Back Issue #31

STEVE GERBER TRIBUTE ISSUE

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HOWARD THE DUCK TM & © MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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AN ALL-STAR REMEMBRANCE OF THE CREATOR OF HOWARD THE DUCK, with BRUNNER • COLAN • SIMONSON • GOLDEN • MAYERIK

and many more superstars

Volume 1, Number 31 December 2008 Celebrating the Best Comics of the '70s, '80s, '90s, and Today!

The Retro Comics Experience!

EDITOR Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Rich J. Fowlks COVER ARTIST Frank Brunner

BACK SEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 FLASHBACK: Steve and Howard: A Boy and His Duck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Trapped in a world they never made, Howard the Duck and his creator

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Bob Brodsky, Cookiesoup Productions PROOFREADERS John Morrow and Eric Nolen-Weathington SPECIAL THANKS Brook Anthony Roger Ash Michael Aushenker Karen Berger Jonathan Bolerjack Jerry Boyd Frank Brunner Rich Buckler Timothy Callahan KC Carlson Joe Casey Gene Colan Comic Book Artist Comic Book Resources Gerry Conway Farel Dalyrmple Tom DeFalco J. M. DeMatteis Brian Denhem Tony DeZuniga Mark DiFruscio Mark Evanier Brent Frankenhoff Mike Gagnon Simon Garth Michael Golden Grand Comic-Book Database Steven Grant Larry Hama Matthew E. Hawkins Heritage Comics Auctions Howard the Duck Club Christopher Irving Tony Isabella The Jack Kirby Collector Dan Johnson Jim Kingman David Anthony Kraft Andy Kuhn Bill Kunkel Stan Lee Steve Leialoha Paul Levitz

Ryan Liebowitz Alan Light Margaret Liss Johnny Lowe Pablo Marcos ManwithoutFear.com Wayne Markley Marvel Comics Val Mayerik Jim McCann Allen Milgrom Modern Masters Stuart Moore Gabriel Morrisette New York Comic Con Martin Pasko Michael Ploog Alan J. Porter Eric Reynolds Murray Roach Bob Rozakis Joe Rubinstein Brian Sagar Peter Sanderson Alex Segura Jason Shayer Dave Simons Walter Simonson Mary Skrenes Roger Slifer J. David Spurlock SteveGerber.com Ty Templeton Roy Thomas Randy Tischler Nathan Turner Len Wein Brett Weiss John Wells Westfield Comics Ron Wilson Phil Winslade Marv Wolfman Tom Ziuko

OFF MY CHEST: Of Ducks and Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 Artist Frank Brunner reveals the story behind Howard the Duck #1 PRO2PRO: The Duck Requiem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Howard the Duck artists Gene Colan and Val Mayerik on working with Steve BEYOND CAPES: Gerber’s Gruesomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 Man-Thing, Tales of the Zombie, and other gory Gerber gems FLASHBACK: Steve Gerber in the Marvel Universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 From Shanna to Foolkiller, Gerber’s Marvel output was always different

The All Night Party’s 1976 presidential candidate, Howard the Duck. Bernie Wrightson art. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg

FLASHBACK: Omega the Unknown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 The writer’s waaaaaay-before-its-time unfinished symphony GERBER’S GREATEST HITS ART GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 Eye-popping pinups by Ron Wilson, Frank Brunner, and Pablo Marcos WHAT THE--?!: Gerber Goes Crazy! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 Gerber’s gags elevated Marvel’s “MAD” to new heights FLASHBACK: The Metal Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 Gerber’s one issue of this series, drawn by Walter Simonson, is still talked about today FLASHBACK: The Miracle Messiah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57 Gerber’s short-lived take on Mister Miracle INTERVIEW: Steve Gerber Discusses The Phantom Zone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 A 2006 interview examining Gerber’s dark, disturbing Superman spin-off BACKSTAGE PASS: Thundarr the Barbarian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64 How Gerber got around TV watchdogs to bring to life this clever cartoon series FLASHBACK: Sludge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71 Gerber’s muck-monster with a difference BEYOND CAPES: A Hard Time in Nevada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75 Two of the writer’s later, more mature comics series BACKSTAGE PASS: The Gerber Memorial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 Mark Evanier leads an all-star tribute panel at the April 2008 New York Comic Con OFF MY CHEST: “There was something about the guy…” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82 Friends of Ol’ Gerber speak out BACK TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88 Reader feedback on “Mutants” issue #29 BACK ISSUE™ is published bimonthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. E-mail: euryman@gmail.com. Six-issue subscriptions: $40 Standard US, $54 First Class US, $66 Canada, $90 Surface International, $108 Airmail International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office.

Cover art by Frank Brunner. Howard the Duck TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted.

All editorial matter © 2008 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING. S t e v e

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Covers TM & © their respective copyright holders.

Writer Steve Gerber (1947–2008) captivated Marvel Comics readers in the early to mid-1970s with offbeat, thought-provoking, and often satirically laced series such as Man-Thing, Omega the Unknown, The Defenders, and his most famous creation, Howard the Duck. His later work was imaginative and diverse: Mister Miracle, KISS, Void Indigo, Exiles, Cybernarry, Hard Time, and Countdown to Mystery are among his credits. Gerber’s early-1980s collaboration with Jack Kirby, Destroyer Duck, was produced as a fundraiser to assist in his legal battles with Marvel over ownership of Howard the Duck and to increase awareness of creators’ rights. He also made his mark upon the world of animation, with the short-lived Thundarr the Barbarian being beloved among toon fans.

On February 10, 2008, pulmonary fibrosis robbed Steve Gerber of his life, extinguishing one of comics’ freshest, most unpredictable voices. Some within the industry regarded Gerber as a troublemaker, or as a deadline liability, or as a nutcase, and from their perspectives those assessments may indeed be valid. But others regarded him as a treasure, as a trailblazer, and as a friend. Many of their names are inscribed onto page 1’s “Special Thanks” credits, surely the longest such list we’ve ever run in this magazine.

As I’ve often stated in editorials, BACK ISSUE is about comic books—we leave the career-spanning creator retrospectives to other publications. And although this issue may appear to violate that dictum, that appearance is deceiving. This issue is, like the thirty preceding it, about comic books—the wild, groundbreaking, and forever entertaining ones produced by the unforgettable Steve Gerber.

Michael Eury

Steve Gerber photo © 1977 Marvel Comics..

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Roger Ash

In the mid-1970s, one of Marvel’s hottest titles didn’t star a musclebound hero or busty heroine dressed in bright spandex and saving the world from the latest galactic menace. Instead, it starred a cigar-chomping, suit-coat wearing duck named Howard. His adventures, as chronicled by creator Steve Gerber, brought some of the spirit of the Underground Comix to a mainstream audience. Howard’s stories revolved around mundane things like finding a job or bizarre things like crusaders for decency becoming suicide bombers and blowing up porno theaters and adult book stores. No topic was off limits. Even a relationship between a human woman and a duck somehow got past the Comics Code Authority. It was hip and relevant in the same way as the early Saturday Night Live. It wasn’t written by a fifty-year-old man trying to be cool. It was a young man writing to his peers, and the satire and social commentary hit home with the readers.

THE HATCHING OF HOWARD Let’s back up and set the stage. In the Man-Thing series running in Adventure into Fear, a being called the Overmaster was messing with the Cosmic Axis and causing parallel dimensions to come into contact with each other. Dakimh the Enchanter; his apprentice, Jennifer Kale; the macabre Man-Thing; and a displaced barbarian named Korrek were trying to set things right. In Adventure into Fear #19 (Dec. 1973), Howard makes his first appearance, and reluctantly joins this group of “hairless apes.” In Man-Thing #1 (Jan. 1974), on a journey through the various dimensions, Howard missteps and falls into space.

The first artist to draw Howard was Val Mayerik.

“Neither Steve or myself had a specifically detailed concept of the duck’s appearance,” Mayerik remembers.

“Steve simply said that the character was to be

Waugh’s Happenin’?

The penciled version of the cover art for Marvel’s Howard the Duck Omnibus by Frank Brunner, the artist who drew the Duck’s first solo issue. Courtesy of Mr. Brunner. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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proportioned like a cartooned, anthropomorphic duck, but in three dimensions, as if it existed in a three-dimensional world itself. The costume, cigar, and general demeanor of the duck may have all been Steve’s ideas or maybe they were features that I just came up with at the last minute, I can’t honestly recall.

But the basic concept of a talking cartoon-type duck had its genesis with Steve. Once the character actually was on the page, it was then I think that Steve was inspired to really take off with it.”

The idea of Howard’s sudden “death” in Man-Thing #1 came from Roy Thomas. “I had been the editor when I sort of had [Steve] kill off the character,” says Thomas. “He could always bring him back if it turned out that people wanted him. I wanted to get him out of there because I didn’t know how readers would take it.

They had a tendency, in the past, to get almost hostile about humorous characters, like the Impossible Man a few years earlier. I was aware that there was some mail and that people liked Howard, so I told Steve, if he wanted to, he could run a Howard story in the comic Arrgh! that I was editing. It was my way of admitting that we should bring Howard back. He told me that he had already arranged—I don’t know exactly how it happened, though—for Howard to be in the Man-Thing book.”

Giant-Size Man-Thing #4 (May 1975) featured the first Howard solo story, “Frog Death.” Howard, after falling through space for months, lands in Cleveland where he encounters Garko (which is misspelled as Gorko on the issue’s cover). Garko is a creepy tenant in the neighborhood who turns into a giant frog when he drinks a potion.

The artist of “Frog Death” was originally planned to be Neal Adams, but it ended up being drawn by Frank Brunner. “The first time I saw Howard in Man-Thing, I knew I had to be part of this Duck’s career; he was unique compared to the rest of the Marvel Universe,” says Brunner. “When I contacted Gerber about Howard the Duck, he said he’d already written a short story as a backup in Giant-Size Man-Thing, and the script had been sitting on Neal’s drawing board for six months with no progress! I said, ‘Send it to me. I can start right away!’ And the rest, as they say, ‘is history.’”

The next Howard story, in Giant-Size Man-Thing #5 (Aug. 1975), featured Howard fighting Bessie the Hellcow, a dairy cow that was bitten by a vampire and is now a vampire herself.

Man/Drake (top) Steve Gerber, from the 1982 San Diego Comic-Con. Photo by Alan Light. (bottom) Courtesy of Frank Brunner, Frank’s 2002 pencil recreation of his Howard the Duck #1 splash page.

Howard the Duck © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

FLYING SOLO Howard’s popularity continued to grow and he was awarded his own title, cover-dated January 1976. The first issue immediately shows that Howard the Duck is not your average comic as it begins with the title character contemplating suicide. It’s hard to imagine a similar opening in Amazing Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four. Howard decides to kill himself by throwing himself from a tower on an island in the Cuyahoga River. This decision leads to the first appearance of Beverly Switzler; an encounter with Pro-Rata, an evil wizard who wants to become the Chief Accountant of the Universe; and a guest appearance by Spider-Man. This story established what were to become staples of the Howard series: parody and social commentary.

This story lampooned barbarian comics, which were extremely popular at the time, while also making a statement about how people’s lives were being controlled by the bean counters. Howard was also becoming a

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well-rounded duck. He was crass, outspoken, and not always likable, but he seemed very real and was genuinely upset about the injustices in the universe.

Beverly became the main supporting character in the series. In the letters page of Howard the Duck #19 (Dec. 1977), it’s written that “Beverly Switzler is Mary Skrenes.” (Skrenes was Gerber’s friend, his sometimes co-plotter, and co-created Omega the Unknown with him.) When asked if that’s true, she replies, “What do you think, Ducky?

“I came up with her character and her name,” Skrenes reveals. “We were sitting in some place, like a Burger and Brew, with Frank Brunner and talking about the issue. Howard was climbing up a tower of credit cards planning to ‘off’ himself. When he reached an opening at the top and looked inside … I said, ‘And, of course, there must be a scantily clad damsel chained to the wall.’ The boys liked it.

“I think there are a couple of reasons that Beverly became a continuing character,” Skrenes continues.

“One, it really worked well for Howard to have a friend who accepted him exactly as he was, feathers and all, and could be a positive optimist to his cynical pessimism.

