Sad Announcement
I am not Steve Gerber. I’m a friend of his named Mark Evanier.
Steve died yesterday at that hospital in Las Vegas. It was not a surprise but it was a shock…to all of us who knew him.
I posted a little piece over at my weblog that I hope says what some of us are feeling.
I don’t know how long Steve’s weblog will remain but it will be here long enough for you to all read Steve’s past postings…and do pay special attention to the love and respect shown by his many commenters. I’ll bet there will be some important words posted as comments to this message.
Somewhere among his writings here, you’ll find a message where Steve thanks his friends Mary Skrenes and Harris Miller for all that they did for him. All of us would like to thank Mary and Harris for helping keep the guy around as long as was humanly possible…and maybe even a little longer than that.
If there are any announcements about memorials, tributes, etc., I will attempt to post them here, but I will certainly post them over at my site, www.newsfromme.com. That is not a ploy to get you to visit my weblog. It just took me a while to figure out how to “break in” to Steve’s website (with permission from those close to him) to post this…and I’m not certain I can do it again.
And Steve…if you have a good Internet connection where you are and can read this, I just have to say: There are easier ways of getting out of having lunch with me.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:08 PM
I’m just too stunned to adequately express my grief. It’s like losing a brother.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:13 PM
This sucks incredibly. I still have my GET DOWN AMERICA! button. Many condolences to Mr. Gerber’s family and friends.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:16 PM
Maybe tomorrow I can write something. Tonight, I just want to cry. In so many ways, Steve was the best of us.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:19 PM
I’ll miss Steve’s inability to write a comic book without making it seem like more than just disposable entertainment. His work ALWAYS had a deep understanding of his characters, a point of view and writing that made you think about what was on the page lunger than other writers. He’ll be missed, but I’m also glad that we have as much of his work as we do.
It was my pleasure to read what he’d written, and I’ll miss his words, his insight and his passion.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:24 PM
I ran across Steve’s obit in some random wanderings on the web, I had to stop in to express my condolences. I haven’t thought of Steve in many years, I used to be his computer geek back in the 1980s when I worked at a computer store in Studio City (and later, downtown). Steve was always a pleasure to work with, I remember him fondly. I took care of him, and he returned the favor. The last time I saw Steve, he brought Frank Miller into my shop to buy a computer (and oh was Frank shocked when I recognized Steve but not him). Oh that seems like a lifetime ago. The world is a bit smaller now that Steve has passed, and I feel a bit smaller too.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:24 PM
I will come back on here and make a verrrry long post, but my heart wants to let this out right now…
Shit… Mid-sentence I received not one, but two calls that both required long conversation. Getting derailed in the midst of something like this and then having to come back and finish it feels massively awkward, but screw it. I’d like to think being brutally honest and finishing this little bit is just the kind of thing Steve would have wanted…
I’ve posted on here previously that I live very close to the hospital-with-a-mountain-view that Steve was in. And since I’d never met him, that my id told me that I should go see him, because seriously, a man should meet his heroes if he is able. But I never did go to the hospital, because upbringing/society/self-inflicted understanding of “common sense” all told me that especially because of the fact that I did not know him, I should not show up there.
I never should have listened to my own better judgment.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:26 PM
A good man, a great writer, nowhere near enough time.
I hope you’re up there causing a helluva lot of cosmic trouble, Steve. I will miss you.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:33 PM
so long steve. you quacked me up.
Doc
February 11th, 2008 at 7:33 PM
I never met Steve Gerber, but I probably wouldn’t be reading comics today if it weren’t for him and his Man-thing stories. I even had “Man’thing” scrawled across the front one of my t-shirts in high school (yes, I was a hit with the ladies, obviously). Years ago, I was fortunate enough to buy his synopsis for Fear #17, the origin of Wundarr issue. Attached to it is a note to Val Mayerik that includes a thought that is making me cry as I read it: “You and I are in the somewhat awkward position of being relative neophytes on what has suddenly become a major book in the Marvel line. I don’t get exact figures, of course, but last I heard, FEAR was somewhere in the top third of the books in sales. I don’t think Stan or Roy is about to let us blow it.†This means that when I was reading the book in awe of the team’s talent, he wasn’t prepared for his sudden success. Two issues later, he created Howard because, as I recall, he couldn’t think of anything more ludicrous and outrageous than warriors emerging from a peanut butter jar. As far as I’m concerned, he never blew it.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:34 PM
I’ve just cried until I’m numb.
