Steve Gerber is definitely one of my all time favorite
comic writers. No matter what he wrote, there was
always such humanity in whatever he was doing. His
run on Howard the Duck was a rarity in comics: a
character who on every level was patently absurd, but
at the same you couldn't help but identify with him.
The comic really deserves more respect than it gets. His run
on the Defenders was the one that was by far the most
fun. What the hell was up with that Elf with a Gun?
Omega the Unknown was magic. His currently running
Doctor Fate is probably the best any writer for DC
has pitched to that franchise in fifteen years.
Still to me -- it's all comes back to Howard. That
comic (the Gerber issues anyway) got me through some
rough times in my life. They made me laugh when I
really didn't have much to laugh about. A lot of
comics did that though. The one of the few titles I
remember doing so consistently was Howard the Duck -- a
comic that had been out of print for almost 20 years
by the time I found them. I discovered Howard when I
was about 12 or 13 under about 50 or sixty issues of
Man-Thing and Fantastic Four in a big box of comics
that my friend's dad had. Around that time I lost a
big chunk of my hearing and had just gotten my first
set of hearing aids. I never really found out why or
how. Something had changed and I wasn't really sure my
friends would ever quite understand. It left me
feeling trapped in a world I never made but then -- in
the end -- we all are.
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