I called him ‘Ducky.’ I called Steve ‘Gerbs.’

“The second reason is kind of eerie to me. Back on that fateful night when I interjected the girl into Steve’s plot, I said, ‘And her name is Beverly Switzler.

No, wait, I meant to say Swizzle.’ He got excited and said, ‘No, it’s got to be Switzler!’ It was some kind of ‘sign’ to him. He never explained why. After Steve’s death, when I took his ashes to New York, somebody, probably his brother Michael, told me that, ‘Steve named a character after the Switzler Hall Building on the University of Missouri-Columbia campus.’ I had never heard that name before. It was like a little last laugh he had on me.”

Also in issue #1, the final member of the art team, inker Steve Leialoha, joined the book. “In early ’75, Frank Brunner was interested in finding an inker that would be local to him (the San Francisco Bay area) and Jim Starlin recommended me as a possibility,” Leialoha says. “I would pick up the Howard pages from Frank and we would go through them so I would know what he had in mind.”

In Howard the Duck #2 (Mar. 1976), Bev’s friend, writer Arthur Winslow, becomes possessed by a nasty space turnip who menaces Bev and Howard. This issue also introduces a recurring annoyance to Howard, the Kidney Lady. She is convinced that Howard is head of a group who wants to destroy her kidneys, as well as those of the unsuspecting populace. This issue also marked Frank Brunner’s last as artist.

When asked why he left the book so soon, Brunner replies, “Two reasons. Howard The Duck #1 was a mega-hit and was the first Marvel Comic to go back to press while still on the stands! I thought I deserved a small raise in my page rate. I was turned down by then-editors [Len] Wein and [Marv] Wolfman!

“The other reason was with Howard #2, Steve was feeding me six or seven fully written pages of script at a time, so I had no idea where the story was going or how to pace it. And, most importantly, I wanted to have input on the storylines as I did with Howard #1.

I thought that if I quit for an issue or two these problems might be resolved, but by then I was doing a lot of freelance work for Star*Reach, Quack!, and the blackand-white Marvel magazines, which paid better. So, in a sense, I bumped up my page rate anyway. But not for Howard, sadly.”

Everybody Was Kung Fu Fightin’… …even Howard.

Cover to issue #3. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Howard #3 (May 1976) was drawn by John Buscema and featured Howard becoming a master of Quack Fu, a fact which has been noted by other writers of Howard over the years, including in the Howard the Duck film of 1986. The story juxtaposed the sensational version of martial arts often seen in films with the actual intentions behind the arts. Unfortunately, when writers other than Gerber referenced this story, they used it to show what a badass Howard was, which goes against the spirit of Gerber’s original story.

The following issue introduced a new continuing character to the series, artist Paul Same. Paul is Bev’s upstairs neighbor who becomes the nightgown-wearing Winky-Man to deal with his critics.

This was the first issue of Howard the Duck drawn

by Gene Colan, the artist most closely associated with Howard. When asked what he liked about the book, Colan replies, “It was very funny. Steve was a hilarious writer. I generally didn’t read much of other comic scripts, after a few pages I got the gist of where it was going in general, but with Howard it was a treat to read the entire thing. I loved Steve’s writing.

He had a very unusual outlook about life himself and it all translated over to Howard. Then there was the mix of animation along with real life people, which I’ve always loved to do.”

An important part of Howard’s future was revealed in the letters page that issue as his candidacy for President of the United States was announced. But more on that later…

Howard also dealt with everyday issues, like finding a job. In Howard #6 (Nov. 1976), Bev gets a job as a governess for a young girl named Patsy. The problem is that the house in which Patsy lives is supposedly the property of Rev. Joon Moon Yuc and his followers, the Yucchies. The reverend was a parody of then-current

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cult leader and founder of the Unification Church, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, and his followers, the Moonies.

Patsy is revealed as a bit of a mad baker as she has created a giant living cookie, which Howard defeats by chewing off the monster’s leg.

This story is a parody of gothic romances, and Gerber received some plotting assistance from Mary Skrenes. “I had written for House of Mystery and House of Secrets for DC, and I think I did a gothic romance comic called The Secret House of Forbidden Love,” she says.

[Editor’s note: The title was actually The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love.] “Gerbs got a kick out of that and we joked around about the romance and mystery books and got some plot ideas out of it. Then, of course, there was our favorite imagery from Frankenstein combined with the Golem Cookie.”

Sock It To Me, Baby! (above) Candidate Howard on the cover to Marvel’s housezine FOOM #15, and (center) the Wrightson-drawn Duck button. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

DUCK OF THE PEOPLE The second half of issue #7 (Dec. 1976) is where Howard’s run for the presidency becomes part of the storyline. Howard saves the All Night Party’s candidate from assassination and, in the process, becomes their new candidate. His campaign is managed by Mad Genius Associates, a company set up by Gerber to sell Howard campaign buttons and presidential prints.

Howard’s campaign was a perfect vehicle for Gerber’s satire on politics. The satire still rings as true now as it did over thirty years ago.

Mary Skrenes remembers Howard’s presidential bid: “I thought it would be great publicity for the book and Marvel if Howard ran for president.

Steve didn’t think that Marvel would care or give it any support. He was right. They didn’t even do a press release. But, they did let us plug the button and poster on the letters page.

“I came up with [the slogan] ‘Get Down America’ and Steve’s was ‘the All Night Party Platform.’ We rented some office space and, as Mad Geniuses, prepared to ship campaign merchandise. Bernie Wrightson drew the button and the poster. The poster was printed in sepia tones and was wonderfully demented.”

A Howard the Duck treasury edition was printed in 1976 to meet the demand for Howard’s early appearances. It also included a new crossover between Howard and the Defenders, whose book Gerber was

© 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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writing at the time. The story was drawn by Sal Buscema and featured the villains Sitting Bullseye, Tillie the Hun, the Spanker, and Black Hole, who, under the leadership of the mundane mystic, Dr. Angst, set out to assassinate presidential candidate Howard.

Back in the regular book, Howard’s campaign goes into full swing as he faces special interest groups, the press, and more attempts on his life. Howard’s hopes of election are dashed when an obviously doctored photo of him and Bev appears in the paper.

In Howard #9 (Feb. 1977), the source of the doctored photo is traced to Canada. Bev and Howard go to clear their names and meet the man behind the photo and the assassination attempts, Canadian National Pierre Dientifris, who is also known as Le Beaver. He challenges Howard to a duel on a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Howard initially agrees, then decides the whole situation is insane and simply walks away.

Issues #10–14 (Mar.–July 1977) deal with the aftermath of Howard’s decision to listen to his better judgment and run away from a fight. As a result, he loses it. Issue #10 is mostly an interior dialogue, and what a strange one it is, as Howard has a nearnervous breakdown. His hallucinations, in which most people have “piano” as part of their name, features guest appearances by Omega the Unknown, Spider-Man, and Dr. Strange.

Prior to this issue, the relationship between Howard and Bev continued to develop and it was strongly implied that they were involved in some fashion. When Howard awakens and, in a stupor, sees Bev having dinner with the doctor who is caring for him, he jumps to the wrong conclusion. He takes the rest of his money and buys a bus ticket to anywhere.

Unfortunately, anywhere happens to be Cleveland.

Howard is assaulted by many odd characters on the bus, including new cast member Winda Wester. It also features the return of the Kidney Lady, who annoys Howard so much that a fight ensues. The bus crashes and, after a trial, Howard and Winda are taken to an insane asylum.

Steve Leialoha reveals a little-known fact about that issue: “Howard #11 turned into a ‘many hands’ issue.

I was visiting Continuity Studios after picking up the penciled pages from Marvel. Neal Adams asked if he could ‘play with some of the pages,’ and I certainly wasn’t going to say no, so he ended up inking about three pages’ worth. A few other folks inked a face or some small bit. The others lending a pen or brush were Russ Heath, Walt Simonson, Al Milgrom, Bob Wiacek, and Alex Niño, with a bit of additional penciling on the cover. My main challenge was to smooth a few things over a bit to make it all match as I inked the rest.

I guess it worked as I never heard that anyone noticed.”

Howard’s stay in the sanitarium is less than smooth as the mysterious director of the asylum has an unhealthy interest in Winda. Things get really weird when, under stress, the rock band KISS springs out of

Winda’s head. As a result, the head psychiatrist summons an expert, Daimon Hellstrom, better known as the Son of Satan, to check on Winda. The mysterious head of the facility summons his own expert, Rev. Yuc, from Howard #6.

Hellstrom says that Winda is not possessed, but has latent psychic powers. Rev. Yuc has his own ideas and tries to brainwash Winda.

In an attempt to save her, Hellstrom summons his power but, through an accident, the power goes into Howard and the Duck becomes the Son of Satan. Peace is eventually restored and the mysterious director of the asylum is revealed to be … Hitler?

HOWARD SYN-DUCK-ATED Around this time, June of 1977, the Howard the Duck syndicated newspaper strip by Steve Gerber and Gene Colan began. This is a “lost” chapter of Gerber’s Howard oeuvre as only a small part of it has ever been reprinted. The strips that were reprinted tell the story of Pop Syke, a self-help guru who uses Psycho Prosthesis—basically funky-looking helmets— to control his followers. After a brief encounter with the Kidney Lady, Howard and Bev are captured by an entropy cult that intends to destroy the Earth.

Gene Colan recalls that working on the daily strip was extremely difficult: “I never realized what a slave you’d be to it. That, by itself, was enough to keep you busy seven days a week. So I did that and I did Marvel work. I burned the candle at both ends.

“I got better at it. I got less nervous after the first week or so. It got to the point where I was physically not able to continue. I had to give up one or the other, so I had to bow out.”

After Colan left the strip, Val Mayerik stepped in for a while. A story he drew had Bev inheriting a massage parlor that was a front for an old-age home.

While the strip was running in the papers, the Marvel comic book continued. The story picks up in the Howard the Duck Annual (1977), which featured art by Val Mayerik.

The story was co-plotted by Mary Skrenes, who shares this remembrance: “Steve wanted something silly and swashbuckling for the Annual. I had a title floating around, ‘The Thief of Bagmom.’ We took what we wanted from ‘Ali Baba’ and bent it to our will. Two things I remember particularly enjoying: The fact that the kids from Cleveland and the ‘Arabs’ couldn’t understand each other until Paul rubbed the lamp. And I rolled on the floor when Gerber wrote the magic words that opened the door to the underground railroad, the whole McDonald’s slogan as one long word where ‘bunz,’ not ‘sesame,’ was the key.

(Maybe you had to be there.)”

This was the first major Howard story Val Mayerik had worked on since he first drew the Duck in Adventure into Fear. “What excited me most about the story was that I would be able to ink it myself so it would be all my work, other than the coloring, of course,” says Mayerik. “I must admit that it also was fun being able to show some skin on Bev.”

© 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Sunday Best The Gerber/Colan Howard the Duck Sunday strip from June 12, 1977, courtesy of Gabrielle Morrisette. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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THE BONG SHOW Howard, Bev, Paul, and Winda take a cruise ship home that is attacked by a large sea serpent in a top hat, and boulders rain down on the ship. The boulders turn out to be eggs which hatch concrete swans that fly Howard and Bev to the island of Dr. Bong!

Readers would have to wait to learn more about Dr. Bong as issue #16 (Sept. 1977) was the infamous fill-in issue. The whole issue was Steve Gerber musing about life as he moved to Las Vegas and was done as an illustrated text story. One of the pages planted the seed for what would eventually become Steve’s creation, Nevada. Over the years, this issue has been praised as a brilliant storytelling experiment or vilified as utter crap.

Issues #17–19 (Oct.–Dec. 1977) relate Howard and Bev’s confrontation with Dr. Bong. They learn that Bong is a former classmate of Bev’s named Lester Verde. He was a journalism student who quickly learned the power of the press and how to manipulate it to his benefit. By striking the bell on his head, he can paralyze, teleport, or kill.

He also has created in his evolvo-chamber a number of servants, mostly monsters who continually say “neez,” as well as several animal mutations including a French Maid duck named Fifi.

