Movie of the Weekend

Nothing beats a great western. There's no doubt in my mind that Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is one of the finest westerns committed to film. Directed and edited by the brilliant Sam Peckinpah, it doesn't get any better than this, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly notwithstanding. Like Sergio Leone's classic, there is a great deal of pathos in the characters, more than you would automatically expect from a pop classic.

James Coburn and Kris Kristoffersen play the respective leads, and Bob Dylan shows up as a knife-wielding sidekick; you also have Slim Pickens in a memorable role along with many more familiar faces (like a young Harry Dean Stanton, fresh off Cool Hand Luke). One unforgettable sequence early on is Billy's escape from jail. After blasting his way out using a shotgun loaded with dimes (why not?), he proceeds to smash the gun and throw the pieces into the street. This is not the kind of action you usually expect from an Old West outlaw, and the film is full of little nuances like this. What's better, as the townspeople slowly gather around the corpse of Billy's jailer, he serenades them with a song; the fact that it is Kris Kristoffersen improvising on-camera makes this scene that much more mesmerizing.

Some weekend sit back with a few brewskies and sink into this classic film. You will not regret it!

Overheard Down at the Cube Farm

Down at the cube farm you hear no end of things, some that are funny, some that are strange, and sometimes even things that are unprintable. Though it is tempting to relate items from the third column, for the sake of peace I will refrain. Something strange I heard the other morning here at the cube farm was an upper management-type disrupting a confab with some body awkwardness.

Keep in mind that I did not see any of this. The soul of discretion, I cowered behind my cube partition and peeked not once. There was nothing, however, to prevent my ears from catching every word and rustle of cloth; like me, your mind will have to provide the visuals.

The manager was holding an impromptu meeting with three associates, barreling along with a commanding baritone about this and that live issue. Others piped in on occasion but for the most part it was the manager's show. Then something happened and there was complete silence. I heard a rustle, like a pants leg being slid up a calf, and then the manager offering an apology. "Sorry," I heard him say, "I don't mean to gross you guys out."

No response from the others. What had happened? Had the manager revealed a festering wound on his ankle, or perhaps an exposed shard of bone? Was he boldy proclaiming a choice of socks in bad taste? I don't know. As I said, all I could do was listen. The manager went on to say,

"I knew it would callous over and the spine work its way out..." More rustling. "I think that's happening." He apologized again and resumed talking about whatever business it was they were talking about. Eventually the others began speaking and within minutes the meeting had dispersed.

But the peace of my day had been permanently shattered.

Had the manager encountered a porcupine some days or weeks back and gotten one of its spines lodged under the skin? I heard him say "splinter" as well as "spine", so it might have been a rude collision with a bench to blame. Whatever the source of the manager's ailment, it certainly was provocative without some visual backup to provide more details. And what a scenario for a television comedy: a senior employee exposing a callous within which is lodged or half-lodged a sliver of some kind. I could only imagine the suffering endured by the man while he waited out the callousing process (is there a proper verb for that?), feeling and sensing day after day the intruder in his leg or arm, feeling it shifting around and making its way toward the surface with such slowness that a callous was able to form: what a pain threshold the man must possess, not to mention a good dose of patience while he waited for the whole thing to play out. I didn't get the sense that the offending spine was entirely separated right there at the meeting and it is most likely that even as I type the manager is enduring the slow migration of an invader from his limb.

My biggest question: Where do they teach that the best way to deal with something lodged under your skin is to let it callous over?

Arte Y Pico Award

The fabulous Rollerblog has bestowed upon me the Arte Y Pico Award, an award shared among bloggers to recognize others who inspire with their art and creativity. Let me just say that Rollerblog is a definite source of inspiration for me and if there is anything like a "Right Back At You" award, she deserves it.

So, now that I have gotten up off the shag rug and dusted myself off, I can share with you some blogs that I believe are more than worthy of this prize. These are blogs I visit and take inspiration from daily:

PaperKraft.net

Comics Legends and Lore

Waterrose Handcrafted Obsessions

RetroBlog

Dead Rooster

Take a moment to check out these excellent blogs, and in the spirit of Arte y Pico, pass on the award to blogs that inspire you.