Dammit, you wrote so much about what might be waiting for us next… I didn’t want you to go find out. I liked the speculation just fine.
Thank you so much for everything, Steve.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:40 PM
A great writer, and a great guy. Thanks for the great stories, Steve! You will be missed.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:44 PM
Steve Gerber is one of the reasons that I have comic book stores. Back in the 1970’s I was active with fandom and a big fan of his work. I loved Howard the Duck, Defenders and Omega. Unfortunately, I was geographically removed from any type of cons or stores that carried comics and I was at the mercy of the local newsstand distributor. Each week I would take my paper route money into the city and buy my comics from Bookland, a local chain of stores run by the distributor. For some reason I missed Howard the Duck #31. I was devastated.
My mother called the distributor and they told her that should could come to the warehouse and look through the returns to see if they had a copy. She did that for me and in fact did find a copy. In my mind I realized that there had to be a better way to buy comics and I vowed someday to open a comics store in Maine. A few years later I did just that and today we are the oldest and largest comics shops in the state. I feel that I owe this in large part to Steve Gerber and Howard the Duck.
My condolences to Steve’s family and friends.
Rick Lowell
Casablanca Comics
Portland, ME
February 11th, 2008 at 7:47 PM
I had given up comics in the late 80’s; it was largely due to Steve’s correspondence with me that I returned to them. When I mentioned an idea for a comic book series to him, he didn’t just comment; he tried to sell it to his editor and chief. Thank you, Mark, for bringing this to our attention. And nice to see some other old friends show up here.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:49 PM
This is a sad loss. I hadn’t read any of the latest work by Steve but he became a friend way back in the day on the Compuserve web site and what a great guy. The industry and the world lost a bright light with his passing. Knowing that his later days were filled with struggle doesn’t really make it any better but I hope that he is at peace and if he can know it, a helluva lot of people will miss him for a very long time. God bless, Steve
February 11th, 2008 at 7:55 PM
If it wasn’t for Steve’s writing on Man-Thing and (with Mary Skrenes) Omega the Unknown, I likely would not have been inspired to write comics.
If it wasn’t for him reaching out to an unknown writer, and being generous with connections and explanations, I would have had much less of a career in this field. And without him throwing some work my way when times were lean, times would’ve been very different.
The field as a whole owes him a lot. But I owe him much much more.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:55 PM
Man that guy could write.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:58 PM
It’s funny, but with writers there’s two ways to know them. For all of you who knew him as a person to have lunch with, I know this has to feel like a kick in the stomach–every fear realized at once.
I know that because fans like me who only knew him from writing, email correspondence or places like this feel just a tenth of that loss and it physically hurts.
As much as I enjoyed everything he’s ever done, I just kept enjoying every new thing more and more. He had laurels to rest on and just never did.
I’m sorry for your loss.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:03 PM
Steve’s Howard the Duck is what started me collecting comics. His writing became my standard for good comic book writing. Today, I work in a couple aspects of the wonderful world we call comics – retailing and freelance writing. I quite literally owe a big part of what I am today to Steve. Thank you Steve. You are missed.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:08 PM
This really is too upsetting. Are comics fans being tested in some twisted Job-like manner? If so, this was a terrible blow indeed.
I met Steve on my very first day at Marvel back in 1972. I was only 15, but 25 year-old Steve treated me, like he treated everyone — with respect and kindness. Steve loved comics and cared passionately about his work. Even though he was one of the best, most intelligent writers in comics, he never looked down at super-heroes. That he cared so much about writing Doctor Fate in his final days, is fitting in so many ways.
I can’t begin to describe how much Steve Gerber and his work meant to me, all I can say is that I will miss him greatly.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:09 PM
Peace, Steve. Thank you for gifting us with your wonderful creations.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:17 PM
What can I say? Steve was not merely a legend in the industry but to so many people. His creations, were mirrors not only to his own views and soul but to those of his readers giving us small slices of reality in a way that only Steve Gerber could.
I will miss his wit, his edge, his mind, but most of all… I will miss seeing something I enjoy so very much, and then seeing his name attached to it.