Bong gives Bev an ultimatum: marry him or Howard dies. She agrees to save Howard’s life, but Bong puts him in the evolvo-chamber anyway. Fifi smashes the machine and helps Howard escape in a flying Bonger that takes them to New York. They are shot down and Fifi dies while Howard turns into a human.

Howard wanders around New York trying to figure out how to make it as a hairless ape. He goes home with a woman he meets in a restaurant and, after spending an exciting night with her, wakes up as a duck.

Later, Howard goes looking for a job. He’s hired as a dishwasher.

He’s trained by Sudd, the man he’s replacing, who’s leaving for a job with SOOFI (Save Our Offspring From Indecency). An unfortunate accident with a can of cleanser and a microwave turn Sudd into a living bubble man that sets about literally cleaning up the neighborhood.

In #21 (Feb. 1978), with guest art by Carmine Infantino, we learn that Howard’s boss is none other than … Beverly Switzler!

Beverly “Lee” Switzler is Bev’s uncle. Meanwhile, the head of the SOOFI, who wears a smiley-face mask, as do all her followers, kidnaps Howard and attempts to brainwash him. Howard punches the head of SOOFI in the face and breaks her mask. Although it’s never actually stated, it is heavily implied that the head of the SOOFI is Anita Bryant, a right-wing extremist who at the time was also the spokesperson for Florida orange juice. (If you’ve never heard of Ms. Bryant, think James Dobson or Pat Robertson and you get a good idea as to what she was like.)

Issues #22 and 23 (Mar. and Apr. 1978) once again see the return of artist Val Mayerik, and he brings along Dakimh the sorcerer, Jennifer Kale, Korrek the barbarian, and Man-Thing for a rousing Star Wars parody. They need Howard’s help to defeat Bzzk’Joh (pronounced Berserk Joe) and his Imperium Emporium before they commercialize the universe. After destroying Berserk Joe’s Death Store, Howard returns to Earth, where he wanders the streets of New York while waiting for Paul and Winda’s ship to dock.

Howard the Duck #25–27 (June–Sept. 1978) marks the Duck’s first encounter with mainstream Marvel villains: the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime. Howard learns that Paul has acquired a rich patron on the ship, Iris Raritan. She has the Ringmaster perform at one of her functions, knowing full well that he will rob her guests. That will give her the thrill of tracking him down. This act leads to Howard being kidnapped, Paul being shot, and Winda being beaten up. In a subplot, Dr. Bong tells Bev that she won’t be totally his until Howard is dead.

THE FIGHT FOR RIGHTS With all this set up, things looked exciting for Howard. But #27 was to be the final issue of Howard that Steve Gerber would write and plot for quite some time. In 1978, Gerber was fired from the Howard the Duck newspaper strip and from Marvel in general. Why? In a letter written to Gary Groth printed in The Comics Journal #41, Gerber said that “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.”

In a news story in that same issue of The Comics Journal, Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter was quoted as saying that the reason Gerber was fired was that he was “‘over two months late’ on the books he was writing and editing.” When asked if there was any other reason for the firing, Shooter responded, “I would not say there was nothing else to it; I would just say that we found it advantageous to get out of the contract we were in.”

Gerber remained as editor on Howard #28 and 29 (Nov. 1978 and Jan. 1979), which were plotted by Marv Wolfman and Mark Evanier, respectively, with Mary Skrenes scripting #28 and Gerber scripting #29.

Gerber was replaced on the daily strip by writer Marv Wolfman and artist Alan Kupperberg. In an interview with Gary Groth in The Comics Journal #41, Gerber said, “…in Marv Wolfman’s version of

Heartsick Headbanger Howard’s arch-foe Dr. Bong, on the cover to HTD #15 (Aug. 1977). © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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the strip, about all that remains of the feel and thrust and the general artistic direction of the magazine are the names of the characters. It has descended into simple-minded parody. They’ve amputated its social commentary as if it were a vestigial tail.” That’s a criticism that he could have used against other versions of Howard to come.

There were a couple benefit projects produced to help fund Gerber’s legal battle. The first was Destroyer Duck, a comic by Gerber and legendary creator Jack Kirby, which featured Destroyer Duck going after the evil Godcorp for destroying a friend of his.

The second benefit project was the FOOG (Friends of Old Gerber) Portfolio, which featured plates by artists including Dave Sim, Gene Colan, Bernie Wrightson, and more. These projects, and the coverage in the fan press, brought the subject of creators’ rights to comic fans as never before. The lawsuit was eventually settled out of court with Marvel retaining the rights to Howard.

While the legal battle was going on, Marvel’s Howard the Duck continued. The writer chosen to take over Howard was Bill Mantlo. His version of the Duck was very different from Gerber’s. The anger and righteous indignation were pushed to the background in favor of making Howard a more likable character. An example of this is seen in Mantlo’s first issue, Howard #30 (Mar. 1979). Dr. Bong challenges Howard to a battle and one of the things he threatens to do if he doesn’t accept the challenge is expose him in the papers as a coward. To a duck that ran away from a fight with Le Beaver and had his presidential campaign derailed by a doctored photo, what other people might think of him doesn’t seem that big a deal. Yet, to this new duck, it is.

Howard battles Dr. Bong in issue #31 (May 1979) with the help of some gadgets created by Claude Starkowski, a mechanic who believes he’s related to Tony Stark. This was to be the final issue of the Howard comic book (for now) as the story would continue in a new Howard the Duck black-and-white magazine.

CAUGHT WITH HIS PANTS DOWN There was more trouble behind the scenes for Marvel as a new lawsuit was filed against Howard, this time by the Walt Disney Company. The article “How the Duck Got His Pants” by Steven Grant in Howard the Duck Magazine #8 revealed how the lawsuit came to be.

“Disney’s licensees overseas suddenly saw their markets threatened when competitors issued the adventures of Howard the Duck,” Grant wrote.

“The overseas licensees took their grievances to Disney, who in turn contacted Marvel.”

After negotiations, a new look for Howard was devised. A model sheet was developed, and one of the big changes was that Howard now wore pants.

This matter was dealt with in the story “Animal Indecency” in Howard the Duck Magazine #2 (Dec. 1979). To increase his sales, clothier Wally Sidney crusades against animal nudity. Howard gets caught in the madness and ends up having to wear pants.

The touchstone for Mantlo’s run was Howard and Bev’s relationship, which, in the more “adult” world of the black-and-white magazine, also meant that it got much more explicit. In spite of declaring “I am not Steve Gerber” in the letter page of issue #2, Mantlo seemingly courted comparisons by featuring many of the villains created by Gerber, including the Kidney Lady, the SOOFI, Pro-Rata, and others. While some

social commentary was included, most were the hot topics of the day, such as nuclear power, and seemed to only be there because it was supposed to be.

Mantlo’s best stories had little connection to Gerber’s creations, aside from Howard and Bev, and the social issues read as if they were something Mantlo cared about. Issues #5 and 6 (May and July 1980) are the best examples of this. In “Captain Americana,” Howard is the nanny of a group of kids whose father is a right-wing extremist. In “Drakula,” vampire stories are parodied as Howard is bitten by Dracula and becomes a vampire himself. And in “Duckworld,” Howard and Bev return to the planet of his birth where they discover a religion has sprung up over Howard’s disappearance. These last two stories are elevated by some gorgeous art by Mantlo’s collaborator on Micronauts, Michael Golden.

In the final black-and-white issue, #9 (Mar. 1981), Beverly breaks up with Howard and they go their separate ways. Bill Mantlo also went his own way.

In the article “Howard the Duck: Homeward Bound”

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Everything’s Ducky A Michael Golden/ Bob McLeod page from the “Duckworld” tale in 1980’s black-andwhite Howard the Duck #6. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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which was printed in that issue, author Steven Grant revealed what Mantlo had in store for Howard before he quit: “Howard would become a successful TV star overnight, plummet out of popularity overnight, end up as an attraction at the Los Angeles zoo, and then be reunited with Bev—leading to a wedding....”

Same As It Never Was A Hulk-sized gopher, trucker CC Ryder, and the Duck in a page from “Going Underground,” from Howard #32 (Jan. 1986, intended to be a new issue #1). By Grant/Smith/Colletta.

Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions.

HOWARD’S MIGRATIONS Howard continued to pop up here and there around Marvel. In Marvel Team-Up #96 (Aug. 1980) by Alan Kupperberg, Howard and Spider-Man took on Status Quo, a man who wants to get rid of fads. Howard also appeared in various issues of Crazy Magazine. These threepage strips, often written by Roger Stern or Steve Skeates and drawn by Pat Broderick and Armando Gil, dealt with Howard as the manager of a burlesque theatre. The strips were mainly just gags, with the performers often being more important than Howard.

A couple of interesting Howard stories appeared in Bizarre Adventures #34 (Feb. 1983) and Howard the Duck #32 (Jan. 1986). Yes, Howard #32 came out

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seven years after #31. It was presumably published to capitalize on the excitement around the then-upcoming Howard the Duck movie. These two stories, both by Steven Grant and Paul Smith, are “Howard the Duck’s Christmas” and “Going Underground.”

“Going Underground,” according to Grant, “was originally supposed to be the first issue of a new Howard the Duck series. One day, while I was in the office, I was asked if I’d write it. At the time, Steve’s lawsuit against Marvel was in full swing, and I asked about that, but was assured it was all but settled, Steve wasn’t doing the Duck again no how. At which point I agreed to it. Of course, it wasn’t anything even vaguely resembling settled, but we didn’t find that out until much later. We had six issues mapped out, but before I could start writing the second issue, we were told to stop because the lawsuit was going on after all.

“The Christmas story was done right around the same time,” Grant continues. “I think I suggested to Paul we do a Howard story, set before the series.

It sprang from my utter loathing of It’s a Wonderful Life, so the notion was that when an angel shows a suicidal Howard what life for everyone would have been like had he never existed, it turns out everyone’s life would have been so much better.”

Howard the Duck #33 (Sept. 1986), also a singleissue story, was by Christopher Stager and Val Mayerik.

It features a rags-to-riches-to-rags story as Howard wins the lottery, spends his money on having a mad scientist create a Bride of Frankenstein-type mate for him, and when it doesn’t work out, he’s back where he started.

Mayerik says he enjoyed working on this book: “The story takes place in Cleveland. I was living in Cleveland at the time and was working with some local TV and film producers. We were doing some short films for Viacom Cable and I was doing some acting and writing. An editor at Marvel had seen one of our shows and suggested that one of the show’s writers and myself cook up a Howard story. I’m not too sure how successful the story is inasmuch as the writer was so inexperienced at comics, but we had fun throwing in a lot of inside jokes about Cleveland.”

As mentioned previously, there was a lot of excitement around the 1986 Howard the Duck movie coming from executive producer George Lucas and director Willard Huyck. In this film, written by Huyck and Gloria Katz, Howard is pulled from his world to Cleveland, where he meets rock singer Beverly Switzler (Lea Thompson).

She agrees to help him learn how he got here and takes Howard to see Phil Blumburtt (Tim Robbins), the wacky scientist boyfriend of one of her bandmates.

Phil learns that Howard was brought here by an experiment conducted by Dr. Walter Jenning (Jeffrey Jones). In an attempt to send Howard back home, Jenning accidentally brings down a Dark Overlord of the Universe instead, who possesses Jenning. The rest of film is a race to stop the Dark Overlord from bringing more of his kind to Earth.

The film is widely regarded as Lucas’ biggest flop.

Jones gave a wonderful, scene-chewing performance as the possessed scientist, but the rest of the movie seemed rather flat. For a filmmaker who was known for his special effects, Lucas’ Howard looked exactly like what he was—a man in a duck suit. The script only hinted at what made Howard popular: his explosive personality and sly social commentary. Instead, Howard was now a wise-cracking action hero in an adventure/ comedy. Audiences didn’t go for it. There was an

adaptation of the film with lovely art by Kyle Baker and able scripting by Danny Fingeroth, but nothing they did could save the story.

But interesting things were going on behind the scenes. On his website (www.stevegerber.com), Gerber wrote that he was approached by Marvel in 1985 to write a new Howard series. He wanted to get rid of Duckworld, a concept he hated, and parody the recent events Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret Wars. When he was asked to make changes he didn’t like, he pulled the script.