All Hail The 70's

I will always think of the 70's as the "brown decade" -brown polyester, brown mustaches, brown air, brown shag... there was a lot of brown in those days. It is a time I remember with fondness. As a kid I used to buy comics at a Bait and Tackle shop in downtown Redwood City, or at the local Alpha Beta. Sadly, comics from that time get a bad rap from just about everybody, as if they belong in a big pile of brown. It isn't entirely just: some great books were created, and artists and writers famous today were cutting their teeth lo those nearly forty years ago.

I want to pay these artists due respect and will conduct a survey. In a post to come, I will publish the top ten comics of the 70's. Let me know if you're like me, if you think some great comics came out of that decade; results will be published at the end of the month.

Casting Call

To help me get a grip on the novel's central characters, I "cast" them with actors. Here we have Chiaki Kuriyama as "Yumiko"; I first saw her in Battle Royale, but she's more famous for swinging a spiked ball on a chain at Uma Thurman in Kill Bill Vol 1;
Lana Parilla as "Sally", whom I've seen in supporting roles on 24 and Lost, and currently resides in Swingtown;


Kurt Russell as "Macready", pictured here from one of my favorite movies, The Thing, and from whom I stole not only his likeness but his name as well (his name is Macready in the film);
and Keith David as "Ozzy", an actor who carries so much grace and dignity in voice and form, there was no better choice for the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

City of Destiny

Another prominent location in the novel is Edinburgh, city of destiny and the arts. My family is a sept of the Macgregor clan and when I visited Scotland for the first time a few years back, it set my native blood singing (which sounds like a disturbing experience but was actually quite pleasant). The hostel where I spent most of my stay was an incredible spot and left such an impression on me that I decided to use it as a location in the book. While I did take photos of it on real film, unfortunately I don't have any digital copies, so I can't share it with you. However, I do have some other images that give you a fair taste of what Edinburgh looks like. It really is an incredible city and I recommend a visit to everyone, whether you're Scottish or not.Lastly, a look inside The Elephant House, the "birthplace of Harry Potter". Legend has it that JK Rowling did some early writing here, and the staff confirm it as fact. It is a brilliant writing spot, full of students and funky community tables, with the castle on full display through the windows; most importantly, they can pull a mighty decent shot of espresso, roasted locally.

Movie of the Weekend

Come to Winnipeg, capital of sorrow, at the peak of the Depression: they are holding a contest for the saddest music in the world. The prize is $25,000 and all the Canadian lager you want. You will see Lady Port-Huntley dance on glass legs filled with beer; you will learn the prognostications of a tapeworm; the fate of a man's soul will be decided and sadly it goes badly for him; finally, witness the victor of Lady Port-Huntley's saddest music in the world contest, rendered in gorgeous Super-8.

Book of the Week

I can state with perfect confidence that the entire Philip K Dick catalog fits into a suitcase. I know this because I used to store his novels this way, slowly filling up a Samsonite until all 45+ titles were represented in the collection; then I promptly delivered the suitcase to my neighborhood bookshop and delighted the buyer by offering it to her at a bargain price. I had read each of the novels multiple times and knew them back and forward, and why not pass them on to fledglings. After all, I had gotten my start years ago discovering one of PKD's novels -UBIK- in a bookseller window and it gave me a little charge knowing that I would enable someone to have the same experience.

Lo and behold, that bargain dump did not mark the end of my relationship with the great author. So powerful and enthralling are his stories, in certain instances I cannot stop myself from going back and revisiting them. Recently I picked up Now Wait For Last Year, a novel of the future that touches on all of PKD's signature themes: conspiracy, questionable reality, body doubles, perception experiments, and the non-linear nature of time. It's the last theme in particular that comes to mind as I read the book this week.

Having experienced PKD's entire body of output, it's interesting to see what he does with his pet interests. Like other great artists -Woody Allen leaps to mind- he is not so much inventing a story as telling the same one over again and investing it with progressions of his themes. This touches on the non-linearity of time, as you can see him developing concepts of how time really works and the impact it has on characters in each iteration.

