Hot News: Who was that at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy?

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After the finale of Guardians of the Galaxy we get two post-credits scenes. One, which happens almost immediately after the credits start, simply shows a fun moment on the Guardians' ship. The second, which pops up after all the other credits have run was so secretive that it wasn't even shown at press screenings for the movie and didn't show up on prints of the film until Thursday evening.

So who is that character who shows up at the end?

The scene shows Benicio Del Toro's character The Collector sulking in the remains of his hideout after most of his things have been destroyed by an blast of the infinity gem. The Collector gets his face licked by a space dog and a voice off-screen asks why he would let someone would allow a filthy animal like that to lick them. We flip over to the source of the voice and it's revealed that Howard the Duck has been kept in one of The Collector's cages.

Howard the Duck is a cult favourite character who was introduced into Marvel comics in the mid 1970s on the pages of Man-Thing*, Marvel's swamp-themed horror character. Howard - an anthropomorphic and surly cigar-smoking duck with a metatextual habit of breaking the fourth wall - was always a strange fit for mainstream comics continuity, but he lived in the same world as Captain America and Iron Man.

Howard was created by Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik, and was given a solo series written by Gerber which quickly took off. The joke of the book was the juxtaposition of an absurd and somewhat silly-looking cartoonish Duck with the more serious real-world issues that were being presented. The comic was later spun-off into a newspaper strip.

After about 30 issues Gerber was removed from the series and the strip over creative disagreements, and later sued Marvel over the ownership rights to Howard. The case was settled in 1982 with an out of court settlement, the details of which were never made public. What is known, however, is that Gerber ceded all rights to Howard to Marvel and that he was allegedly given an undisclosed consulting contract with the character. If you're wondering why Guardians ended with a conspicuous 'created by' tag, this lawsuit is likely the reason.

At around this same time Disney sued Marvel over similarities between Howard and Donald Duck, leading to Marvel being forced to put pants on Howard. (This mandate seems to follow to this day - Howard is wearing pants in the scene - despite the fact that Disney actually owns both characters at this point.)

Howard's biggest mainstream spotlight came in 1986 when he was the start of the live-action Howard The Duck, where Howard was paired with Leah Thompson as a love interest. The movie, which jettisoned most of the satirical and metatextual elements of the comic, went on to completely bomb, and was the first real fumble for George Lucas - who produced and championed the film - since making American Graffiti in 1973.

GUARDIANS made almost as much on Thursday as HOWARD THE DUCK made in its entire run.- Devin Faraci (@devincf) August 01, 2014

Amazingly, Howard The Duck was actually the first attempt at bringing a Marvel superhero to the big screen since the company had rebranded itself from Timely Comics in the early 1960s. After Howard, Marvel wouldn't see another theatrical release until 1997's Blade.

The use of Howard in Guardians is interesting because it indicates that Marvel is really willing to explore the weirdest and deepest corners of its library, despite the fact that the character is best known for being in a pretty terrible '80s box-office blunder and is just downright strange in the context of the world the company has been building up. * Man-Thing actually exists in the Marvel cinematic continuity as he was offhandedly mentioned by Maria Hill in an episode of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD. Man-Thing, of course, should not be confused with the more famous Swamp-Thing, who is a very similar DC character introduced around the same time.

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