The script is quite enjoyable. In short, the Howard stories in the black-and-white magazine and Bizarre Adventures were not real but films created by an alien named Chirreep. However, due to an anomaly, parts of her movies are becoming real and are tearing apart the universe. Howard has been falling in the rift between them for years. The Brotherhood of Evil Prepositions, including the Betweener and the Arounder, have brought together a number of Howard’s friends and enemies to fight it out for supremacy.

Even though that attempt to revive Howard didn’t work out, Gerber would eventually return to Howard in She-Hulk #14–17 (Apr.–July 1990). “The Cosmic Squish Principle” teamed Howard with the titular Jade Giantess, the Critic (an offshoot of the race that became the Watchers), and a Golden Age hero, the Terror, to take on the revived Dr. Angst, Tillie the Hun, Sitting Bullseye, the Spanker, and the Black Hole, who were out to destroy the universe and create a new, mundane one.

Gerber also wrote Howard again in Spider-Man Team-Up #5 (Dec. 1996), but there’s quite a story behind this tale, one that involves the return of Destroyer Duck. Gerber wrote in an article in the back of Savage Dragon/Destroyer Duck (Nov. 1996) that revealed that while he was working on this book, Marvel contacted him about doing a new Howard/ Spider-Man story. His initial reaction was to say no, but he was convinced otherwise. Erik Larsen, the creator of Savage Dragon and the publisher of Savage Dragon/Destroyer Duck book, agreed as well and suggested a crossover of the stories where you would see the same scene from different angles. Marvel agreed. However, while working on the book, Gerber learned of Howard appearing in three other books. He was not happy. Erik Larsen made a suggestion that made him happy. Here’s what happened: In Spider-Man Team-Up, Howard and Spidey are trying to find something that was stolen from the Ringmaster by the trigger-happy elf who appeared in

Howard the Dog… …of a movie. (above) Stickers from the Lucas flop, and (left) the cover to its adaptation. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Defenders. They think it was the hypno-disc that the Ringmaster used to use to entrance people. It was actually a small, electronic sitar pin. In Savage Dragon/Destroyer Duck, they are looking for the electronic sitar pin and end up with the hypno-disc.

The elf calls the Dragon and suggests a trade. They meet at a warehouse where a battle ensues and Howard and Spidey retrieve the disc and the Dragon and Destroyer Duck get the sitar. Or so it seems. In a scene that is only in the Savage Dragon/Destroyer Duck book, the elf creates a huge number of ducks to add to the confusion. To save them from the battle, the Dragon and Destroyer Duck carry Howard and Bev to safety while one of the conjured-up ducks goes with Spidey. The real Howard and Bev go into protective custody in the Image Universe as Leonard the Duck and Rhonda Martini.

The books that upset Gerber were Generation X, where Howard appeared mainly as a lead-in to the Daydreamers miniseries where he functioned as a father figure to Franklin Richards and young mutants,

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Writer Steven Grant has some wonderful behind-thescenes stories about his work on Howard the Duck, and we want to share them with you.

“Paul Smith was asked to be the artist [on the proposed Howard the Duck series],” says Grant. “We were going to introduce a new supporting cast, starting with long-haul girl trucker CC Ryder, who did appear in ‘Going Underground.’ This was very early in the Reagan administration, which is what that issue was about, that administration’s selling off of America.

The material was very topical, but it got published some six or seven years after we did it, and everything read a little flat by then. That’s probably the biggest rift between Steve’s approach to the character and mine: His has turned out to be infinitely more timeless. Mine was too tied to the exact moment.

“Paul, who did a wonderful job and was really getting into designing characters for the series, had one stipulation on taking the job, as I recall: Vinnie Colletta couldn’t be assigned to ink it. When the book was yanked from the schedule, the pages went into this big stack of unused art in Jim Shooter’s office. Vinnie Colletta and Shooter were bosom buddies at that point, and if Vinnie was light on work, he’d go rummage through the pile to find something to ink and to pick up some cash.

Of course, as soon as he saw the Duck pages, that’s what he wanted to ink, I suspect because Paul has a very open style, as opposed to a lot of artists, and Vinnie translated that into his head into fewer ink lines necessary, so the same money for less work. Naturally, any promises made to Paul were long forgotten by that point, and Vinnie ended up inking the story. I don’t think either of us knew until it saw print.

“Paul and I did one other related story, a CC Ryder solo story, just a short comedy bit for a later issue of Bizarre Adventures. We both loved our hard-assed cowgirl trucker and wanted to see her in print—but Bizarre Adventures was canceled before the story saw print, and it ended up in Shooter’s art stack. Guess who inked it.

“I’d met Steve once before all this, at the end of 1976, but didn’t really get to know him until I moved to Los Angeles a few years later. I apologized for having stepped on his turf—had I been given accurate info, I wouldn’t have—but he was very gracious about it and we ended up being pretty good friends.”

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© 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

STEVEN GRANT’S FOWL MEMORIES

Artie and Leech; the Howard the Duck Holiday Special, in which Howard leads a commando raid on Santa’s Workshop to take it back from operatives of Hydra; and Ghost Rider, in which he was basically comic relief.

Gerber returned one last time to write a new Howard story in 2001.

This time, it was a six-issue miniseries for Marvel’s MAX imprint, which is intended for mature readers. He re-teamed with artist Phil Winslade, with whom he had previously worked on the DC/Vertigo book Nevada. The book’s editor, Stuart Moore, says that convincing Gerber to do this book wasn’t easy. “He was worried about the process, yes, but he really wanted to do it,” Moore recalls.

“So we just took it all one step at a time.

Having Phil Winslade on art helped, I think, because Steve had worked with Phil already and they trusted each other.”

In this series, Gerber took on boy bands, modern marketing, bad girl comics, DC’s Vertigo line (including Nevada), Oprah, Dr. Phil, religion, and the rights of creators. In the story itself, Dr. Bong returns to make another play for Bev. Howard once again finds himself in one of Bong’s vats with the result being that, for the rest of the series, he shifts shape between various animals, most commonly, a mouse. They get rid on Bong and end up having to stop Deuteronomy, an angel/demon hybrid, from taking over the world through the TV personality Iprah.

The final issue, “Creator’s Rights,” is a Gerber tour de force as Howard sits down for a talk with God. The discussion of religion turns to the rights of creators as God reveals that this universe was created as work-for-hire.

After the miniseries, Howard occasionally appeared in the Marvel Universe, most notably in the Dan Slott-written issues of She-Hulk.

Slott even sent one of the series’ supporting characters to Duckworld.

It would take the company-wide Civil War event to get another Howard solo story. Ty Templeton wrote a short, “Non-Human-Americans,” for the Choosing Sides one-shot (Dec. 2006). This would eventually lead to a new Howard miniseries, but that wasn’t the original intent.

“All the other stories in that special were aimed at launching new series, and the special was sort of a sampler,” says Templeton.

“All except our story … which was put in there to fill the last six or seven pages of the book.

“When the issue came out, the Howard story was mentioned in a lot of reviews as the best thing in the book,” Templeton continues, “and the readers’ response on the Marvel boards was fairly positive, too. I hope that had something to do with the change of heart.”

Templeton was nervous about writing the new Howard the Duck miniseries (Dec. 2007–Feb. 2008). “I was very conscious of how little Gerber enjoyed it when other people worked on his characters, so I strained to make our version of Howard as recognizable to Steve as possible. Apparently he wasn’t offended by our Howard story, I heard through our editor (though he was slightly miffed that he wasn’t asked to participate in it, I also hear…). Not being offensive to Steve was a goalpost, and I’m glad we scored on that note.”

To Templeton, there were three important aspects to get into the story: “The formula for Howard stories was one-third Marvel Comics spoof, one-third soap opera, and one-third social satire, baby!

“I wanted a firm connection to the world of Marvel, so I decided my villains were going to be my favorite Marvel whipping boys, the evil scientists of A.I.M. And when you have A.I.M., you often have MODOK (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing), or in this case, his cousin MODOT (Mental Organism Designed Only for Talking).

“My one-part soap opera part was Howard and Beverly dealing with two things: their sudden fame and [Howard’s] sudden awareness that he was not a citizen of these United States, and as an illegal, it meant he had no rights in post-9/11 America, and that people could shoot at him.

“And for the social satire stuff: I decided to go after the media, which currently functions in the United States as an enemy of democracy, and needs a little slapping. With all the propaganda and disinformation and distraction hitting the newsstands and airwaves, it occurred to me that ‘talking heads’ were ruining it for everyone else, and that’s when it hit me, that MODOK is basically just a talking head, and why not create a similar character who literally is the talking head of America.”

UNCERTAIN FUTURE What will happen with Howard in the future is unknown, but no matter who writes him, to many fans, Steve Gerber is Howard the Duck.

“Everybody knows that nobody could ever really write Howard but Steve,” says Mary Skrenes. “Howard was Steve’s voice. I could easily write Beverly and often did. I never wanted to, or even tried to, write Howard’s dialogue. I don’t have that kind of passion.

“Gerber’s world view was unique and had been influenced by his deep love of Superman, broadcast television, the news, Marshall McLuhan, and a voracious need for history and current events,” Skrenes reveals. “He believed in truth and justice and knew that ‘the Medium is the Message.’

“He saw through the rhetoric, propaganda, and political double-speak. Most of the rest of us enjoyed his outrage as he channeled it through his stories and characters. We probably wouldn’t have built stories around some of his issues, or even wanted to deal with the politics, but we were thoroughly entertained when he did. Steve Gerber was a writer’s writer.

“Gerber’s fans sometimes saw themselves in his other characters,” Skrenes continues. “I don’t know that many people saw themselves in Howard the Duck. What they saw and liked was the social and observational humor being screeched and ‘Waaugged’ by an arm-waving, cigar-smoking, fit-throwing, frustrated duck.

“And, eventually, Marvel made Steve feel just like that about them. He couldn’t screech or throw a fit. He could only fight a long legal battle, for years, for justice for his seminal character, himself, Kirby, and for other creators’ rights. It was noble, but it was sickening to watch. It took a toll on his financial, physical, and spiritual health. He and his supporters fought for justice. He had what some would consider an amazing success. But it was more of a win for future creators than he got for himself.

“I have to say this: To his dying day, no matter what Marvel did to him, or what went on between he and Stan, or how much he was hurt and disappointed by him, no matter how much I blasted him … Steve loved and tried to make me understand Stan Lee. “Steve Gerber was my dear friend for over 35 years,” Skrenes concludes. “I loved collaborating with him.

I enjoyed our conversations, for hours, about everything under the sun. I thoroughly appreciated his insights into the candidates in this historic presidential election. He made me think and laugh. He’s irreplaceable.

I miss him.”

Unfair and Imbalanced (above left) Detail of harried Howard from the cover of issue #1 of the 2008 Howard the Duck miniseries, and (above) the cover painting to issue #4. Art by Juan Bobillo.

Scans courtesy of Ty Templeton.

People who helped with this article but aren’t mentioned in the text are Wayne Markley, KC Carlson, Marvel’s Jim McCann, and Fantagraphic’s Eric Reynolds. Thank you, one and all.

The comic that started ROGER ASH collecting, and on the road to where he is now, was Howard the Duck #25. This article is dedicated to Steve, Gene, and all the others who have brought so much pleasure into his life.

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It was the autumn of 1975, I was living in Berkeley, California, and I had two “Howard” short stories under my belt, appearing as backups in Giant-Size Man-Thing #4 and 5, respectively. The fan mail was pouring in, coming from college students and comics fans all over the country. They were all saying the same thing, loud and clear: “WE WANT MORE!” “Howard must have his own book!!”

So it was not a big surprise when the call came from New York and Steve Gerber gave me the good news—we got our own book! Or, should I say, Howard the Duck had won his own title! No small feat when you consider how long it took characters like Iron Man to do it!

Steve was a bit giddy and I wanted to help write it (as I had done with Steve Englehart on Dr. Strange). Gerber was not your average comic-book writer and an odd bird unto himself! He was also part of the younger creators at Marvel who, frankly, wanted to turn Marvel upside-down and shake it up! He annouced to me that SPIDER-MAN would guest star in Howard’s premere issue! Which to us young guys was like throwing bombs at the Marvel Establishment, to actually intergrate Howard into the segregated (and very serious) Marvel superhero Universe … “Yep, that’ll shock the hell out of Stan Lee,” I was thinking.