Since this a middle period novel, I can touch on later books and see where he went with the idea of overlapping time; I can also go back to earlier works and see where PKD first introduced his idea. This is one aspect of the author where he gets short shrift: he was a bonafide scholar working out a thorough schematic of perception, totally earnest and many times brilliant in his insight.

In Now Wait For Last Year, a narcotic is responsible for opening characters' perceptions to the overlapping nature of time. Once ingested, the drug causes them to recede chronologically; for the duration of the drug's effects, a character is literally in the past and can affect the present while they are there, sometimes literally plucking a past self and transplanting them to take over their life. One character who takes full advantage of being able to do this is Gino Molinari.

Here is the unforgettable introduction:

"The guest; the man they had come here to see. Reclining, his face empty and slack, lips bulging dark purple and irregular, eyes fixed absently on nothing, was Gino Molinari. Supreme elected leader of Terra's unified planetary culture, and the supreme commander of its armed forces in the war against the reegs.
"His fly was unbuttoned."

The Mole, as the character is commonly known, is a great portrait of a hypochondriac; he literally lives to be sick, having such a sensitive nature that he assumes the ailments of people around him; he is a wounded clown who rules from the gurney. I cannot do the complexity of the character justice here, except to say that he makes for very enjoyable reading. His exchanges with an 18-year-old mistress, who dominates him with crude bantering, are a prime example of PKD's antic powers.

History of the Internet

Remember Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, the 80's tv celebration of wealthy elites? It was hosted by this man, Robin Leach:

In printed form, the magazine Vanity Fair serves a similar function of the long-gone show, providing a telescope into lives of privilege otherwise barred to scruffies like me. I take guilty pleasure from reading about debutantes and their hair. However, there is more to the magazine than you might expect, and this month it offers a pleasant twist.

The latest edition has a fascinating oral history of the internet, the first history of its kind to address the still-unlimited possibilities of this profound leap forward in communication. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of ARPAnet, the progenitor of what we know today as the World Wide Web, the men and... more men (there's a female investment banker who pops in at the very end) talk about how it all began. I couldn't stop reading, fascinated especially by the goals of free community and universal protocols that these pioneers brought about.

(I might be biased, too; having grown up in the Bay Area where a lot of the early networking was laid out, I have to confess to a bit of hometown pride.)

Midnight Run Greatest Hits

Abba Pentalewon

Throughout my novel several different locales are featured, ranging from Africa to the moon. Over the course of researching these different places, I have accrued a small collection of images to give me inspiration. It struck me the other day that it might be kind of fun to share them and build some anticipation for those who haven't yet read the book.A central point of interest in the book is a monastery in the Ethiopian capitol of Axum. Though it is greatly changed in the future setting of my book, the monastery itself is intact and frames a couple of important sequences. It takes its name from Abba Pentalewon, one of the Nine Saints who fled to Ethiopia to escape persecution after the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon proclaimed Monophysitism a heresy.

While my book does not take up the Monophysitism debate, it does prominently feature Abba Pentalewon. As you can see here, it looks like a lovely spot for bird-watching. Other locations used in the book are Seattle, Edinburgh, and a helium mine on the moon's Heraclides Plain; you will see them in future posts. I'm thinking also of sharing how I "cast" the book -let me know if this is something you would like to see!

What do you mean, "You people?"

Though I rarely get out to the movies anymore, I will definitely be setting time aside to see Tropic Thunder. Watch the trailer and tell me Robert Downey Jr is not ready to kill us all with comedy genius. I mean, just look at him:With Iron Man already a big hit this year, there is no doubt that this great actor is on the rebound from some troubled times. Speaking of which, another man in this category is Tom Cruise, who makes a cameo appearance in Tropic Thunder, looking like this:The former star has hit bottom, but with a belly like that, rebounding shouldn't be too tough.

