Rest in Peace Steve Gerber

Well I am behind the news on this one as I just learned from Booksteve that one of the best comic book writers of the 1970's and probably of any decade, Steve Gerber, passed away on Feb. 10th 2008. Most of his writing that I am familiar with is from Marvel Comics of the 1970's. It was there that he wrote for Man-Thing, Son of Satan, The Defenders, Omega the Unknown, Marvel Two-In-One and was most famous for creating Howard the Duck.

His battle over the rights for Howard the Duck is near legendary in the business and among comic book fans. It is a shame that it seems to have dominated his career and legacy as he put out some fine and entertaining comic books. As Steve said his work was surreal. Still that does make for good literature from time to time and Mr. Gerber's was good literature.

His battle with Marvel was a rallying cry to freelance artist and gave a kick to the Independent comic book industry in the 1980's. Jack Kirby created the character Destroyer Duck that was the star of an anthology series where other major freelancers submitted stories and the sales helped with the legal fees that Mr. Gerber was having a hard time with. That book also gave us the first look at Groo The Wanderer.

It is a shame that he didn't seem to care for all of his body of work. I recall reading a story where a young boy got together enough money to finance a comic book convention in the area. He got Steve Gerber to be the guest of honor but didn't have enough for him to get a motel room so he stayed at the boys house that weekend. The first day the boy had all of his favorite Steve Gerber stories laying on his bed. He showed them to Mr. Gerber. The boy was proud of his collection but got a startling reaction from him. He said he can't believe all the garbage that he had produced over the years. This shook the boy but he said it helped to make him a better writer.

Well Mr. Gerber may have believed that he put out a lot of garbage. I don't agree. However, in life there is good garbage and bad garbage. If he did put out garbage then Steve Gerber put out good garbage.
The above photo is from his site which you can see here or click on the title above. On that site he talks about recently working on a Dr. Fate project. The character seems a perfect fit for his style and I hope DC decides to publish it soon.