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Tribute to Steve Gerber
As many of you likely WON'T know, one of the best comic writers in history passed away last weekend. Well, I guess it's Monday, so technically the weekend before last weekend. His name was Steve Gerber, and he was one amazing man. He was battling against a degenerative lung disease, pulmonary fibrosis. He was waiting for a lung transplant, a thing that would have extended his life by perhaps five to ten years, tops, but time was against him even then.
A funny anecdote: another writer wrote about Steve: he said that Gerber was a heavy, HEAVY smoker, and smoked to the very day his health issues required him to stop. He had already been diagnosed, and yet still, he didn't drop a single pack. Finally, his lungs just couldn't support it and he had to stop. To the bitter end, Steve swore (and believed!) that his smoking had nothing to do with his lung problems. The writer telling the story mentioned this because, and I quote: "it was the only time I'd ever seen Steve divorced from reality".
And there's truth to that. Steve was a phenomenal, insightful writer, clever, deft, sharp as a tack. Even he, apparently, had a limit and a wall he reached when it came to the vice that likely finished him before he should have been finished, but thank god it was the only such wall he was caged by. On all other fronts, Steve was housed only by comic book stories unlike anything any other writer has ever, seriously, produced.
There's plenty of folks who wrote about him after his passing, but me and a few of my Broken Froniter colleagues gave it a shot as well. Mine's a little ways down, as I've included everyone's. Enjoy, and rest easy Steve. Miss ya already. --Dave B.
Steve Gerber 1947-2008: A Tribute
Lowdown by The BF Staff, posted February 15, 2008
As all will be aware by now, last weekend we lost Steve Gerber. Steve's most famous creation was probably Howard the Duck but his body of work included Man-Thing, Omega the Unknown, The Defenders, Guardians of the Galaxy, Void Indigo, Sensational She-Hulk, Foolkiller, Sludge, Nevada, Hard Time and so, so much more. At the time of his passing he was working on the Dr. Fate feature in DC's Countdown to Mystery. The Broken Frontier team take the opportunity below to give their personal recollections of the impact Steve's writing had on them and extend their condolences to Steve's family and friends.
Tony Ingram writes: I’m not sure when I first came across the work of Steve Gerber, but if the date has been forgotten, the effect of his writing has not. As a kid growing up in the Seventies, I was pretty much a loner. It wasn’t that I disliked people - I just didn’t understand them; their cliquishness, their need to always be in a crowd. My closest "friends" were the comic book characters I read about all the time, but though I liked them, I had little in common with them. Even the misfit X Men were in a group, and had each other. Obviously, there was something wrong with me.
And then, I discovered The Defenders, a "group" of people who really were misfits. I met Nighthawk, always seeking approval, and Jack Norris, always trying to understand a world that made no sense to him. I discovered Omega the Unknown, a superhuman with tremendous potential who just hadn’t a clue who he was or where he was going, and Howard the Duck, who considered the whole world crazy. And above all, in the pages of Man-Thing, I discovered Richard Rory, the ultimate everyman; just wanting everyone to get along and, preferably, leave him in peace to play his music.
And suddenly, it was okay to be a loner. Because there were a lot of us, after all. Thanks, Steve.
Bart Croonenborghs writes: I’m from Belgium. There, I said it. My comics were always way behind your comics. My comics needed to be translated… this takes time. You can stop laughing now. We are allowed to drink beer when we reach the age of 16. Being 8 years old and in possession of a world that has the exact width and breadth as your bicycling range, I did not know about any publication time-lags or shipping delays or other some such nonsense. Comics arrived in shops, one month apart. That was it.
I read The Defenders in Dutch. I knew these were some mad comics. Except for Norm Breyfogle’s Batman, it was one of my favorite books. Comics to me existed in a kind of fugue state not unlike a kids’ perception in the Sixties in the States, before the advent of the Direct Market. You took whatever you could get. I was so obsessed with not missing an issue that I would go to the bookshop the same day every week to check on the comics.
The shop owner once grabbed me by the coat and accused me of stealing. I did not buy something every week, you see. I felt bad afterwards for a long time, even though I did not steal anything or even thought about stealing them. I just did not want to miss an issue.
Steve Gerber? Never heard of him at that age, but I knew The Defenders had a Voice. Stronger than the story. Something was said between the lines in those issues. You could beat me upside the head with a caveman holding his wife and sixteen children and I could still not tell you exactly what. The characters seemed to give voice to a higher power. In the Avengers comics, the Masters of Evil were attacking the New York Manor and boy was that exciting, but the story was the story, the characters played the part they were expected to play. Nothing more, nothing less. But The Defenders and later Howard the Duck… the story had subtext, hidden messages, a Voice.
Being young is being impressionable. These comics impressed me. Nowadays, as a writer, they awe me. This is what Steve Gerber taught me: never give up, find your voice, make your mark. You could sniff a Gerber comic from a mile off. I wish you could smell my comics from a mile off. Or my writing.
Andy Oliver writes: I first came across Steve Gerber’s writing in the 1970s and immediately realized I was reading something very different, something very special. As a kid I just loved the out and out weirdness of Man-Thing, and the uncompromising, biting humor of Howard the Duck. As an (alleged) adult I learnt to appreciate the humanity of Steve’s work on so many other levels; whether they were philosophical, satirical, political, psychological or even downright experimental.
Of all his creations, though, the one I always had the softest spot for was Howard the Duck. While the Marvel super-hero set may have had their soap opera-style problems there was still a large element of wish-fulfillment embodied in their fantasy world that meant I could empathize with them, but never really identify with them. Howard was different though. As gloriously absurd as his adventures were, I could connect with Howard in a far more personal way because, to use the famous tagline, who amongst us hasn’t felt "trapped in a world he never made"? Who doesn’t want to rail against the world of the "hairless apes" on a daily basis for its thoughtless stupidity, overindulgence and unfairness? Steve had far more to say about the realities and frailties of the human condition through that little anthropomorphic duck than every "hard luck Peter Parker" and allegorical mutant story combined.