Bless the Readers

I have gone about writing my novel in a piecemeal fashion. It has been the absolute worst trial-and-error-in-your-free-time approach that I would not recommend to anyone; counterproductive and at times like pouring lye on a bare patch of skin. The opposite of how to effectively compose a work of 70,000+ words. That being said, at the end of three years of work it looks like I might have produced something coherent. My readers will be the final arbiters.

For the longest time I dreaded that the book would amount to nothing more than a jumbled pile of half-baked plotlines. After some judicious editing on a draft completed in November, the book resembles its original form only superficially -like a colicky infant eschewing its clangor and performing Toscanini for royalty.

I recently embarked on the last round of edits -filling out character details, adding dialogue for clarification, creating two ancillary scenes, and rearranging the final sequence. If all goes as planned (and it never does), I'll complete work by the end of the month.

It struck me this morning that I've had a lot of help from readers. I want to take the opportunity to give a shout out to these good people who have offered invaluable encouragement and feedback: my monthly writing group (Danny, Will, Brian and Caleb), Jonathan Shaw, Doug&Anna Dalrymple, Megan Dodgson, Jen Phoenix, Anne Overstreet, Katy Shaw, Beth Haidle, Andy Bates, and Heather Guerrero, who read in its entirety an early draft and offered tremendous insight; I should also like to thank Danny Walter for the use of his PC, upon which a lot of early composition was done. Truly, I could not have carried on without the input of these wonderful people!

Now the manuscript is nearing readiness to be sent to agents and publishing houses, and I plan to be more regular in my updates... about the current novel and news about the next one. Here's hoping I've learned how to do it a little better the second time around.

Map It!

I love the wayfaring website...
An old friend I once worked with at Tower Books whiled away his hours at the front counter drawing maps freehand. Within a matter of minutes he could transform a slip of scrap paper into a tiny masterpiece of cartography.

New Beck Song

You know when there is something in life totally removed from yourself that seems to grow and change at some kind of parallel rate? Beck has always been like that for me. After being a grudging listener to "Loser" on the radio and thinking, like so many naybobs, that here was a one-hit wunderkind, it wasn't until a friend played the bluesy, melancholy sounds of One Foot in the Grave on a clunky tape player for me that the spark of interest really ignited. About a year later Odelay was like spontaneous combustion and I've anxiously awaited every new release since. The latest album from Beck is coming soon, but he has posted a new song that is dynamite, called "Chemtrails". When you link to the page, wave over the discobox and the track will start...

Z-Day

The other night Katy&Adam hosted "Z-Day" -an evening of watching zombie movies! Now, there's question you always have to ask on nights like this: why are zombie movies so much fun to watch? The subject matter is grim, the antics are disgusting, and at the end there is very little hope for humanity beyond a slow descent into the chomping jaws of the undead.

What's the appeal?

During our post-Z discussion, we might have stumbled upon a unifying factor. There is a post-apocalyptic quality to zombie movies. Though it is arguable that zombies are an ongoing apocalypse, there are other factors to consider; namely, a landscape devoid of humanity, technology and progress rendered useless, and a scattered few on the run from inexorable forces of destruction. Most importantly, the cities that are viewed even briefly in these films are always empty of life and cluttered with the debris of civilization that was.

Could it be that we enjoy dreams of an empty planet? or is it a morbid fascination with self-inflicted predators, hunters of our species inflicted upon us by our own misguided attempts at science and war? Ponderous questions, certainly. I don't have any answers.

Maybe I need to watch more zombie movies!

Exquisite Misery

There's a new tide of misery washing over the planet and making itself felt in Japan and England. It takes the form of "crying clubs", at which participants engage in public displays of emotion and indulge their most melancholic impulses, by watching heartrending films, carrying peacock feathers, or presenting freshly signed divorce papers.

In Kyoto and Tokyo, this phenomenon is known as the 'crying boom"; in England, where they know a thing or two about how to deal with sorrows (usually by drowning them), they take inspiration from Gunter Grass' novel The Tin Drum, which is very sad indeed, and cut onions at midnight while blasting Mozart's Requiem.
I, for one, am quite looking forward to my first crying club visit. As Viktor Wynd, originator of London's "Loss; an evening of exquisite misery", puts it: "I don't know why people think they have to be happy all the time."

