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.