BOOKS
Book Review Feb. 29, 2008
Steve Gerber Comics
Hackettstown, NJ The death of writer Steve Gerber at age 60 in early February has left a void in the comic book world. For over 30 years, Gerber had been an iconoclast, an innovator, a gadfly, and a pioneer. His distinctive voice will be missed.
The obituaries in the mainstream press have almost invariably cited Gerber primarily as the creator of Howard the Duck, widely remembered for that bloated 1986 movie. But if you've read any of Gerber's stories of the character, you know that Howard was a vehicle for sharp social and political satire, as well as a metaphor for anyone who's felt like an outsider, "trapped in a world he never made."
Steve Gerber joined Marvel Comics in the early 1970s. It was a fertile environment, as new creators were breathing life into characters created a decade or more earlier. Writers such as Steve Englehart, Don McGregor, Jim Starlin and Doug Moench were rewriting the rules and questioning assumptions about characters, plot and themes.
Even among these talents, Gerber was a maverick. He never seemed comfortable with traditional heroes such as Daredevil or the Sub-Mariner. Actually, his best superhero work was The Defenders, a "non-team" of characters who didn't fit into other groups.
However, given the chance to work with a blank slate, Gerber could fly. He took a derivative title such as Man-Thing, a horror book about an empathic monster, and turned into an anthology series that explored issues, including racism and censorship, in a way previously unseen in comics. Original creations - of which Howard the Duck and Omega the Unknown were the most prominent examples - gave him even more freedom to turn his satirical eye on society and to vent his anger at injustices.
But Gerber never forgot how to keep the "comic" in comics. He wrote dead-on parodies and some truly groan-worthy puns. He laced many of his stories with black humor and surreal touches. For example, one of the running gags in his Defenders book was the recurring appearance of a gun-toting elf that randomly showed up at people's door and shot them. And then there was the time the jar of peanut butter turned into a sword-wielding barbarian. And don't forget the mad scientist whose brain was transplanted into a fawn.
One of his stories was called "I Think We're All Bozos in This Book," in a nod to the I Think We're All Bozos on this Bus LP by the Firesign Theater. And like that legendary comedy troupe, Gerber could be erudite and subtle in his points of reference. His work alluded to the writings of Hegel and Camus, among others.
Amazingly, Gerber was able to do some of his best writing at a time when a Marvel story was only 17 pages long AND had to be approved by the restrictive Comics Code Authority. Comics today are at least five pages longer and no longer have to fall under the Code. But if you compare most "adult" comics of 2008 with what Gerber was doing from 1973 to 1977, there's no question which are more mature and more complex.
Gerber left Marvel under acrimonious circumstances and filed a lawsuit over ownership of Howard the Duck; that legal action drew attention to the way publishers trampled on creators' rights and led to important changes. He continued to push boundaries with stories for the independent publisher Eclipse Comics, including Stewart the Rat (one of the first true graphic novels), and Destroyer Duck.
Gerber's death is made doubly sad by the fact that - unlike most of his contemporaries - he continued to produce inventive stories. 'Nevada' (a mystical story of a Las Vegas showgirl and her pet ostrich) and 'Hard Time' (a bizarre hybrid of 'Prison Break', S. E. Hinton's 'The Outsiders', and the 'X-Men') were as trippy and intricate as anything he had done. Best of all, he was able to do an unfettered 'Howard the Duck' story that ended with a conversation with God that had to be seen to be believed.
On a personal note, Steve Gerber was one of the writers who helped save my life during the 1970s. His compassion for his characters, his sense of absurdity, his sympathy for the underdog, his moral outrage - all these shaped my sensibility and got me through a difficult time of my own making.
His absence leaves the world a little dimmer. It's enough to make a grown man shed a tear. Or, as Howard would say: Waaaugh.
© Copyright 2009, WNTI