One Man Counterculture

One-Man Counterculture
How Steve Gerber changed comics with Howard the Duck
By Grady Hendrix

Steve Gerber died last week at the age of 60, and so ended one of the most spectacularly creative and cursed careers in comic books. Readers may wonder if it's wise to celebrate the literary accomplishments of the writer responsible for 1977's KISS comic, but, from 1972 to 1979, when Gerber worked at Marvel Comics, he was a one-man counterculture. The clunky comic books written for Marvel and DC (the two biggest comic book companies) in the 1960s and '70s may have acquired a certain retro chic, yet they bear almost no relation to the comic books of today. Marvel was the House That Squares Built, and in the kingdom of the unhip, Gerber was the only writer who had a clue.

In the early '70s, most comic book writers were content to churn out insular, out-of-touch tales about the superheroes they worshipped in their childhoods. But when Gerber was first assigned a lemon of a book—Man-Thing, about a pile of sentient swamp ooze with a carrot for a nose—it didn't take long for him to turn it into freaky lemonade. He wanted to use comics to write about the real world, and, living in Hell's Kitchen, he was obsessed with landlords, slums, and moving to another city. In his books, El Gato was lord of the cats on the Lower East Side, welfare mothers ate dog food, and a black financier turned self-loathing racist founded the white supremacist cult Sons of the Serpent. He delighted in sneaky juvenile wordplay—for part of his run on Man-Thing the book was called Giant Size Man-Thing; and one of his later creations, known as the Black Hole, would activate his supersuction powers to a caption trumpeting, "The Black Hole sucks!" But one of his characters stands above the others: Howard the Duck.

Howard was the last of the angry ducks, a pants-eschewing cigar smoker who was trapped on our planet in—shudder—Cleveland. Shacking up with the curvaceous Beverly Switzer, Howard came off as a waterfowl Woody Allen, an oversexed, overly intellectual anti-hero who was constantly in the throes of an existential crisis, and who delighted in puncturing pomposity. He battled Pro-Rata, the Financial Wizard; the Deadly Space Turnip ("We were a breed of aggressive, dynamic, success-oriented vegetables. ..."); Bessie the Hellcow; and Dr. Bong.

Howard the Duck sent up the '70s and parodied Marvel's purple prose style ("The ghastly rumble of the explosion reverberates off the Pocono mountainsides—a sonorous death burp echoing into eternity. ..."), but the book grew into something deeper. Howard raged against the glorification of violence, had a nervous breakdown, lost Beverly to Dr. Bong, was transformed into a man, and, in the end, rejected his friends and bitterly set out on his own, trying to forget a past of pointless superfights. One issue was all text; another took place entirely on a long bus trip. These were surreal flights of fancy with razor-tipped wings, America's answer to Monty Python's Flying Circus.

But Gerber himself was trapped in a vulturelike publishing industry. A dispute with Marvel over payment terms for the artist on the Howard the Duck newspaper strip led to Gerber leaving the book, only to realize too late that his creations were all work-for-hire, property of Marvel Inc. He engaged in a protracted legal battle that was eventually settled, but the comics industry broke his spirit. When novelist Jonathan Lethem was hired by Marvel last year to revive Omega the Unknown, a series created by Gerber and collaborator Mary Skrenes, Gerber blasted the younger writer for validating the theft of his creation. Even after meeting with Lethem, he said, "I still believe that writers and artists who claim to respect the work of creators past should demonstrate that respect by leaving the work alone."

Gerber was the amphibian stage in the evolution of comic books, from when they swam in the funny-book oceans to the modern age, when graphic novels walk the earth and earn glowing reviews in the New York Times. But here's what overshadows all of Gerber's accomplishments: During his lifetime, Steve Gerber created dozens of popular characters and comic books. He died owning none of them.