God speed Mr. Gerber, you had the misfortune of being trapped in a world you did not make, but you made it yours anyway.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:23 PM
I too never met Steve in person, and our only correspondence were one email back and forth in 1997 when I wrote to congratulate him on having had Duke “Destroyer” Duck rescue Howard and Beverly from the Marvel Universe in the Savage Dragon / Destroyer team Up. He wrote back, thanked me for my comments and promised Leonard (or was it Howard) would be back. This message brought me back to why I had cared so much about Howard in the first place.
I received my first issue of Howard the Duck, #5, in a trade for a Olivia Newton John’s new (at the time) 7″ single “I Honestly Love You.” It was the tail end of the 6th grade for me in the late spring of 1977 and after that one issue I was hooked. I soon picked up all the issues I was missing, and even gladly shelled $12 for a near mint copy of #1. Who but Howard who was “Trapped in a world he never made” could speak of the alienation and frustration I’d felt as a young adolescent among the jocks, popular kids and bullies. Forget the Hulk, Fantastic Four and Spiderman, in a very short time Howard, and his human persona Steve became my heroes.
Steve’s being gone is a great loss to those of us who read his comics, and dug him as a writer because he got what so many other writers failed to see: the absurdities of the world and how the only sane reaction to an insane world in reading how this world is dealt with by Howard and the other characters that he made his own.
Steve, you will definitely be missed. This world is much poorer and less sane now that you are gone. Rest in peace, man …
February 11th, 2008 at 8:25 PM
Gosh, I had no idea. Howard the Duck was the first comic I ever collected. It was the first capital W “writer’s” comic I ever noticed, especially when he did those text pages and the excellent Dreaded Deadline Doom filler issue of HTD.
I’m sorry the poor guy had to suffer so in the end. Wherever Steve’s at now, I hope he knows in my heart how much we admired his work.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:27 PM
Oh, fuck.
I met Steve on the CompuServe boards in the early ’80s. We rapidly became good friends, exchanging many ideas, many jokes, many horrors and many joys. For a time, we worked together. Like Nat, I wrote some comics for Steve. I didn’t stay in the field, but it’s a memory I prize highly. He was generous with his time, generous with his self.
I’ll be doing a proper obituary on Netscape’s Books Forum, which I still run, just as I did when Steve and I first met. Right now, I think I’m just going to go cry.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:35 PM
I won’t claim to be a huge fan. Actually outside of Howard The Duck I wasn’t very aware of Steve’s work. Looking thru the remarks here I see Danny Fingeroth mention that Steve worked on Cloak & Dagger, a favorite of mine. So I must have read Mr. Gerber’s work at some point.
But I did wanna add my condolences, thoughts, prayers and blessings to those already stated for his friends, family and fans. He must have been a good guy to inspire so much love.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:35 PM
Thank you, Steve. You helped make the 1970’s go a little smoother for a kid with an big imagination. I never knew until now that you came up with Thundar. And, thanks to you Mark for sharing this with us all. I’m glad that friends, fans, and peers will have a chance to celebrate and honor the memory of a very gifted man. He will be missed.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:42 PM
This just sucks.
As a kid, like many of us in the 70’s, there was something about those Gerber comics that just made me read, and re-read, and re-read them.
They were nothing like all the other super hero comics at the time. The Defenders just boggled my mind…. You never knew what was going to happen in each issue of Man-Thing…. and Omega The Unknown was so FAR ahead of it’s time!….and that is certainly what alot of us say about Gerber’s 70’s writing.
He was the first creator I made contact with on the internet back in the mid 90’s, and I was thrilled to be able to exchange a dozen or so emails with him. He was gracious with each reply, even though I’m sure I sounded the complete fan boy.
He was a true hero of mine and gave me my fondest comic reading experiances.
A very sad day.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:47 PM
I am deeply sorrowed to learn of Steve Gerber’s untimely death. 60 years doesn’t seem like enough.
I’m 43 but comics have been part of my life since I was 4 years old. I’m no historian, but it seems to me that when the history of comic books is written, Steve Gerber will be remembered as a giant who helped usher in a second golden age of comics – an age that celebrated and embraced its creators instead of shunning, neglecting and discarding them.
From my perspective, limited though it may be, I think comics as a creative endeavor changed more in the 70s than they had since the first golden age, and Steve Gerber helped lead that change.
Man-Thing, Howard the Duck, the Defenders, Son of Satan, Morbius – Steve Gerber always gave you something to think about. His stories might not always have worked, but I never knew him to coast, never saw him give you his second best.