Within a couple days, I was in New York again, and knocking on Gerber’s door.

I think Mary Skrenes answered and I was ushered into an apartment that resembled more a dorm room at college—with bunk beds, no less. I looked around and spotted a typewriter … piles of comics … and a rather large sign on the wall that said, “KILL FOR MONEY.” Before I could question what the hell that meant, Steve appeared with a phone in his ear: “I’m on the line with Lark”— otherwise known as Margaret “Lark” Russell.

She and Mary were both interested in comics, writers, and artists … in a Bohemian sort of way, sometimes playing the muse or co-writers. Something that Steve liked to do was bounce his crazy ideas off others. And I guessed we four were going to a nice, dark restaurant where the music was low enough to hear ourselves plot and joke about our new project: Howard the Duck #1!

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Frank Brunner

One short taxi ride and we arrived at a midtown bistro, where we took over a table all the way in the back. I don’t think any of us believed this was indeed really happening. Howard the Duck not only broke all the rules, we actually had to invent new ones for him to shattter! But the first thing we needed was a girlfriend for Howard … Beverly Switzler by name!

How she came to be a prisoner of a villianous accountant in a tower of credit cards is unknown—she probably answered an ad in the Cleveland classifieds.

I can’t remember exactly who contributed what.

I know I wanted to do a sword-and-sorcery send-up, since Conan and Red Sonja were hot at the time.

And that’s what I saw in the Duck: a vehicle to do satire of each and every genre of popular fiction!

I also remember one of the best lines to ever be censored (modified) in a Marvel comic book: We had Howard and Beverly coming through a transdimensional portal, sent there by the mad accountant (Pro-Rata) with sorcerous powers, landing in a huge bird’s nest!

And Howard remarks innocently to Bev, “Reminds me of where I was first laid.” (Changed for publication to “first hatched.”) Hell, we tried, but they [Marvel] caught it! Much like what happened later, in #2 when I tried to show Howard and Bev sitting up in bed together having what looked like an “after sex” conversation … Howard smoking a cigar, of course.

It was several hours of plotting, eating, and drinking (perhaps a bit too much of the last item). Lark was

taking down all the craziness on a legal pad, and finally we thought we had the skeleton of the first issue!

And God knows I was too drunk to go on anyway…

Just to note: One of the things I liked about Steve’s finished scripts were the captions that appeared out of nowhere and usually were some form of social criticism, commentary that he somehow wove into the story!

The restaurant was trying to close by then, so Steve and Mary would go back uptown and Lark and I would grab a cab and head downtown. It was upon arriving at her digs that I realized only one thing was missing—I had left all the notes on the seat of the taxi!!!! PANIC!!!! Nothing like a crisis to get one sober, rather brutally, too! So after calling the company with no luck … we had to do the unthinkable—call Steve and Mary and tell them what happened. After some blankety-blank bitching to and fro, we pieced it back together over the phone, but I always had the nagging thought that we must have forgotten a gem or two from the original notes!

I will also always wonder, What happened to those pieces of paper … now lost forever … like so many tears in the rain? Maybe Steve’s re-reading them now, somewhere beyond time and space. If you listen carefully, you just might hear: “DAMN! Now, that would’ve been GREAT!!!”

Thanks, Steve and all!

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Fabulous First Issue (opposite) Frank Brunner’s recreation of his landmark HTD #1 cover. (above left) A signed Brunner page from issue #1, and (above right) its color guide.

Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Dan Johnson

con duc ted Apr il 17, 200

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To anyone who loves the Bronze Age of Comics, the passing of writer Steve Gerber was a major blow.

Gerber was one of the most creative and imaginative forces in the field. He was also one of the industry’s most vocal activists. His Howard the Duck helped break comic books out of formula superhero stories, and also became the catalyst that made Gerber push for creators’ rights.

Recently BACK ISSUE sat down with two of the men who helped bring Gerber’s “fowl” little malcontent to life, artists Gene Colan and Val Mayerik, to talk about their time with Howard, and their all-too-fleeting time in Gerber’s world.

– Dan Johnson DAN JOHNSON: What were your thoughts when you each first met Steve Gerber?

GENE COLAN: He was a very funny guy. I would stop working in the middle of [a Howard the Duck] script and I would be laughing my head off. He was a good writer, an excellent writer.

VAL MAYERIK: I don’t exactly remember the first time I met Steve, but we spoke for three or four years over the phone before I actually met him in person, when I was still living in Ohio, before I moved to New York.

He always had an up personality, but we only spoke in regard to whatever issue of Man-Thing we were working on. That was the book we first worked on together, and of course that is the book where Howard appeared for the first time.

When I was living in Manhattan, I met Steve and Roy Thomas, who was editing the book at the time, at a pub/restaurant and we sat around and talked.

It struck me then that Steve was very ambitious, and not in the sense of wanting money or power, but he had a very clear vision of what he wanted to do with comics. He was very committed, and he didn’t want anything to stand in his way. He really wanted to write the stuff he wanted to write.

And to echo what Gene said, he was a funny guy.

He had a dry sense of humor and he was irreverent, but not nasty. He was not a bitter person by any

Are You Man Enough?

Original Gene Colan cover art (inked by Klaus Janson) to Howard #18 (Nov. 1977), courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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means, but he certainly liked to point out the ironies of life.

JOHNSON: Considering that, how much of Steve was Howard?

COLAN: [laughs] MAYERIK: Howard was definitely Steve’s Greek chorus.

I was not an avid follower of Howard the Duck, so I didn’t read everything ever written, but anyone who knew Steve who read that book could see Steve’s attitude coming out and manifesting itself in that character.

JOHNSON: I was curious about how personal the character was to Steve, especially considering how hard he fought to win him back later on. I always thought that if there was ever a character that had Steve’s heart, it was Howard.

COLAN: Oh, yeah.

MAYERIK: I would say so, but I think it was also a question of the times and what was going on [in the industry]. Had it not been Howard, it might have been another character Steve would have fought for. [In the late 1970s,] people were starting to call attention to how Jack Kirby never got his due for all the characters he came up with and how a lot of the older guys were never given the credit they deserved. They certainly weren’t being given any financial compensation for the characters they helped create. It was a time when people were starting to be vocal about that.

Barry Smith was one of them, Neal Adams was another.

Steve just happened to have a character that he really liked, who was successful, and it was a particular time in Steve’s life when he had the energy and resources to fight. Part of it was just Steve’s personality, but certainly he liked the character, and he felt a connection to Howard, and an affection for him.

I can’t say I was Steve’s closest friend, but knowing him as I did, had it been another character, a superhero or something else he had come up with, I think he would have fought just as hard [to hold on to it].

The time had come for people to start setting precedents as to what was theirs and what was Marvel’s and DC’s.

In my opinion, [the fight over Howard] was just a confluence of events and personalities. Steve was suddenly in a position where he had something worth fighting for, and that is why he fought so hard.

JOHNSON: Val, what were your thoughts when you first heard of Howard the Duck?

MAYERIK: I think the Duck was truly a fluke. I don’t think Steve expected that character to be so popular initially. [Howard was introduced] in a Man-Thing story where Man-Thing, because of some psychic aura or some aspect of his latent power, was able to create dimensional openings, and all these people came through. There was a barbarian who came through, a blond-haired Conan-type guy, along with Howard and two or three other characters. I had gotten into comics because I wanted to draw Conan, so I didn’t even pay that much attention to drawing this silly duck.

I was hoping this barbarian guy would be popular and spin off into his own book. That barbarian character disappeared quick soon thereafter, and I don’t know what it was, but there was some kind of groundswell with that duck that took on a life of its own. I really had no clue, and quite honestly, I don’t know if Steve, at that moment, thought it was going to go anywhere either.

COLAN: Howard was certainly different, but there was a big conflict between Howard the Duck and Donald Duck. I thought from the beginning that there might even be a lawsuit. But all I had to do was put pants on Howard, and that settled it.

Beginnings: Wings Comics for Fiction House in 1944

Milestones: Journey into Mystery / Kid Colt, Outlaw / Creepy / Eerie / The Avengers / Silver Surfer / Iron Man / Sub-Mariner / Captain Marvel / Captain America / Dr. Strange / Daredevil / Tomb of Dracula / Howard the Duck / Phantom Zone / Wonder Woman / Ragamuffins in Eclipse Monthly / Batman in Detective Comics / Night Force / Nathaniel Dusk, Private Investigator / Jemm: Son of Saturn / Silverblade / Rob Zombie's Spookshow Spectacular / Hellboy: Weird Tales

Work in Progress: Retired, but taking requests for commissions through his official website

Cyberspace: www.genecolan.com

GENE COLAN

Beginnings: Brax the Barbarian story, “Spell of the Dragon,” in Chamber of Chills #2 (Jan. 1973)

Milestones: Thongor in Creatures on the Loose / Man-Thing / Howard the Duck / Ka-Zar / The Living Mummy in Supernatural Thrillers / Monsters Unleashed / The Frankenstein Monster / Conan (various incarnations) / Creepy / Eerie / Vampirella / Heavy Metal / The Starling in Destroyer Duck / Void Indigo / The Punisher / Sensei The Young Master / Magic: The Gathering

Works in Progress: Advertising art / No current comics projects in the works, although there are some whispers in the wind

Cyberspace: www.valmayerik.com

VAL MAYERIK

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JOHNSON: Gene, I had the honor of speaking with you and Steve previously about Howard [in a “Pro2Pro” in BACK ISSUE #19]. Just listening to the conversation between the two of you, I got the sense that you had a great respect for his talent.

COLAN: He was an extremely talented fellow. I always thought he would have been great as a screenwriter in Hollywood. He lived in Las Vegas, didn’t he?

MAYERIK: When he left New York, he went to Los Angeles, then he settled in Vegas.

You know, Steve and I talked for about a year after 9/11, when he was still in Vegas, and if he was ill at the time, I didn’t know about it. I think it was just a chronic ailment that was nagging at him, it hadn’t become fatal yet, I don’t believe.

COLAN: Do you know if he had paid attention to it pretty quickly?

MAYERIK: From what I understand, that kind of condition is like emphysema. It just progresses, and there really isn’t a lot you can do. I understood he was on a waiting

See You in the Funny Papers (above) The Colan Duck daily from August 15, 1977. (below) The cover of issue #2 (Dec. 1979) of the Howard magazine featured pencils by Val Mayerik (with inks by Peter Ledger); Gene Colan penciled the interior tales. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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list for a lung transplant. Even with that, he would have had only five more years.

COLAN: You know, I didn’t know Steve that well outside of dealing with Howard. I know that long after the book became defunct, I would call him to see how he was doing and all I would ever get is a message machine.

I did get him one time on the phone, but that was for a very short conversation.

MAYERIK: The last two years of his life, Steve was almost incommunicado. The only reason I was able to get ahold of him was because of, coincidentally enough, an artist that I knew back in Cleveland, Ohio [Howard’s fictional Earth-home], who I had shared studio space with. He was a caricature artist, and he wasn’t making a lot of money with that, so he got in on the bottom floor of the computer animation business back in the 1980s, right when it was starting to take off. In 1997, 1998, he was working in Las Vegas at a huge animation studio and they were producing a lot of CD-Roms and computer games. His name was Chuck Carter and he was trying to get his own company going and develop his own games, and somehow he found out that Steve was living in Las Vegas.

Chuck hired him to write storylines and scenarios.

Chuck really liked working with Steve and thought he was coming up with some great ideas. For a while, Steve was getting gainful employment. It was good to hear that he was working and making some dough while still able to do a few comics. Chuck called me and told me he was working with Steve and he gave me his number.

Gene, the same thing happened to me. I called him once a week for two or three months, and all I got were answering machines. Chuck told me later that Steve would go through periods where the illness was really getting to him, and he was depressed, and he wouldn’t talk to people. He didn’t want to talk to people unless he was at his best and feeling good because he didn’t want to burden anybody with his problems.

COLAN: Yeah. That’s the special part of his nature.

As far as family, I always thought of him as a loner, pretty much.