The Elf Did It

My first real laugh in days came this morning; Mark Evanier, bless his soul, is minding the Steve Gerber blog, and his latest entry is just so appropriate to the ocassion:

"I am still Mark Evanier and I am still both staggered and pleased by how many writings I’m spotting on the Internet, on blogs and message boards, about what Steve’s work meant to people. That would have meant a lot to him and it certainly means a lot to his friends.

I can’t begin to link to them all but I have to link to the one by Heidi MacDonald. Make sure you read that one, as well as this one by Jim McLauchlin. In the meantime, Tom Spurgeon is compiling a list of links to Gerber recollections and tributes all across the Internet...

Lastly: There is no truth to the rumor that all this stuff about pulmonary fibrosis is just a cover story, and Steve was actually offed by an elf with a gun."

For context, see here.

Neil Gaiman pays homage to Steve Gerber's continuing inspiration to new artists.

In Memoriam

"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

Steve Gerber, 1947-2008: An Obituary, by Tom Spurgeon

Steve Gerber, a leading light in 1970s American comic books, a singular writer of odd and affecting comics for mainstream publishers, an advocate for and icon of creators rights, and the creator and co-creator of several characters including Howard the Duck and Omega the Unknown, died Sunday in a Las Vegas hospital. The cause of death is believed to be pneumonia, although he had been suffering from a long-term illness, pulmonary fibrosis. He was 60 years old.

Gerber was born in St. Louis in September, 1947. A comics fan as a youth, he began to correspond with legendary fanzine figures Roy Thomas and Jerry Bails at an early age. He participated even more directly in the early fanzine movement by creating the publication Headline as a young teen. He attended at school as the University of Missouri -- St. Louis and the University of Missouri, finishing his degree and doing some graduate work at St. Louis University. He found early employment as a copywriter for a St. Louis advertising agent and wrote short stories at night.

Gerber became an associate editor at Marvel in 1972 through Roy Thomas, at a time in which the roles of writer and editor were blurry in that most of the editors, like prime Marvel mover Stan Lee and Thomas himself, were also writing books. His initial page rate may have been as low as $13 a page.

Gerber began to find fill-in work on Marvel's second-rung titles such as Sub-Mariner, Iron Man and Daredevil, branching out into more traditional assignments like Fantastic Four as well as stories for Marvel's newer horror titles such as Creatures on the Loose and Chamber of Chills. He began editing Marvel's MAD knock-off Crazy with issue #14, and found a twist on the classic EC through Marvel formula of exaggerated glimpses of the comics' creators by portraying himself and his fellow creators as straight-up crazy themselves.

A creative run on The Defenders featured one of the first deconstructions of the superhero idea and its conceptual nephew the superhero team concept that was actually done in the course of a narrative that also worked as an adventure story. Gerber was a fruitful creator or co-collaborator for many other titles and characters, including but not limited to Morbius, the Living Vampire, the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Son of Satan, Tales of the Zombie, and Shanna the She-Devil. Those concepts he didn't create he often fleshed out. In many cases, his supporting characters were better known than the headliners, such as his title-jumping everyman, Richard Rory.

His scripts for Man-Thing, a classic swamp creature character of the kind that had been in comics since the 1940s, only this time portrayed as an empathic monster that used his burning touch on the fearful, are well-regarded even today for their concentration on psychological humor and touches of the absurd. It was in building an unlikely cosmic odyssey for the shuffling muck creature that Gerber created his signature character, Howard the Duck.

Howard the Duck was an unlikely twist on another classic comics archetype: the anthropomorphic duck (he would later wear pants after Disney threatened legal action, a story that if it's not true is better than truth). In the course of the story being told with Man-Thing in Fear, Howard played a more utilitarian role. His stepping forward from the bushes was put into the story to provide a weirder character introduction than the barbarian (Korrek) Gerber and Val Mayerik had just debuted by having him pop out from a can of peanut butter. A classic straight-talker slightly out of step with the time, an archetype that appears a lot in 1970s pop culture but never more effectively, Howard's debut proved popular enough with fans for Gerber and Marvel to bring him back, first in a short story or two, then in his own comic.

