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HH
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Subject: A Fitting Tribute to Steve Gerber (and Alan Moore, even though he's not dead)
Posted Fri Feb 15, 2008 at 05:25:47 pm EST |
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Posted with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 2000
http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp02122008.shtml
http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp02132008.shtml
The fitting tribute is in the links above, but here’s some other thoughts of my own…
There are some writers who somehow just manage for a brief time to speak with the voice of the people, to capture an era and a feeling and somehow summarise a generation. Amongst comics writers I suspect Stan Lee managed it around 1964-8. Moore caught it with Watchmen. And for a little while there in the mid 70s, Steve Gerber was that writer.
It’s hard now to recall that time – I was 13 in 1976 when America celebrated its bicentennial. Looking back on Gerber’s work in Defenders and Man-Thing and Howard the Duck it seems fun but not that world shattering. But at the time Gerber had his finger on the things that every comics fan wanted to say, to know, to be. Comics and their readers came of age a little more with Gerber’s time at Marvel. If the material seems unremarkable now it’s because everything that came after was shaped by what he did then.
It all ended in tears, with creator rights lawsuits and recriminations and the world turned colder, but for a while there Gerber took us to a world we never made, filled with bozos and nihilists and elves with guns, gave us mainstream comics’ first character who made her living as a nude model, ran a duck for President, and brought the cultural social generational revolution that must have been going on in New York just then into the unprepared minds of teenage comics readers everywhere.
Waaaauuughh!
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killer shrike
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Subject: Can't say I read many of Gerber's comics, but "Thundarr the Barbarian" was one of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons [Re: HH]
Posted Fri Feb 15, 2008 at 06:34:07 pm EST |
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Posted with Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista
> http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp02122008.shtml
>
> http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp02132008.shtml
>
>
> The fitting tribute is in the links above, but here’s some other thoughts of my own…
>
> There are some writers who somehow just manage for a brief time to speak with the voice of the people, to capture an era and a feeling and somehow summarise a generation. Amongst comics writers I suspect Stan Lee managed it around 1964-8. Moore caught it with Watchmen. And for a little while there in the mid 70s, Steve Gerber was that writer.
>
> It’s hard now to recall that time – I was 13 in 1976 when America celebrated its bicentennial. Looking back on Gerber’s work in Defenders and Man-Thing and Howard the Duck it seems fun but not that world shattering. But at the time Gerber had his finger on the things that every comics fan wanted to say, to know, to be. Comics and their readers came of age a little more with Gerber’s time at Marvel. If the material seems unremarkable now it’s because everything that came after was shaped by what he did then.
>
> It all ended in tears, with creator rights lawsuits and recriminations and the world turned colder, but for a while there Gerber took us to a world we never made, filled with bozos and nihilists and elves with guns, gave us mainstream comics’ first character who made her living as a nude model, ran a duck for President, and brought the cultural social generational revolution that must have been going on in New York just then into the unprepared minds of teenage comics readers everywhere.
>
> Waaaauuughh!
>
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CrazySugarFreakBoy!
Member Since: Sun Jan 04, 2004
Posts: 1,235
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Subject: I'd already seen (and enjoyed) the Something Positive strips ... [Re: HH]
Posted Fri Feb 15, 2008 at 10:09:11 pm EST (Viewed 446 times) |
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Posted with Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP
... And looking back on his work, especially Howard the Duck, has made me realize what an active, visceral voice of discontent with reality Gerber was. As George Carlin has argued, all the best humor comes from someone basically saying, "Everything is wrong," and even when Gerber's protagonists were powerless in the face of the inherent wrongness of existence, they still refused to put up with it.
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Manga Shoggoth
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Subject: Alas, I remember the comics, but don't associate them with an author... [Re: HH]
Posted Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 06:05:11 am EST |
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Posted with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 on Windows 95
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Visionary
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Subject: Sad news of his passing. Funny comics, though. Fitting indeed. [Re: HH]
Posted Sat Feb 16, 2008 at 11:00:54 am EST |
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Posted with Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.12 on Windows XP
> http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp02122008.shtml
>
> http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp02132008.shtml
>
>
> The fitting tribute is in the links above, but here’s some other thoughts of my own…
>
> There are some writers who somehow just manage for a brief time to speak with the voice of the people, to capture an era and a feeling and somehow summarise a generation. Amongst comics writers I suspect Stan Lee managed it around 1964-8. Moore caught it with Watchmen. And for a little while there in the mid 70s, Steve Gerber was that writer.
>
> It’s hard now to recall that time – I was 13 in 1976 when America celebrated its bicentennial. Looking back on Gerber’s work in Defenders and Man-Thing and Howard the Duck it seems fun but not that world shattering. But at the time Gerber had his finger on the things that every comics fan wanted to say, to know, to be. Comics and their readers came of age a little more with Gerber’s time at Marvel. If the material seems unremarkable now it’s because everything that came after was shaped by what he did then.
>
> It all ended in tears, with creator rights lawsuits and recriminations and the world turned colder, but for a while there Gerber took us to a world we never made, filled with bozos and nihilists and elves with guns, gave us mainstream comics’ first character who made her living as a nude model, ran a duck for President, and brought the cultural social generational revolution that must have been going on in New York just then into the unprepared minds of teenage comics readers everywhere.
>
> Waaaauuughh!
>
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