MAYERIK: To tell the truth, I never heard Steve mention family, not a brother, nothing. I still don’t know to this day [about his family].

COLAN: We were at one of the big cons and we sat down to be interviewed together, and we were just talking like we are now. We had a good time. Steve would say two sentences and laugh. Did you ever catch that with him? It was kind of a little giggle.

MAYERIK: [laughter] Oh, yeah! Yeah! Right!

COLAN: I remember that very well. That was the last time I saw Steve. I was working with Steve on Howard, Stan Lee wanted me to work on the book, and I was doing other books for Marvel, too. Unfortunately, I burned the candle at both ends. I paid so much attention to Howard, but it was a freelance business, and I didn’t want to miss out on the other work with Marvel. I was doing other stories during the day and working on Howard at night. It was a good thing I was quite young then, otherwise I couldn’t have stayed in the game.

MAYERIK: How many issues were you on the book, Gene?

COLAN: Oh, I don’t know. I lost count.

MAYERIK: How about years? You were on it at least two.

COLAN: At least. There may have been three. I know a lot of work got put into the scripts and it got to the point where I couldn’t do it anymore. There was also the Howard the Duck comic strip, and with that there was lateness and the syndicate was so angry because they had put so much money into the strip. By the time the syndicate dropped it, I was exhausted and flat broke.

MAYERIK: I don’t think I’m telling any tales out of school, and I don’t think that Steve would deny any of this, but he was chronically late.

COLAN: Oh, yes. I remember waiting a very long time for the first scripts for the newspaper strip. It seemed like a couple of months overdue. One day a large manilla envelope arrived from Steve. This was it!

By the Time I Get to Feenix (above) A pair of Mayerik-illustrated Howard dailies, from October 1977; thanks to Val for the scans. (left) The cover copy to Howard the Duck #13 hints at the issue’s surprise guest stars. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Rub-a-Dub-Duck

Finally! Nope! It was a 20-page single-spaced typewritten letter from Steve citing the reasons why we should give it our best effort! No script! Aaargh!

MAYERIK: I recall, quite vividly, that when I took over the Howard comic strip from you, Gene, it was nightmare time. I remember I kept calling you at your home to figure out how to fill in some back parts because I couldn’t get ahold of Steve and your wife got good and irritated at me at one point. She said, “Could you call Steve Gerber and leave Gene alone!?!”

COLAN: The strip could have been great, but it’s a different thing doing comic books and then going and doing a full-blown syndicated strip. Was it ever syndicated, or do you know?

MAYERIK: Yes, it was. When I was working on it, it was in fifty newspapers. Finally, because Steve was so late, the syndicate canceled it. Archie Goodwin called me up and said, “Forget it, Val. Steve screwed up.” I was relieved because, although it was fun to do the Duck again, it was so behind I literally had to do three weeks’ worth of dailies in one weekend.

COLAN: How did your wife take all this?

MAYERIK: I wasn’t married at the time. I was living with a woman who was an artist, and she helped me, actually. She understood and she would help ink in the solid blacks and lay out the strip. For the first couple of weeks it was fun to be doing the strip, but then I realized that this was never going to get any better.

COLAN: I don’t know what was taking up Steve’s time, but he wouldn’t talk about that. I had me a time with him [on the comic strip]. I tried to get him to get me the work on time so the syndicate would be happy. But when he did sit down to write, it was a joy.

I hesitate to say he was misplaced, but I always felt he would have been great writing films.

MAYERIK: As interesting as some of the television is today on HBO and Showtime, he would have been great writing an episode of something like The Sopranos.

Steve really had an ear for dialogue.

COLAN: [How about him writing] Seinfeld?

MAYERIK: Oh, yeah! [laughter] COLAN: He was really very humorous, and I think he took life pretty easy, but regardless what you think you see,

This sexy Howard strip shared space with Peanuts and Blondie in newspapers on Sunday, February 5, 1978. Drawn and signed by its contributor, Val Mayerik. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

© 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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you really don’t know the man. I never got to know Steve that well.

MAYERIK: I’ll tell you one thing, and this is important for me to say, to let the world know about Steve. When the lawsuit against Marvel started to gain some momentum, Steve was living in Los Angeles and he had a really good copyright attorney, who was also Harlan Ellison’s attorney, I believe. Steve wanted me to give a deposition because I was the first person to have ever drawn the Duck.

Frank Brunner had drawn the Duck, and so had Gene, but since I was the first artist to draw him, I was considered a co-creator. Steve flew me and my girlfriend out to Los Angeles and put us up in a nice hotel. I could have given a deposition over the phone, but Steve wanted me out there so I could give the attorney all the details. He was working in animation and television at the time, so he had a fairly healthy income, and he paid for all that.

This was stuff that he did not have to do, and there are people nowadays who would try to squeeze the artist out of the picture. But Steve made sure I was taken care of and ultimately, [in regard to] the settlement they arrived at with Marvel, no copyright aspect ever transferred to me, but when the movie was made and when there were reprints of the books, I got money for that. That was all due to Steve’s efforts and what I believe to be his genuine generosity. If you want to be cynical about it, you could say his attorney advised him to treat me well so later on I wouldn’t sue him, but I really think Steve was just trying to be fair. He was not going to do to me what Marvel was doing to him.

COLAN: Steve was very talented with writing, but he also knew how to speak up. He knew how to get down with the brass. How old was Steve?

JOHNSON: I believe he was sixty.

MAYERIK: Yeah, sixty or 61. He was a few years older than me, and I just turned 58.

COLAN: Well, I hope Steve is smiling at us.

MAYERIK: I do, too.

COLAN: He’s the kind of guy you’ll never forget.

Even long after Howard had ended, when he went off on his own and I continued with some of the books, every now and then I would bring him up in conversation with my wife and we talked about how funny he was.

MAYERIK: I think one of the reasons that the Duck had the appeal that it did was because of these back-and-forth banterings between Howard and Bev or Howard and the villains. There were all these jokes and one-upmanship with the dialogue, and it was very entertaining, and you really have to have an ear for that kind of writing.

COLAN: I’ll miss Steve awfully. Sadly, Steve was really more a voice on the phone than someone I was in touch with, and we weren’t social in any way. To be honest, we were just too busy meeting deadlines and getting the work out.

MAYERIK: Boy, ain’t that the truth! You know, ever since this has happened, [I know] it is just one of those things, and I knew Steve was ill and knew it was a serious illness, but I always kept meaning to call him. And I did call him a couple of times and all I kept getting was the answering machine.

Now that I’ve given a couple of interviews and talked to people about him, I wish I had gotten to know him better. I wish I had made more of an effort to stay in touch more often and learn more about the guy and learn more from the guy.

I don’t do comics anymore, I do advertising and other kinds of illustrations.

I always told myself that there are very few things that would get me back into comic books.

But one of the things would be if I could work with a writer who I really liked and who was a friend and who I could be on the same page with. Had Steve come up with a really good idea to pitch for both of us, I would have taken a foray back into the comic-book business with no hesitation.

This has made me realize that life is short and since then I have called up old friends that I haven’t seen in many years just to say hi and to see what is going on, because you just never know. And like Gene mentioned, why was he late? Where was he half the time? What was his life about? There is so much about him now that we’ll never know.

DAN JOHNSON is a regular BACK ISSUE contributor whose writing credits include Herc & Thor for Antarctic Press and occasional gags for the daily and Sunday Dennis the Menace comic strip.

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Too Weird for Joe Average?

Perhaps Steve Gerber’s tardiness wasn’t the only thing that killed the Howard the Duck syndicated strip.

After reading this daily and Sunday drawn by Gene the Dean, Gerber’s sense of satire and his socio-political commentary—hallmarks of the comic-book Howard— seemed a bit bizarre for the mainstream readership of newspaper funnies. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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by

Michael Aushenker

Call him the “outsider writer.”

Gravitating from gravitas to ha-ha’s (sometimes within the same book), Steve Gerber may have been the most offbeat writer ever to pass through 575 Madison.

If guys such as Sal Buscema, Jim Mooney, George Tuska, and Don Perlin represent the “house art style” of 1970s Marvel Comics, Bill Mantlo, Gerry Conway and Doug Moench surely represent the “house writing style”––dependable and ubiquitous. Count Gerber among this genre of writer. And yet––he wasn’t.

His name was everywhere. But he was also a little different, a little more … eccentric. His work took detours. Looking back, the characters Gerber spent the most time and energy writing seemed to come from left field or under the radar.

The imaginative writer became the glue of quality and consistency at Marvel, whether scripting The Man-Thing or his quirky, quacky Howard the Duck.

Like the way he narrated those Man-Thing comics.

Or the oddball Howard, a true novelty and a truly radical departure from superhero stuff. As dorky as Howard may have been, that alien fowl shared a lot in common with the supernatural characters that Gerber often scripted. Meanderers, misfits, misanthropes—the ultimate outsiders.

When Gerber introduced Howard the Duck in “Man-Thing” (in Adventure into Fear #19), I never questioned it. The Duck somehow fit seamlessly into the Marvel Universe. As a kid, I took it for granted when I saw those great Marvel ads––Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man, Howard the Duck … of course, a cigar-chomping bird would be in that milieu! As an adult, I realized how desperately Gerber seemed to shoehorn something personal, observed, and different into an art form that was calcifying into formula.

“It was a really neat time in the comics industry,” writer/artist/editor Al Milgrom recalls of the halcyon days when Gerber let his hair down at Marvel.

Milgrom, who inked a couple of issues of Howard the Duck and collaborated with Gerber on “Guardians of the Galaxy,” worked uncredited on Gerber’s Man-Thing, assisting, with Jim Starlin, on Rich Buckler’s art.

Night of the Living Dead A drop-dead “gorgeous” painting of Simon Garth, the “real” Marvel Zombie, by macabre-master Pablo Marcos. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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THE GERBER’S GRUESOMES CHECKLIST • Adventure into Fear #11–19 (Dec. 1972–Dec. 1973), 21–25 (Apr. 1974–Dec. 1974) • Chamber of Chills #2 (Jan. 1973) • Creatures on the Loose #28–29 (Mar.–May 1974) • Dracula Lives #1–2 (June–Aug. 1973), 6 (May 1974), 10–11 (Jan.–Mar. 1975) • Haunt of Horror #1 (May 1974) • Man-Thing #1–22 (Jan. 1974–Oct. 1975) • Marvel Comics Super Special: KISS # 1 (1977) • Marvel Presents #3–7 (Feb. 1976–Nov. 1976), 9 (Feb. 1977) • Marvel Preview #12 (Fall 1977), 16 (Fall 1978) • Marvel Spotlight #14–23 (Mar. 1974–Aug. 1975) • Monsters Unleashed #4 (Feb. 1974), #8–9 (Oct. 1974–Dec. 1974) • Supernatural Thrillers #5 (Aug. 1973), #7 (June 1974) • Tales of the Zombie #1–8 (Aug. 1973–Nov. 1974), Annual #1 (1975) • Vampire Tales #1 (Aug. 1973), #6 (Aug. 1974)

“It was the first time, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, when comic-book fans who loved the medium got into comics with the idea of doing comics [as opposed to strips and other media]. This whole group of guys from all over the country at the same time––because of the Marvel revolution––it became much more of a fan club, that Stan Lee attitude. It was the next generation after Stan introduced the stuff. Roy Thomas, Denny O’Neil, then [Len] Wein, [Marv] Wolfman, Starlin writing his own stuff. A certain amount of it was trying to stay the course, continue Stan’s superheroes.

“But there was a group that did more personal, introspective stories. Not quite the scale of saving the universe. A lot more personal, a lot less commercial. Steve was one of them. He was probably one of the least commercial of those guys.”

Simon Garth, the Zombie … Michael Morbius … Dr. Ted Sallis (Man-Thing) … the Living Mummy … Lilith … Daimon Hellstrom (the Son of Satan). Here’s a look back at those seminal supernatural characters that we will shorthand as … “Gerber’s Gruesomes”!

TRAPPED IN A WORLD HE NEVER MADE… One of the most important people whom Steve Gerber met as a youth would become a big part of his professional life––Gerber’s future Marvel Spotlight and Tales of the Zombie editor, Marvel’s then-editor-in-chief, Roy Thomas.