Imbued with an underground comix sensibility but as overground as the spinner rack at your local supermarket, Howard became a mini-sensation, allowing Gerber and his collaborators the opportunity to use a classic outsider character to riff on the ridiculous excesses of that decade's pop culture landscape: kung fu, the moonies, self-help gurus, Anita Bryant, KISS, religious fundamentalism, and Star Wars among them. It also turned out to be a perfect vehicle for Gerber's acerbic worldview, and in some of the best comics, such as when Howard ran for President -- something Marvel milked for all it was worth in terms of mainstream coverage -- Gerber turned his comic into maybe the most formally daring book ever put on the market by one of the big two publishers. Howard would eventually spawn a newspaper strip, which Gerber initially wrote, and a film version in 1986 by American Graffiti collaborators George Lucas, Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz that has gone down in history as one of the all-time Hollywood bombs. Gerber had only a minimal amount to do with that project and, truth be told, the resulting film had nothing to do with Gerber.

Another fondly remembered title, Omega the Unknown, came about in partnership with the writer Mary Skrenes and the long-time industry veteran Jim Mooney. It was many things: an odd but extremely affecting meditation on childhood as it rubs up against some of the sadder and isolating elements of adulthood, an out of the corner of one's eye snapshot of the post-Kirby Marvel Universe, a walking tour of Gerber's own Hell's Kitchen neighborhood and another dissection of the superhero. The briefly-lived comic series gained much of its power through Gerber and Skrenes' modern, even arch take on comic book writing dancing in and among Mooney's classic, square-jawed comic book dynamics. Although there were admirable attempts to resolve the character's story by other creators once the series had been canceled, the resolution desired by Gerber and Skrenes apparently never saw publication. A currently ongoing re-telling of the story with additional layers by writers Jonathan Lethem and Karl Rusnak working with artist Farel Dalrymple has put the character back into the consciousness of comics fans, although there were complaints after the project's announcement that Gerber and Skrenes should have been given a chance to tell their story either additionally or instead of this new effort. As with Howard, there has never been a comic book quite like it.

Gerber left Marvel in either 1978 or 1979, and immediately entered into dispute with the publisher over the Howard the Duck character he created a few years earlier. In a letter that appeared in The Comics Journal #41, Gerber explained his situation to that magazine's editor, Gary Groth: "I was dismissed from the Howard the Duck newspaper strip in a manner which violated the terms of my written agreement with Marvel. Marvel was advised that I was contemplating legal action which would likely result in my ownership of the Howard the Duck character and all rights therein. As a consequence of the notice given Marvel by my lawyers, the company chose to terminate my contract on the comic books as well. Marvel's action was not unanticipated, and my only regret is that, for a while at least, the Duck and I will be traveling separate paths." In an interview that followed the publication of that letter, Gerber painted what was at the time a startling picture of the mainstream comics industries, its rivalries and petty jealousies, and what he described as a plantation system in terms of how the talent was treated by the corporations.

"What disgusts me even more, though, is that I think the writers and artists have largely brought this on themselves," he told Groth in 1978. "They don't want to know about the business end of comics. They prefer to remain ignorant. They've allowed the publishers to convince them that they're a bunch of no-talent bums surviving on the goodwill of the companies. Very few people in this industry really believe that their work has any artistic merit, or that it's sale-able elsewhere. Or that they deserve more than they're getting. You will actually hear them defend the publishers' ownership of their creations, the low page rates, the cowardice of the companies to explore new markets. That's why it's startling when someone like Gil Kane or Neal Adams or Don McGregor or Barry Smith -- or Steve Gerber -- shoots his mouth off. People in the industry find it disturbing that one of their number might actually take his work seriously, take pride not only in being fast and dependable, but in the work itself."