The Internet can be a scary place, full of rampant excess and tiresome hyperbole. But in Steve Gerber’s case, not one word of the online praise and appreciation that has deluged cyberspace in the wake of his passing, is unjustified or exaggerated. He was, quite simply, that unique a voice and that irreplaceable a talent.
First beer tonight is raised to you Steve. Cheers!
Dave Baxter writes: Steve would have winced to hear it, but I discovered him through the movie version of Howard the Duck. As a child, I thought it was a wonderful film, a completely wild and astonishing urban adventure starring, of all things, a duck.
Thankfully, I graduated to a box of actual Howard the Duck comics via an aunt who held hostage the entire run of Gerber’s original Volume 1 down in her basement. To say I was enchanted by the comic, to say I was educated by it, would be an understatement of epic proportions. It was phenomenal, insightful, entirely unpredictable though never purely non-sequiter. It was what we in the biz like to call "smart", "intelligent" even. And that was the core of Steve Gerber as a writer: imagination unfettered, with no horizon to his own shrewd acumen.
Whether he focused upon the politics of politics, environment, culture, sociology, or just plumb commentary on day-to-day human idiocy, Gerber approached it all with a charm and swagger that was irresistible. He cared. He wanted to change things, affect things, but he wanted people to listen, and that meant developing a voice few writers and hardly a comic scripter around has ever achieved: total self-awareness and the ability to write about topics that mattered, in ways that people were willing to read. Gerber found a voice that was sympathetic, for all its criticisms, a voice that loved as much as it loathed, a voice that couldn’t help but give a person pause for its honesty and sincerity.
I didn’t know Gerber as a "name" until his Vertigo series Nevada struck shelves in the mid-90s, a sort-of spin-off from Howard the Duck that, while never finding a large audience, I know was received as one step beyond joy by those who read it. We all hoped, to this very day, for a sequel — such was its power. In the midst of a revolution in comics heralding the violent and unapologetic storytelling of Ennis and Ellis and Morrison, Gerber sallied forth with a hysterical, over-the-top, and ultimately humane series that adapted to the times and, indeed, surpassed it. He made it look effortless.
If I have any regret, in living in a world that housed Steve along with myself, it’s that I didn’t reach out and say word one to him until Countdown to Mystery #1 was released, only a scant few months ago. I discovered his blog, read wonderful postings as sharp and yet cautious as his writing ever proved, and even managed to post a few comments and receive a response or two in return from him - absolute highlights in my career as a reviewer, I can tell you that much.
I learned there about his struggle for survival. As usual, the world hardly batted an eye. His blog filled with a few stalwarts that cared, and even a few that merely wanted to take up space inside of his blogosphere for whatever they felt they needed it for, to deride him, to promote the odd whatever. And through it all, as he bore the weight on his own mortality (let that sink in)… he continued to respond, kindly, thoughtfully, and pen one of the best comics to come out of DC in years.
As usual.
He was a modern master to the end, a humanitarian with more insight and understanding on any given day than the rest of us might manage, collectively, throughout the course of our inwardly-seeking lives. He was one hell of a writer. Crème de la crème. He has not left without touching thousands, deeply, truly, ineradicably. I’ll miss his presence dearly, but, more importantly, I’ll forever be happy that he was here period. That was Steve’s effect on people he never knew, and who never really knew him. I can only imagine the effect he had on those who did. He was and is of the very best to have come and gone. Godspeed, m’man.
Sam Moyerman writes: One of the oddest things about going to college is finding out you can study all sorts of topics you never thought possible. So when I saw a course at Penn State that covered comics, I jumped all over it. Sadly though, as a child of the late 80s and early 90s, until I got to college it seemed like all I knew of comics was X-Men, Marvel, and Image. And it wasn't until this class (Integrated Arts 10 for any Nittany Lions reading this) that I learned of some of the greats that I never even noticed before. People like Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, even (as ashamed as I am to admit this now) Will Eisner.
But the one guy who seemed to stick out of all of them was Steve Gerber. Here was a man who was not only famous for creating one of Marvel's funniest characters, but also for fighting for the creative rights of him. What made him stand out even more is that my only knowledge of said character was a crappy 1980s movie that made Roger Corman's Fantastic Four film seem like an Oscar winning effort. I, of course, am referring to Howard the Duck. But for some reason, I was learning (in college no less) about this creator's ongoing struggles for control of his irreverent mallard.
Fast forward a couple of years. I'm now out of college and my tastes in comics have changed dramatically to those I was taught about and suddenly Marvel Comics is announcing their new Max line of Mature comics, which will be headlined by one Howard the Duck miniseries, written by none other than Steve Gerber. Now, I'll be honest, initially I bought the book more out of curiosity than anything else. Quality-wise I had no idea what to expect. Comics from Gerber's time had tended not to age well to modern audiences and there was a little apprehension on my part. But boy did it ever come through.
Somehow Steve Gerber made his way back to his most famous creation and made me enjoy a book more than I ever thought possible. Satirically brilliant, Gerber hit all topics. The book was topical and written for modern audiences. He took chances and attacked everyone. And yet somehow, as he was throwing caution to the wind, leaving no stone unturned, and treating nothing sacred, he made a poignant statement, made the reader think, and also treated everything importantly. The series made me laugh so much I had to reread every issue over and over again. It was such a good series I even forgave him for turning Howard into a rat for most of it. Thank you Mr. Gerber. The comics world is not the same without you.
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