Disney demanded to be able to redesign Howard themselves, and their redesigned character wore pants. Marvel accepted this, but first, they had to create a story that explained Howard’s new style. In it, Howard is besieged by protesters who call him indecent, and this turns out to all be a conspiracy by a businessman named Wally Sidney. This time, Marvel really was aiming for a Disney parody.
Wally Sidney was a cartoonist who invented a rat named Hymie (“a rat that wears clothes and talks?” say his boss, “that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard”). He quits the biz and moves into the fashion world. He opens an emporium called “Sidney Land” and also creates a fashion film called Pantasy—this last part may be a reference to Fantasia, but the parody’s getting loose at this point. He makes conservative clothing till updated trends leave him unsuccessful. So he creates a conspiracy to make people clothe their pets. And now, Howard must agree to wear pants, else an angry mob will come in and tear him apart.
When the Howard the Duck movie came around in 1986, they even had him telling those confused by his clothes, “My lawyers tell me I’ve always been wearing these pants.” It’s a film otherwise known for some human characters taking off their pants and for duck characters showing off above-the-waist nudity, but Howard keeps his pants on.
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