CHUD.com Community › Forums › ARTS & LITERATURE › Comics & Anime › R.I.P. Steve Gerber (Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, etc.)
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

R.I.P. Steve Gerber (Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, etc.)

post #1 of 19
2/12/08 at 12:02am
Thread Starter 
Comics legend Steve Gerber passed away Sunday. He was the creator of Howard the Duck and Omega the Unknown, among other things. For a nice tribute and brief bio, head over to The Comics Reporter.com.

An excerpt:
"Steve Gerber's superhero books were a tonic to the over-seriousness of most of their cousins, and his horror-adventure books were frequently classy and reserved in a genre that tends to reward the blunt and ugly. No creator save Jack Kirby has as a cautionary tale and a living example saved so many creators the grief of turning over their creations without reward or without realizing what they had done. Few creators in the American mainstream were as consistently fascinating as Steve Gerber. Even fewer have been as outspoken and forthright, or in that way, as admirable."

"I wouldn't describe myself as fearless, but I think you have to accept the possibility of failure if you want to achieve anything, in any field." -- Steve Gerber, 1985

Link: http://www.comicsreporter.com/index....ber_1947_2008/bb
Reply
post #2 of 19
2/12/08 at 1:04am
Yeah, even though I knew he was sick, this was a sad shock to me.

Besides his lengthy and outstanding contributions to comics, Gerber also worked as a writer and story editor in animation--he created the Thundarr the Barbarian cartoon, for example.
Reply
post #3 of 19
2/12/08 at 4:11am
I own just one of his comics, but it contains this wonderful scene:

*a gangbanger is chilling out, leaning against a wall, apparently rapping to himself*

Gangbanger: Bad rap, hot slap, slow tap on my lap.

*Hawkeye pops up and shoots the gangbanger with an arrow*

Hawkeye: Lean back, into the trap.

*I put down the comic in confusion*

Rest in peace, Steve, and your endearingly naiive attempts to write street lingo.
Reply
post #4 of 19
2/12/08 at 5:07am
Howard the Duck remains a key element of my young development. It still angers me that so many people only know Howard from that movie. Rarely has an adaptation so utterly missed the point of the original.

Waauugh.
Reply
post #5 of 19
2/12/08 at 5:57am
Foolkiller. Bingo bango bongo.
Reply
post #6 of 19
2/12/08 at 12:55pm
Agitpop never knew it so well. Plus, the motherfucker created Thundarr the Barbarian.

Did anyone else here read his book "Hard Time"?
Reply
post #7 of 19
2/12/08 at 1:32pm
God damn it...between this and Scheider, and me having to shell out $400 for new tires, this week has been kind of shitty so far. And it's only Tuesday!
Reply
post #8 of 19
2/13/08 at 11:21am
Gerber was the man ... Howard the Duck and Omega the Unknown were favorites as a kid. Because of the shattershot distribution system for comics in those days, I was always upset that I missed the end of Omega, until I found it it didn't really have an ending (and I don't count that crap in Defenders.)

In retrospect, it's really amazing how much controversy Howard the Duck sparked. Gerber sued Marvel on one front for ownership of the characters (which was a landmark action) while Disney sued the company on another for copyright infringement on Donald Duck. Add the George Lucas fiasco to the pile and the character becomes a lightening rod of misfortune.

I traded e-mails a few years back with Gerber, and he was always fun to talk to.
Reply
post #9 of 19
2/13/08 at 3:54pm
Good eulogy from Steven Grant*:

Quote:
He embraced Man-Thing. (It's pretty much impossible to discuss Man-Thing without unfortunate double-entendres - GIANT-SIZED MAN-THING is still the best, funniest comic book title Marvel ever came up with – so there they are and that's that.) He quickly turned it into a mechanism for telling any kind of story he chose to tell, in any way he chose to tell it. (The "nexus of realities" he tossed into Man-Thing's swamp was the progenitor of hundreds of such reality-warping plot gimmicks infesting comics ever since.) He championed the literary use of text in comics, in massive doses; of social realism that ended up making him the Nostradamus of Columbine; of deconstructing and undermining formulae with abandon; of incorporating didactic or philosophical arguments in stories. There were other great comics writers at the time, but, whether you like the work or not, in MAN-THING Steve alone of all his mainstream peers was writing as if there were still undiscovered countries in the medium. Steve always said his major influence was the SUPERMAN TV show of the 1950s – it certainly informed the humanist moralism that runs throughout his work – but though he tried several times to create a new Superman figure, it's evident "heroism" and "power" were concepts he held in deep suspicion, along with fashion and tradition; his natural subjects were losers, outcasts, the repressed, the oppressed and the downtrodden. More than other comics writers of the era, he placed great coin on literary style; the "ironic moralism" in all his work stems, I think, from those same Missouri wellsprings that produced Mark Twain and William Burroughs. But what most readers recognized was this: unlike standard superhero books like DAREDEVIL, MAN-THING gave Steve the ground on which to develop an almost wholly unique tableau, where there was no formula (or precious little, unusually restricted to someone burning at Man-Thing's touch... and there's a damn double entendre again) except that anything could happen.
*Interestingly, Grant wrote the aforementioned Defenders crap.
Reply
post #10 of 19
2/14/08 at 1:30am
I always loved Wundarr, Gerber's Superman parody--a baby rocketed to Earth by his scientist dad who thought their planet was going to explode (it didn't). And the elderly Ma and Pa who saw the crash decided not to mess with it because it could have something to do with communists. Hence, Wundarr grew up alone and uneducated.
Reply
post #11 of 19
2/14/08 at 2:18am
Thread Starter 
Another couple of really good Gerber reads by way of the Inkwell Bookstore:

Link: http://inkwellbookstore.blogspot.com...-brief_14.html

"The Comics Journal has just posted their 1978 interview with Steve Gerber. It was the first(?) interview Gerber gave after being sh*t-canned from Marvel Comics for asserting his creator's rights to the character Howard the Duck, and Gerber pulled no punches."

Link: http://www.tcj.com/index.php?option=...=754&Itemid=48

"(One more Gerber related item: a eulogy of sorts, care of The Savage Critics. Oh, and the eulogy actually ties back into the first news item, so viola -- connections made!)"

Link: http://savagecritic.com/2008/02/sayi...ve-gerber.html
Reply
post #12 of 19
2/14/08 at 8:18pm
As an aside: anybody reading the current Jonathan Lethem scripted Omega The Unknown? Opinions?
Reply
post #13 of 19
2/14/08 at 8:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mad Man Mundt View Post
As an aside: anybody reading the current Jonathan Lethem scripted Omega The Unknown? Opinions?
I am, and I like it. It abandons some of the heavy handedness of the original series (which was part of the culture at the time, and not specifically Gerber's fault) but still has that "WTF?" vibe of the original. Very quirky book and respectful of Gerber/Skrenes ... even if it is a remake.

I was doing back flips at the prospect of reading new Omega the Unknown AND Howard the Duck comics at the same time. HtD wasn't terrible, but it wasn't as good as Ty Templeton's usual output. Gerber's HtD comics were full of genuine rage. People who follow in his footsteps either have to share that rage or fake it, which is why the Duck has struggled since Gerber left Marvel during the original series.
Reply
post #14 of 19
2/14/08 at 8:39pm
So is it actually telling the original story over again, or breaking out into its own thing?
Reply
post #15 of 19
2/14/08 at 8:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg David View Post
So is it actually telling the original story over again, or breaking out into its own thing?
A bit of both, really. It's the same general story, but many of the characters have changed (not to mention their names.) This isn't a shot-for-shot remake, and a few new wrinkles (some of them surprisingly violent) have been added to the tale.

Having read the original books isn't required, but it certainly makes for a deeper experience.
Reply
post #16 of 19
2/14/08 at 10:05pm
Thread Starter 
^^^
...and it will have an actual ending.
Reply
post #17 of 19
2/14/08 at 10:47pm
Cool. I'll eventually pick up the trade. I had a few of the original issues as a kid. I dug it because it was weird and a far sight different that Spidey and Captain America. I had no real understanding of what the hell was going on in it though and had no understanding of distribution so I was totally puzzled as to why I couldn't find it in 7-11. Always sad to see a true original go.
Reply
post #18 of 19
2/14/08 at 11:01pm
I just ordered the trade paperback collection from Amazon, as my memories of it are fuzzy at best. I wonder if it includes the conclusion from another comic (Defenders?) that Gerber apparently didn't like.
Reply
post #19 of 19
2/15/08 at 2:14am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg David View Post
I just ordered the trade paperback collection from Amazon, as my memories of it are fuzzy at best. I wonder if it includes the conclusion from another comic (Defenders?) that Gerber apparently didn't like.
Yep, it does (Defenders #76-77).
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Comics & Anime
CHUD.com Community › Forums › ARTS & LITERATURE › Comics & Anime › R.I.P. Steve Gerber (Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, etc.)