Howard the Duck was supposed to get laid (sort of) in his debut issue cover-dated January 1976 — and though I no longer remember why he didn’t get laid, I have proof of that editorial alteration thanks to papers discovered in my late sister-in-law Ellen Vartanoff’s collection.

In that issue, there’s a scene where Howard lands in a nest and explains how it “reminds me of where I was first hatched.” But that is not how the word balloon was originally lettered.

As you can see from a photocopy of the original art for that page, the initial word balloon had Howard saying the nest reminded him of “where I was first laid.”

I’ve found no Comics Code paperwork, so I have no idea if they’re the ones who decided “laid” was too much of a double entendre, or if it was an internal decision, but the change was made.

Here’s the actual replacement lettering of the word “hatched” — along with John Romita, Sr.’s instructions to have the word stripped in, which tells me this was caught and changed extremely late in the process.

We’re unlikely to ever know the cause for this alteration … unless my continued poring over my sister-in-law’s collection reveals more. I live in hope!