My life is better for Steve Gerber being in it although we never met.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:48 PM
Another childhood hero gone too soon. My sincere condolences to his family and friends.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:54 PM
Thank you Mr Gerber. You made me laugh, cry, and cringe at the beauty you allowed me to view of your work. And I never got to tell you thank you. Soddin bastich that I am. But thank you Mr Gerber. May you find peace and happiness now.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:55 PM
Omega the Unknown was published in 1976, before I was even born, and it was only just a few months ago that an older friend handed me the full run and said “Read this. It’s crazy and cracky and confusing as hell, but it’ll make you think about people.” And I read every issue and ate it up, and I’m sitting there reading about James-Michael Starling just shocked–SHOCKED–that a bully at school would hit him for no reason, wondering where the hell that sort of easy brutality even came from, and it’s something I’ve always wondered. And it had me sitting there thinking: “Why the hell don’t people write more comics like this anymore?”
There’s a kind of class to some comic writers. Something that makes what they’ve created “classic,” because instead of becoming deeply entrenched in the real world, and politics, and violence and “realism,” their work is focused on making you lose yourself. Instead of imitating the harsh reality of the real world, or magnifying it, it makes you look up at the world and wonder what the hell exactly is wrong with it, with people–but also reminds you of what’s right with it, too.
It’s class. It’s class that makes classics.
You, Mr. Gerber, were a class act. Thank you for making me wonder.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:03 PM
Jeff Vargon, I too was first introduced to Howard The Duck (and Steve Gerber) with issue #5 and I also got it in a trade (I traded Black Goliath #1). Howard The Duck also spoke to me in a way that nothing else I’d read up until then did and I really believe I have Steve Gerber to thank for helping shape my world view.
Steve Gerber’s creations, characters, and stories have helped me deal with what he called the cosmic absurdity of everything for over thirty years and they will stand the test of time.
I’m still trying to process this sad news, but I’m going to do as Paul Levitz has done and head over to Hero Initiative to donate in Steve Gerber’s memory.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:04 PM
Steve pushed the envelope in some of the most interesting and exciting ways around–if Lee and Kirby and Ditko had opened up comics the previous decade, Steve Gerber was, more than any other writer, the guy who decided to map that new territory. There are ways in which that seventies stuff is still waiting to be caught up to. It’s a great achievement, one that makes his loss all the more acute. My sincere condolences to his family and friends.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:27 PM
Howard the Duck first came out in black and white here in Denmark over 3 decades ago, and only for a couple of issues (each with two or three US comics). But that was enough for me, when I found out about them some years later (I was only 3 years old in 1977).
(There’s a picture of one of the issues here at a Danish auction site – at least for a while, since it looks like the deal is already closed. http://www.danauktion.net/auctiondetails.php?id=40655)
Anyway, through my early teens I would write and draw Howard-the-Duck like stories with some friends at school. It was a strange fusion of a Howard like-character wandering around in a noir setting, posing as a kind of detective and being very sarcastic about pretty much everything that we youngsters felt like being sarcastic about – from popculture, to school to society around us, which we gradually began to comprehend maybe wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. (Courtesy of adult propaganda.)
I still have many fond memories of those times. The clever political, social and pop-cultural satire that Steve was able to deliver in so many of his unique stories will always be an inspiration for me.
Thanks Steve.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:30 PM
Steve was my first “favorite writer.” Selfishly, I regret never having met him in person, although we corresponded a fair amount online, usually in a friendly way.
John Lennon’s death hit me harder, but not by much.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:35 PM
In the summer of ’74, aimless in a Southern town, I rekindled an interest in comics that I thought had been long extinguished by the distractions of adolescence. In that first set of funny books, amidst the old familiars like Spidey and Shellhead, was MAN-THING #10, the second part of the classic “Dawg story.” I read it, was moved to tears as much by its grim absurdity as its shameless sentiment, and made note of its writer: Steve Gerber.
In the ensuing months, gleefully haunting newsstands for new issues and greedily accumulating back issues where ever they could be found, I decided that comics written by this Steve Gerber were often silly when not completely off-kilter, but, unlike most comics, they were full of surprises and unabashed humanity, and, thus, stayed in the mind and heart long after most others were forgotten. There were all too few Steve Gerber comics…
…and only one Steve Gerber. Unique. Unforgettable. Irreplaceable. I’ll bet he would have said that’s true of each of us. Such may even be the credo in his body of work, serving as an epitaph which warms my sad heart now like a small, but unyielding flame.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:36 PM
Steve gave me a lifetime of enjoyment as my favourite writer. I’m devastated.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:48 PM
“Am I making myself sufficiently ambiguous?”
