Howard the Duck is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by writer Steve Gerber, based very loosely on his college friend Howard Tockman, and artist Val Mayerik. Howard the Duck first appeared in Adventure into Fear #19 and several subsequent series have chronicled the misadventures of the ill-tempered anthropomorphic animal trapped on a human-dominated Earth. Echoing this, the most common tagline of his comics reads 'Trapped In a World He Never Made!'.