Steve Gerber: 1947-2008
Author: Ink-Stained Wretch
After a long, pitched battle, comicbook writer Steve Gerber finally succumbed to his failing lungs yesterday. Most of you out there in Jawn-land probably have no idea who the dude was... but Gerber reinvented comics writing in the early '70s with a unique gonzo approach that prefigured the reinventions of the Vertigo generation of comics scribes (Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison all owe a debt of gratitude to Gerber.) Gerber turned the muck-drenched horror comic Man-Thing into a psychedelic postmodern romp where the backwater bayou became "the Nexus of All Realities." In The Defenders, he transformed the standard issue superhero team into an encounter group, where superpowered misfits worked out their aggressions and "issues" in Dr. Strange's upstate New York retreat. And with his most famous creation, Howard the Duck, he gave us a candidate for our times. The notoriously dreadful movie version has nought to do with Gerber's sardonic, satiric and unapologetically strange work with the character. (During his brief, blistering run, Howard ran for President, battled vampiric cows, went insane, suffered from hallucinatory visions of the band KISS, endured demonic possession, fought a nine-foot-tall Frankensteinian gingerbread man, faced off with his arch-nemesis Dr. Bong and, through it all, maintained an inter-species relationship with a hot young human thang.) The wretched movie was the lowest blow in Gerber's long, doomed battle with Marvel to retain control of the character. In addition to his brilliantly offbeat writings, Gerber's other legacy lingers: a champion of creator's rights, he never relented in a world dominated by media giants where every idea is just an intellectual "property" waiting to be seized, stolen and squatted upon. More here and here.
Wow,
informative as always, Inkie
- Thanks.
I remember seeing Howard
running at me off the back
page of various Marvel comics
as a kid...
I think it was an advert for subscription.
Maybe an example of Gerber and his
character's long running feud with
Marvel?
As for the movie, that is one bad
film, that I did not like. Sadly, I
am all too familiar with it.
I don't know what was more embarrassing-
Howard himself, the duck costumes,
Tim Robbins or the choice of
Lea Thompson as the "hard rocking chick"
in a supporting role. I think Jeffrey Jones,
of Ferris Bueller fame, as the baddy
was the only thing going for this movie.
I read a lot of Howard the Duck in issues that someone from my family had passed down from a pretty sweet 70's Marvel collection (I'll spare you the details of another "Oh, I wish I still had so-and-so" story…).
Thanks to this and MAD Magazine, my childhood humor and pop-culture references were largely anachronistic (I told way too many Spiro Agnew jokes for an 80's/90's kid).
Its pretty great stuff, and as I rebuild my old comic collection in the form of those phonebook-sized Essentials Howard is high on my list of acquisitions. For me, Gerber's work here as well as Omega the Unknown define Marvel's odd pop/horror/martial arts/blaxploitation era, along with Werewolf by Night and so many other great comics…
Weep not for Gerber though friends, as he "reclaimed" Howard back in the 1990's through an unofficial Image/Marvel crossover in Savage Dragon Meets Destroyer Duck. Howard and his Lady Friend are rescued from Godcorp (No mention of Golden Fluffy…) and spirited to another dimension and placed in a witness protection program. Now colored green and going by the handle "Leonard the Duck", I believe this is the last "canon" Howard story [slides glasses up nose].
Actually, I think Gerber's pretty decent HOWARD miniseries for Marvel's "adult" MAX imprint came after the Savage Dragon story... Howard was kind of a creature of the '70s, but the mini did a pretty good job of making that kind of satire seem relevant for the '90s... and though, from all accounts, the book & the trade paperback collection that followed did pretty well, nobody at Marvel did the obvious thing (greenlighting a full-fledged Howard revival with Gerber at the helm).
Like you, Messr. Count, I only caught a few glimpses of Howard in crumbling back-issues before the ESSENTIAL came out. (And supposedly there's a giant full color hardcover HOWARD OMNIBUS coming out... if you've got the cash to buy it, don't drop it on your foot.)
I still haven't had a chance to read the OMEGA trade, so no spoilers, please! (You're probably already aware that award winning "lit'rary" scifi writer Jonathan Lethem is currently doing a new riff on OMEGA?)
And thus I've been schooled…
I've seen some of the new Omega stuff floating around, but I haven't had the chance to check it out A) 'cause I'm a poor ol' dirt farmer, and B) I'm always hesitant to embrace new versions of awesome stuff (See: Val Kilmer as KITT), I will look for the Howard MAX though, as I didn't really know it existed…
The MAX book has nice Phil Leilahoa art, if nothing else!
BTW, does anybody know what happened to the the Howard "pin" art from this entry??? Just vanished.... not my doing.