The Comics Rack

Farewell, Steve Gerber

The passing of someone who has entertained us, always causes me to pause and reflect about what this person had to say in their creative endevours that made me notice them. In the case of Steve Gerber, a number of comic book memories came to the surface and you will find them listed below:

• I first encountered Gerber's work in the pages of The Defenders. His take on the characters was, shall we say, quirky and slightly off the norm...but, it worked and for a couple of years, Gerber's view of the group's dynamic set a standard that was never equalled on the book.
• After reading The Defenders, I sought out Gerber's other work and, for a time, he was one of my favorite creators.
• On The Defenders, Gerber followed the work of Steve Englehart. In fact, it seems that on many comic titles, Gerber took over after Englehart left. Don't mean this as a slight, and I'm not going to compare the two writers, just an interesting bit of triva.
• I will say, however, that Gerber's take on things often dovetailed out of Englehart's foundations into wonderfully original directions.
• I recall reading an answer to a letter in some Marvel letter column in which the author of the answer thoroughly skewered DC's treatment (at the time) of Superman, without mentioning anyone, including the character, by name. There was a later apology (in either the same letter column or a fanzine) where it was revealed that it was Gerber who had penned the response shortly after reading the current issue of Superman; a childhood favorite he hadn't read in many year.
• What I liked about that incident is that Gerber had opinions and wasn't afraid to express them, either publically or through his writing and, most importantly, he was an industry insider who was willing to point fingers and name names (something that didn't enamore him to the suits at the top).
• I've personally felt the Man-Thing (both in Adventure into Fear and Man-Thing) was Gerber's best work, since it took the concept of horror in an unexpected direction (it also doesn't hurt that some of his run on the title had Mike Ploog on the art). Under Gerber, the Man-Thing was a peripheral character to the stories that were about people rather than the central character. No one has done it this well either before or since.
• Although most consider Howard the Duck to be Gerber's masterpiece, I think the series fell apart after the first 5 or 6 appearances of the character. Howard, at his inception (regardless of what you read to the contrary), was a parody of Donald Duck (I'll be writing something about this in a couple of months). Once Gerber abandoned the parody idea, he took off into a direction that I still can't quite figure out, but it was a bit too much Gerber and not enough Howard for my taste.
• Some years after he left Marvel, Gerber, along with Miller and some other creators (can't recall who) were involved in proposition to DC to license Superman and Batman and do their own stories that would not fall under the control of DC comics, as the characters were pretty boring at that point and sales were through the floor. DC declined, but it did set up a later occurence at Marvel where Lee, Liefeld and others did the Heroes Reborn sequence.
• In later years, I read less and less of Gerber's output, since his writing had changed and whatever it is that spoke to me in the early days just wasn't there any longer-he seemed angry and, to an extant, seemed to want to push the envelope without any real direction.
• I will say, however, that he probably put more of himself into his work than many creators and there was a sense of reality to his work that went contrary to the main comic book current. In a different comic book world, Gerber would have been celebrated for what made his work different and, he wouldn't have had to fight, like so many other creators, for a piece of what he created.