[SPOILER] Popular Marvel Cameo Appears In Leaked ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ End-Credits Scene

Guardians of the Galaxy is set to open this weekend, and is already tracking for a $65 million dollar opening, which would make it the biggest August opening in history. The film is great, we’ve seen it, but what we didn’t get at advance screening was the end-credits scene, commonly called the ‘stinger.’

Now, as reported by Business Insider, via Yahoo!, footage has leaked of the end-credits scene online, and it contains a whopper of a cameo. Beware of spoilers going forward. You’ve been warned.

One last time SPOILER ALERT!

The end-credits scene opens with The Collector, Taneleer Tavan, played by Benicio del Toro bandaged up and sitting amongst the remains of his “collection” after the Guardians paid him a visit in the film. Cosmo, the russian space dog he he previously had in his collection comes up and licks The Collector’s bandaged face, and then we hear a voice speaking. The camera shifts and we see Howard the Duck in his now-shattered glass pen, equally unkempt and battle weary, sipping a space martini. Lines are spoken and the scene ends. Just like that. The stinger runs for around thirty seconds, but it’s just enough for audiences to get a taste of Howard, last seen in 1986’s George-Lucas-Produced box-office bomb.

The Inquisitr previously reported about the end-credits cameo, based on cast and credit information taken from press materials sent by the studio.

The cameo character would fit well in the Marvel Cosmic universe, as his first comic book appearance was a cameo in Adventure Into Fear No. 19, and saw him abducted from his home world (which was not a world of just ducks–as was later retconned, but of all human-like animals) to aid Man-Thing on a quest. The character slips and falls into space during the quest, but instead of dying, he magically winds up in Cleveland and meets a beautiful, down on her luck woman and together they have zany misadventures.

Steve Gerber, the character’s creator, had his hand in the development throughout the series, which also included Marvel magazines and even a daily syndicated comic strip. Gerber famously sued Marvel for creator rights when Marvel began to use the character at will, and the issue came to a head when Lucasfilm bought the rights for the aforementioned 1986 film. Gerber won the lawsuit and now characters have to be attributed to their specific creators whenever used, which was how the cameo was first discovered in the first place.

Guardians of the Galaxy opens on August 1st. Make sure you stay for the end-credits scene to see the cameo of one of the most cherished Marvel characters ever.