her find her missing memory, which will eventually link in someway to her part in the original film.
Zdarsky was excited to work with Thompson, someone he grew up idolizing, saying: “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.”
As for Thompson, she says her appreciation for Howard has grown over the years, adding: “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.”
Due to the disappointing reception of Howard, she had to take another film right after, which happened to be Some Kind of Wonderful. It was there that she actually met her husband, Howard Deutch, so it didn’t turn out all bad, with Thompson concluding: “Things that seemed bad had turned out to be good in the end. It was a pretty demented movie, though.”