Steve Gerber did not win back Howard the Duck. He settled with Marvel and even returned to the company by the mid-1980s, although not in as devoted or prolific a fashion. Although the terms of the settlement were sealed, he told Art Cover in 1985 that, "It's no secret how mad I was during and before the lawsuit. The terms of the settlement are such that I am no longer angry." As part of the protracted legal battle, Gerber and the legendary Marvel Comics creator Jack Kirby created the lead feature in an anthology sharing the name Destroyer Duck, from Eclipse, with proceeds from various professionals doing stories going to Gerber's war chest. As Mark Evanier points out in his memorial post regarding Gerber, there was no shortage of professionals willing to contribute. "People did that because they knew, first of all, that Steve was fighting not just for his own financial reasons but for matters of principle relating to how the comic book industry treated its creators." The Gerber/Kirby feature is fondly remembered as comics apart from its industry implications. Marvel was satirized in the comic as Godcorp, the merciless corporation that exploited and then killed Destroyer Duck's best friend in a blunt swipe at Marvel's treatment of Gerber's Howard. That character would go on to make brief appearances in future comic books from Marvel and Image, and the original material is to be collected by Image Comics.

The notions that Marvel would take a character away from a creator, even the one best suited to it, and that a creator might fight back, became powerful ideas among a growing tide of younger creators asserting a series of creators' rights in regards to their work with big, mainstream comic book companies or their moves to smaller companies or self-publishing where rights might be attained. One element of the cautionary story was that Marvel was more interested in keeping and controlling the character than it was in fostering a relationship with the creator, even when the benefits were obvious to both. Also, the fact that Gerber had created Howard in an offhand manner but that the character had come to be a valuable mouthpiece for the creator became a key part of the thinking of a lot of creators rights advocates, and spoke as a powerful counter to an argument often expressed that some characters you created for the big companies and some characters you kept for yourself. As many have cautioned in a thousand hushed conversations since, you never know.

The remainder of Gerber's comics career was devoted to primarily mini-series and a few short runs on series comics. He had worked sporadically for DC Comics and Hanna-Barbera even while still at Marvel. He created the early graphic novel Stewart the Rat for Eclipse. An Epic Comic series refashioning a Hawkman proposal became the sex and violence-filled Void Indigo, one of the first comics to run afoul of the hands-on series of single proprietors approach that drove growing Direct Market network of stores in that, as Gerber put it, "Certain distributors themselves, personally, found it objectionable." This was also an opinion shared by some retailers and a few comics reviewers. He would write Howard the Duck again, a series starring his Foolkiller character, and pen a number of stories for the anthology magazine Marvel Comics Presents. Gerber was one of the veteran writers brought on board by the then enormously successful Image creators to provide some scripting stability for a title or two, and he was in the group of writers that created a superhero line at Malibu, eventually sold to Marvel. His Nevada was the last after Stewart the Rat and Omega the Unknown in a series of comics that were as much about a place as they were a set of characters, an under-appreciated aspect to his career and something he did as well as any writer to work in comics. One of his last notable creations was the superhero-in-prison saga Hard Time at DC Comics. He was at the time of his passing working on a revival of the difficult Dr. Fate character.

Gerber's main vocation during the 1980s and its sporadic comics output was as an animation writer and story editor, working for such successful franchises as Dungeons and Dragons, GI Joe, Thundarr, Transformers, Mr. T and The New Batman Adventures. It was in that role that he was famously parodied during the period of antagonism between himself and Marvel, in Marvel Secret Wars II #1, a comic book that Gerber said later he enjoyed.

Gerber had in recent months turned to blogging as many writers in the industry have, talking openly and honestly about his various projects, his state of mind and his declining health. It was there that first indications he may have passed were posted, in the commentary thread under Gerber's last entry.

Steve Gerber's role as one of the best and emblematic writers of his generation can't be understated. He was a crucial figure in comics history. Like some of the all-time great cartoonists of years past, Gerber carved a place for self-expression and meaning out of a type of comic that had no right to hold within itself so many things and moments that were that quirky and offbeat and delicately realized -- except that Gerber made it so. His Howard the Duck comics remain amusing when read today, perhaps more poignant now, laying into their broad targets in a way that communicated a kind of critical consciousness into the minds of many devoted superhero comics readers, fans that simply wouldn't have been exposed to those kinds of ideas any other way, the concept that media might lie to you, the notion of absolute self-worth in the face of a world that seems dead-set against it. 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.