That line, from one of the first comics I ever read, Defenders #37, written by Steve Gerber, stuck with me for years — I’d even find myself dropping it into conversations with a smile when I knew I’d said something that didn’t make sense.
Every time I read a Steve Gerber-scripted comic thereafter — and I sought them out hungrily — I’d finish with my head whirling, put the book aside, spend a little time trying to make sense of it, and then smile, the line above coming back to me.
Steve Gerber made me think, he made me smile, and he made me want to write. Great gifts from a giant talent, and nothing ambiguous about it. He is much missed.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:58 PM
Thanks for getting me into comics as a kid, Steve.
I hope you’re at peace now.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:01 PM
I really have no words.
Thank you, Steve.
http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=352258&GSub=55114
February 11th, 2008 at 10:02 PM
a terrible loss, I’m sure, to his family and friends, but also to thousands of his fans, including me. definitely a huge influence on me, thank you for helping twist my mind Steve, peace be with you.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:03 PM
We all owe you Steve…just the Kidney lady alone gave me more laughs and insight into the world than I had ever had before at the ripe age of 15. You opened so many doors for so many people…
Salute!
February 11th, 2008 at 10:17 PM
Even though it never sold, I created the Captain Average character as a result of pondering what a Steve Gerber everyman might look like [other than Richard Rory, of course].
When I thought about giving up the habit [reading comics], he tossed Howard the Duck and Omega the Unknown at my head and made it possible for me to read comics and have Stuff to Ponder. [I still have my Omega set, but the Howards seem to have disintegrated…]
I think I’m going to have to go read them again.
Thanks, Steve. As a rather monumental icon once said, “You done good, kid!”
Rest in peace.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:17 PM
Goodbye, Gerbs.
He was a good man, a good friend and a great writer. I wish I had spare lungs I could have given him. Damn.
If there’s a comic book heaven, he is king of the place right now.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:24 PM
What sad news.
I loved “Howard The Duck” when I was a kid – if Spider-Man was an outsider, Howard was the apotheosis of the fish-out-of-water, an outsider’s outsider. He was literally from another planet – he wasn’t even the same species as everyone else. I ate it up as often as my local drugstore’s sporadic delivery schedule (and my anemic pocket money) would allow.
Howard was out of sync, beset upon by an increasingly hostile world, and I identified big time. It was bizarre and surreal, and to this day, there’s never been anything like those thirty-odd issues.
My affection for them never dimmed. I chatted online with Steve for a short time (after discovering his blog) quite some time ago, and commissioned a drawing from Gene Colan which hangs in my home. There wasn’t much for me to say once I got past the usual fannish drivel, so I let him be. But I still have the entire “Howard” run, and I think I always will.
Rest in peace, Steve. And thanks again. Thanks so much.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:27 PM
I had a brief e-mail exchange with Steve last year – an amazing thrill to encounter a lifelong idol and deep formative influence. I imagine many people don’t get to have idols and influences as humane as Steve: his writing changed my life, and is still changing it.
Heartfelt condolences to his family, friends, and many, many fans.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:29 PM
While others had already written mainstream comics with “personality,” Steve was the first to infuse his work with his own real personality, warts and all. That alone made him one of our most important writers. Add his wit, his drive to always give us something new, and his crusading spirit… it’s too much to lose at once. I knew him only through comics, his blog, and a few emails we shared, and I feel like I lost a friend. That’s because he fought our loneliness by bravely and skillfully sharing his true self. Steve was his own greatest character.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:33 PM
You were always an individual, unique voice in an industry where the temptation is to do cookie-cutter work, and for that, you were one of the first names I actually noticed when I was growing up reading the funny books. I knew that when I was picking up a Gerber comic I was in for a ride.
Goodnight, Steve. You will be missed.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:34 PM
You’re already missed, Sir.
Thank you for everything.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:41 PM
Steve Gerber’s Defenders was my first favorite comic book. His innovative writing style and unique take on super-heroes stood out from the crowd and I think that book is largely responsible for my lifelong connection (addiction?) to the field. From Omega and Howard through Destroyer Duck and more recently Hard Time and Doctor Fate, he gave us over three decades of brilliantly thought provoking stories. We have lost one of the best.