“Steve and I first met through the mail, after the first issue or so of Alter Ego came out, and he learned that we were both in Missouri,” Thomas tells BACK ISSUE. “He was in junior high, I was just finishing up college and then doing some teaching, so we communicated and he would send me these longish stories of a Legion of Super-Heroes-type group he drew on some kind of paper with roughly the consistency of today’s paper towels. This was in 1961–1962.

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“Before long,” continues Thomas, “we met in person, and I spent some time at his parents’ home in University City, a suburb of St. Louis; they were nice people. I also met several of Steve’s friends, some of whom did fanzine work together. In fact, I suggested they do one called Crudzine, using a term of the day for a badly done fanzine. I still have that. I was originally going to contribute, but never got around to it … but they did a very good parody of a bad fanzine, much of which will be printed in an upcoming series in Alter Ego (AE), in Bill Schelly’s “Comic Fandom Archive,” utilizing an article written by John G. Pierce several years ago and slated for early publication not long before Steve died.”

Thomas and Gerber’s destinies took a detour and headed down a different path ... paths that would eventually cross on the road to Marvel.

“At one time in early ’65,” Thomas remembers, “after I was publishing AE, I was contacted by someone who wanted me to put together a MAD-type magazine, and I turned to Steve and his talented friends. We were going to do it together, though I’d have been editor. But the guy who made the offer was a flake, and things quickly fell apart. I don’t even recall the details, although we’d already begun to do some stuff. After I moved to New York City in the summer of 1965, we kept in touch.

“When Steve graduated from high school in 1965, he took a trip to NYC and stayed for a few days at Dave Kaler’s apartment on E. 2nd Street, off Avenue A, in the Lower East Side, which I was sharing with Dave at the time. At his request, I introduced him to Stan, but had warned him in advance that Stan could just spare a couple of minutes. Stan found him bright and interesting, though, and they talked for quite a while. I don’t recall about precisely what … I was busy doing my job elsewhere, and I don’t remember what Steve told me about the conversation. That was more than half a decade before he worked for Marvel, of course.

“In 1967–1968,” Thomas recalls, “when I flew down to St. Louis once or twice to see Jean Maxey, my future wife, who was in college there, I’d see Steve as well. And at one time in ’68, since her parents wouldn’t let her go out with me, Steve was happy to act as the ‘beard’ in the situation. He picked up Jeanie, delivered her to me, and went his way. When the two of us eloped shortly afterward, however, it was an old boyfriend of Jeanie’s that acted as the beard.

“Then, in the early ’70s,” he continues, “I got a letter from Steve that basically amounted to, ‘Help, I’m going crazy working for this advertising agency in St. Louis.’ As Jeanie put it later, ‘What we didn’t know at the time was that it wasn’t a work-caused illness.’ We both considered Steve a little nutty, though in a good way––he was just very excitable, given to occasional bouts of near hysteria, or so it seemed to us at the time. I gave him a job at Marvel first chance I got, which was very soon afterward, but Steve wasn’t a good staffer at the time. Once, I found him asleep at his desk when he was supposed to be proofreading.

He always claimed it wasn’t narcolepsy, but I think it was some sort of ailment, perhaps psychological. He wandered off staff ere long, but was kept reasonably busy as a freelance writer, especially once we started all those black-andwhite horror mags.”

Gerber Cartoon An illo of the writer from FOOM #15, contributed

by Mark DiFruscio. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

DON’T SNICKER, HERE COMES THE MAN-THING! With Gerber helming the series, Marvel’s Man-Thing transcended on several levels a deadbeat destiny as a secondhand swamp creature to DC’s Swamp Thing (by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson). For one, the book became the unlikely launchpad for Gerber’s most heralded creation, Howard the Duck. Man-Thing also operated from a unique narrative device: All those pronouns as the narrator talks to the erstwhile Ted Sallis on an emotional level, describing how he feels.

If writer Roy Thomas [with Gerry Conway] and artist Gray Morrow stylishly created the Man-Thing formula in a Savage Tales #1 story awash with Morrow’s grays, Gerber cemented it, pounding even harder on the secondperson narrative device, and introducing the line that would forever become the character’s tagline: “Whoever knows fear burns at the Man-Thing’s touch.”

In the initial Gerber stories, Man-Thing’s world intersects with Andy and Jennifer Kane, a pair of kids who live with their grandfather, Joshua. Gerber’s first issue, Adventure into Fear with Man-Thing #11 (Dec. 1972, art by Rich Buckler and Jim Mooney, with a Neal Adams cover), sets the pre-teens up as Man-Thing’s allies.

At times, the visuals, with their sickly horror element combined with the kids’ plotline, resembles something out there, such as Charles Burns’ Black Hole. In Fear #12, with art by Jim Starlin and inks by fellow Detroit delineator Buckler, Man-Thing tracks a spooked cop. By Fear #16 (Sept. 1973), “Cry of the Native,” drawn by Val Mayerik with inks by Sal Trapani, Gerber introduced thorny socio-political plotlines into the series, with a storyline that pitted Joshua Kane and his grandchildren against Jake Simpson and his construction worker crew tearing up the swamp. The story includes a big protest mash-up between the indigenous Native American Indian protestors waving “Save Our Swamp” signs and the construction crew, as Simpson tries to destroy the muck monster.

When Gerber writes in a narration caption, “This Man-Thing which finds in Jake Simpson an offense against nature greater even than itself!,” one feels that Gerber sides and identifies with this severe, tragic product of damnation––the ultimate outsider. By the story’s end, when Man-Thing scares off the workers by reducing Simpson to a “bloody mass,” there is no question on which side of the equation Gerber’s loyalties lie.

In the next issue, Adventure into Fear # 17 (Oct. 1973), the controversial construction company (Schist) returned for a cameo in the oddball “It Came Out of the Sky” (which, among other quirks, contains a map of Man-Thing’s swamp). Once again realized by Mayerik/Trapani, the tale in Fear #17 features a strange retelling of a certain Kryptonian’s origin with Wundarr (rhymes with Thundarr!), an extraterrestrial humanoid sole survivor of a far away planet. This parody, which Gerber dedicated to John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival for inspiration, nearly cost the writer his job.

“The worst incident was when he introduced Wundarr into a Man-Thing story and made him far too close to Superman,” Thomas says. “I asked him to change it so it wouldn’t upset DC and trusted him to do so … but I carelessly didn’t check him, being so busy … and Steve did rather little to the story as it stood.

This resulted in an angry letter or phone call to Stan Lee from DC, and Stan getting upset with Steve and me, and Steve nearly losing his [freelance] writing job over it.”

So was Thomas at all surprised when Gerber introduced such an unlikely character as Howard the Duck in a book as macabre, weird, and decidely EC-ish as Man-Thing?

Marvel’s Muck Monster (above) A 1976 sketch of Man-Thing

by Alfredo Alcala. (left) Original Gil Kane/Dan Adkins art for the cover to the snicker-worthy title Giant-Size Man-Thing #5. Both images courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Shambling “Hero” (below left) In this dynamite page by Mike Ploog (inked

by Frank Chiaramonte), Gerber pits Man-Thing against a Gorgon that was once Maybelle Tork. From Man-Thing #10 (Oct. 1974), courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions. (center) Detail from the John Buscema/Klaus Jansondrawn splash of Giant-Size Man-Thing #2 (Nov. 1974). © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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“I admired a lot of what he did with the Man-Thing series, even if it was never a great seller,” Thomas says. “I wanted him to have the Man-Thing in it a bit more, even if the template was the old Heap stories in the later Airboy Comics, in which the unspeaking Heap often wandered in near the end of the story to alternately settle and make a shamble of things.”

Gerber’s Man-Thing addressed another issue topical to the early 1970s––a touched Vietnam vet still shell-shocked from his four years in Hanoi. But Gerber truly let his freak flag fly by #19 in the downright weird “The Enchanter’s Apprentice,” in which an unnamed Howard the Duck makes his first appearance; a story in which Man-Thing becomes peripheral to a tale centered on Korrek, Warrior Prince of Katharta, and Dakimh the Enchanter. The next ManThing book, Man-Thing #1 (Jan. 1974), resumed the “Apprentice” storyline, and Howard the Duck had officially arrived.

In a July 26, 1999 interview published in Comic Book Artist #7, the late Jim Mooney, who died on March 30, 2008, discussed working with Gerber on Man-Thing. “That was one of my favorite strips, by the way,” Mooney told the then-TwoMorrows mag. “In fact, my all-time favorite.” Mooney had followed Mike Ploog and John Buscema, taking over after the latter’s last issue.

Mooney described his process with Gerber: “Yeah, we almost always worked on the phone,” Mooney recalled. “I had never met Steve in the early days, when we were working on it. We’d talk on the phone, and the opportunity I had to meet him was way, way later at the San Diego con, and that was about two years ago [in 1997].”

“I really enjoyed working with Steve,” Michael Ploog tells BACK ISSUE. “My favorite work was done while working with Steve. He had a talent for looking at a story from different perspectives and choosing the best approach to a story.

His work always revealed the character’s inner feelings, which made you feel the character was genuine.”

Rich Buckler sums up Man-Thing: “It was like the Swamp Thing, but not really because of the way Steve did it.”

© 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

“Yes, and not particularly happy,” Thomas says. “Marvel’s readers generally hadn’t shown themselves to like it when too light elements were introduced into Marvel stories.

“Of course, I’m infamous as the guy who made Steve kill off Howard the Duck in his first appearance … but I always knew we could bring him back at some stage. I’ll admit, though, I wasn’t really thinking there’d be a lot of reader demand for him.”

Howard became so popular, he spawned his own series, and, in cinema, became a webbed footnote in itself when, in 1986, Howard the Duck became the first big-budget Marvel film adaptation (although the George Lucas-produced movie was also an infamous bomb).

Despite the rows over silly characters such as Wundarr and Howard, Thomas had much respect for the feisty Gerber’s tenaciousness and ambition.

SIMON SAYS, BE VERY AFRAID! Sharing common mucky ground with Man-Thing was the Gerber-helmed Tales of the Zombie, featuring Simon Garth, the zombie with the same initials as its writer.

Graced with eyeball-frying Boris Vallejo and Earl Norem covers, the black-and-white Zombie magazine became home to assorted black-magic tales, including Brother Voodoo stories after that occult character was evicted from Strange Tales.

“I didn’t do a lot of rewriting on Steve,” Thomas says. “I just talked to him occasionally about things I liked or disliked in the stories. I gave him the Stan Lee/Bill Everett Zombie story from Menace #5 and told him to make that the Zombie of the new Tales from the Zombie series, and I even named him Simon Garth … but I left most of it up to Steve.”

With Zombie, Gerber took the Man-Thing formula––lumbering undead lead character, horror and supernatural themes, second-person narrative––and one-upped it, quality-wise. Two words on why: Pablo Marcos.

The master artist remembers how he arrived to draw Zombie.

“At that time, I was working with Sol Brodsky as his assistant,” Marcos tells BACK ISSUE from his Clearwater, Florida, home, where he lives with wife Myriam. “I had to be in an office to get my US residency. He was preparing at that time a horror magazine and asked me if I was interested in drawing an adventure. I did eight pages for ‘Creature from the Bog.’ So they realized my style was

good for the Zombie series. Horror, at that time, was the most popular [comics genre].”

Marcos enjoyed robust relationships with the most talented artists in the industry.

“I had good friendships with George Pérez, José Luis García-López, Mike Spocito, and many more of the Argentinean and Filipino artists,” he says, recalling a smooth-running professional relationship with Gerber, who, contrary to the famous Marvel method, gave Marcos complete scripts.

“I was living in Queens, New York. It was quite easy to get together at the office in Manhattan or at Steve’s house and chat, but I did develop the stories from the scripts.

“Black-and-white was so proper for horror, and I did become very resourceful with textures to make it even more scary,” says Marcos, in somewhat of an understatement. As witnessed by the original illustrations he produced for this issue, Marcos has not lost his touch.

Of all the Zombie issues that Marcos drew, the artist has a favorite: “Definitely number one.”

As well-rendered as the Mayerik and the Tom Sutton work may have been, in this writer’s opinion, nothing touched the Peruvian artist’s highly detailed inkand-wash renderings of Garth … or his storytelling.

With Marcos raising the visual game, Gerber stepped up his writing, which ranged from self-contained stories to a two-part story featuring Philip Bliss and divorce court

Oh, Brother …

Voodoo! (left) A 1980 Pablo Marcos sketch of Simon Garth, and (right) Boris Vallejo’s cover painting to Tales of the Zombie #3, both courtesy of Heritage. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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that was ripe with emotion seemingly fueled from something personal.

Could it be that Gerber was going through a divorce at the time?

The Bliss divorce court story, in which the Zombie literally tears apart the courtroom, would suggest the outpouring of deep real-life distress. The emotion seemed palpable.

“Steve must’ve gone through [his] divorce by––when?–– 1973? 1975?” Thomas reckons. “Probably around the time of Zombie. It would’ve been very much Steve to use such elements in a Marvel story––and why not, as long as he didn’t use it to vilify his soon-to-be-ex-wife.”

Nevertheless, Thomas does not recall for sure if this Zombie tale coincided with Gerber’s personal problems.

“Steve and I were never close friends,” Thomas says, “although I’ll never forget my memory of walking down a midtown street the day he flew in, with me carrying a big beanbag chair (all the rage then) and our stuffing it into a cab to take it to my apartment on E. 87th Street. Jeanie and I had split up for several months at that time, and that was part of my new bachelor lifestyle, I guess. Steve, of course, brought his new bride and soon-to-be child to NYC, but I don’t remember her well and it wasn’t a happy marriage; they split up before too long. I should talk.”

What was it about Gerber’s writing and Marcos’ art that made their collaboration so powerful?

“He and I just made a good team,” Marcos says. “Steve had a vivid idea of the nature of the Zombie. He was a very enthusiastic and fantastic writer. We could talk about the new adventures like it was real life.”

Today, Marcos continues to work full throttle. This Man of Bronze’s career is hotter than Kristi and Mark on Dancing with the Stars, and when BACK ISSUE got in touch with the prodigious Peruvian, he was pummeling through deadline after deadline with a series of cards for Dynamite Entertainment. A career forged from Bronze: hammer and fold, brother! Hammer and fold...

“I was very fortunate having worked with people as talented as Gerber and Thomas,” Marcos says. “Our work used to go beyond assignments. I can say it was part of our life.”

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RAISING HELLSTROM Better known as the Son of Satan, Daimon Hellstrom became yet another weird, supernatural hero to fall into puppetmaster Gerber’s domain. Created by writer Gary Friedrich and artist Herb Trimpe in Marvel Spotlight #12 (Oct. 1972), that creative team produced two issues starring Satan’s offspring before the series landed in Steve Gerber’s lap.

The Mooney-penciled Marvel Spotlight #14 (Mar. 1973) turned out to be a seminal issue, in which Gerber set the stage for romance by introducing us to Dr. Katherine Reynolds, employed by the Parapsychological Studies Division of Gateway University’s Psychology Department. The comely blonde parapsychologist Reynolds hires our brooding demonologist on behalf of the college, based in St. Louis (Gary Friedrich hails from Missouri), to investigate the poltergeist-infested communications building. Hellstrom agrees to exorcise the edifice, on the promise that nobody interferes while he cleans house––Son of Satan-style.

Inevitably, Reynolds violates her word and enters with the custodian, who unwittingly erases the ankh drawn by Hellstrom to contain the invading ice demons headed by crystalline baddie Ikthalon, Lord of Boreas, Keeper of the Ice Wastes. In the politically incorrect climax, Son of Satan repays Reynolds for going back on her word by bitch-slapping her across the face (“‘But’ nothing, fool! You broke your vow to me––and by so doing, almost doomed the human race.” WHAP! “You are beneath contempt, my good doctor!”).

Despite the violent dispatch, the reeling Dr. Reynolds, eyes leaking, appears to have the “hots” for our devil hero (“Who … is he,” she wonders aloud. “Why does he fascinate––and frighten me so? I must know! Somehow ... I must know!”). And their romance is off and running...

Visually, the series hit a creative apex with Gerber’s exorcism story arc in Spotlight #18–19 (Oct.–Dec. 1974), illustrated by Gentleman Gene Colan in the Count of Chiaroscuro’s luminous gothic style. Colan’s drawings appear simultaneously realistic and impressionistic, with that wispy, illustrative “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” imagery, as if envisioned through a pipe smoke-fog of mystery, ripe with a Victorian urbanity and looming dread. Colan gives the series his evanescent Tomb touch, and the pages pop with seductive, shadowy shots. Hellstrom never looked as Daniel Craig-dashing as he did rendered by Colan––dressed in suit and tie, attending the Gateway University Psych Department Chair’s house party in Marvel Spotlight #18 (crashed, as it turned out, by an unwanted guest, the demon Allatou).

Scripting these masterful Colan issues, Gerber injected his quirky rhythms. Then, with penciler Sal Buscema, he closed out Son of Satan’s Spotlight run with an insane tarot card-themed plot (#20-21; Feb., Apr. 1975) and a few issues featuring Hellstrom’s sister, Satana.

In all honesty, Spotlight #21—gratuitously textheavy and dense— grew tiresome in its detail the way some of the ephemera book-ending an Alan Moore book wears out its welcome. And yet, you’ve got to admire the passion, quirkiness, and unpredictability—all Gerber hallmarks.

OF LIVING VAMPIRES AND MUMMIES

Giant-Size Chillers #1 (Feb. 1975) served up ample delights: It was essentially the first Werewolf by Night “Annual,” it featured Tigra vs. Hydra, and, pertinent to this discussion, it introduced Lilith, Dracula’s Daughter.

Cashing in on Tomb of Dracula (which was cashing in on Bram Stoker’s Dracula), Lilith was an inconsequential, throwaway character that, in Gerber’s hands, proved to be pulpy entertainment.

Lilith appeared in just a handful of tales, including Vampire Tales #6 (Aug. 1974), and Dracula Lives #10–11 (Jan.–Mar. 1975), all with art by the late Bob Brown. A green George Pérez drew Dracula’s Daughter in Marvel Preview #12 (Sept. 1977), while the incomparable Colan, inked by the masterful Tony DeZuniga, tackled #16 (June 1978) with gusto. Colan, of course, has the corner on all things Dracula, given his most revered work for Tomb of Dracula.

Writer Robert McKenzie, with Colan’s hand, introduced Lilith, Daughter of Death, in the pages of Tomb of Dracula magazine #5. “Lilith doesn’t call him master or cringe in terror at his mere approach,” Lilith says of her relationship with Papa.

Lilith, the product of a marriage of convenience “arranged for court purpose only by my grandfather Vlad Dracul. When Vlad died, barely a year after the ceremony … Dracula was free to rid himself of this woman he so despised.”

“He wasted little time in expressing his contempt for my mother—his first wife,” says Lilith, as we witness Dracula cold-conk her mother.

Lilith, who has the power to heal a gash after she intentionally leaves one with broken glass on her forehead, enlists musician Viktor Benzel on her mission to “seek out my father in his lair and destroy him before another night passes.” By her instructions, Viktor chops up her host body with a buzz saw and buries the parts, allowing her to divorce her soul from her body and recast herself within a new human female corpse after Viktor recites a few incantations. Madly in love with Lilith, Viktor is not so lucky when he goes up against her abusive father to protect her and has his neck snapped by Dracula’s grip.

From this day on, Lilith wears her Vampirella outfit.

Lilith lore aside, Gerber wrote a handful of her daddy’s R-rated tales for the magazine incarnation. Dracula Lives #1 (Jan. 1973) saw Gerber, with the able visual assistance of Buckler and Marcos, illuminate “To Walk Again in Daylight,” which ends with Dracula taking a bite out of Du Monte, an unfortunate Frenchman considered “the most famed of all researchers into the sinister secrets of vampirism…”

Gerber plotted a Tony Isabella story mingling Jews and Nazi vampires during World War II in “The Terror That Stalked Castle Dracula” (Dracula Lives #2), with quintessential Dracula art by Colan.

For Dracula Lives #6, Gerber wrote the story “A Death in the Chapel,” with Gene Colan/Ernie Chua art. Dracula turns into a bat and visits the Vatican, where he hunts down the monk Montesi within the Sistine Chapel … but not before cringing before a full-on Christ-on-cross wall hanging.

Following in the Colan-drawn shadows of Gene the Dean’s artwork on Dracula Lives #1, and given Marv Wolfman’s scripts so were closely associated in almost a proprietary nature with Tomb of Dracula, Rich Buckler’s art on the series begged for comparisons.

“It was challenging,” Buckler confesses to BACK ISSUE. “I’m not a vampire fan. But I liked the challenge, and I did it as movie-like as I could. I was exploring, too, because this was an early stage of my career. Same with Steve.”

Don Perlin once told this reporter that when the artist first landed at Marvel in the early 1970s, he was given a choice of assignments––Adventure into Fear: The Man Called Morbius the Living Vampire … or Werewolf by Night. Perlin took the latter because Fear was a bimonthly, so the more frequently published lycanthrope saga would dole out more work (and, hence, more pay).

Perlin chose well, as Adventure into Fear didn’t last long. But during that title’s brief existence, Gerber did what Gerber did well: start out weird and get progressively weirder. After establishing his career writing the Man-Thing feature in Fear, Gerber took on the next character to set up shop in the horror title: Morbius.

Sleek in a garish superhero outfit, the Living Vampire, a.k.a. L.A.-based freakazoid Dr. Michael Morbius, was not your typical monster or hero. He was a Nobel prize-winning scientist, with a touch of vampirism, on a personal quest to discover a chemical cure to remedy his condition. A good guy at heart, he could not curb his deadly instincts, and would often feel remorse after sucking the life out of a victim— he was a sensitive, guilt-ridden killer.

Created by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane as a foil in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (Oct. 1971), Morbius would go on to prove himself a pain-in-the-tail to the Werewolf by Night (they once battled at the La Brea Tar Pits for West Coast supremacy) before joining the sometimes-hairy Jack Russell in the Legion of Monsters. This bloodsucker was no doubt the most offbeat “superhero” to don a blue-andred costume until Richard Pryor wore Spider-Man tights in The Toy. So it was only appropriate that this bug-eyed, pointy-eared, fang-bearing, and flamboyantly dressed monster-hero with the cadaverous alabaster pallor should get the Gerber treatment. And yet, perhaps, under Gerber’s guidance, Morbius the Living Vampire may have been a bit too offbeat to stay in publication for long.

© 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

LILITH FARE

Creepy Crusaders (opposite left) Earl Norem’s cover painting to Tales of the Zombie #5. (opposite center) That hottie, Hellstrom, and (above) his sis, Lilith. (below) Detail from Rich Buckler’s Morbius cover to Adventure into Fear #22 (June 1974). © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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GERBER BRINGS KISS ALIVE Gerber’s Gruesomes extended beyond your typical monster creatures.

In the mid-1970s, the writer introduced white-hot metal group KISS to the Marvel Universe.

A lifelong comic-book aficionado, KISS leader Gene Simmons has said in many interviews that Marvel Comics had inspired his rock group’s trademark superhero-ish alter egos. So it seems fitting that, in 1977, Gerber brought it all home full circle, commencing with a pair of KISS cameos in Howard the Duck, illustrated by Gene Colan with Steve Leialoha inking.

Yes, the Demon, Space Ace, Starchild, and the Cat waltzed through Howard the Duck #12 (May 1977), in which Winda Wester opened a dimensional portal that dragged KISS into the Sauerbraten Mental Hospital. The band surprised the heck out of Howard and Dr. Morton Avery, only to return in Howard #13 (June 1977), where they stirred up the loony bin when Space Ace unleashes a sonic blast on a nurse’s gluteus maximus, while Starchild blasts a pair of oncoming security guards. As KISS accosts a heavily drugged Howard, feline KISS member Peter Criss offers this sage advice: “When you meet reality head-on, kiss it, smack in the face! That’s the word! Pass it on!”

To which Howard appropriately responds, “Hah...?”

And then, KISS disappears as mysteriously as they came.

But KISS (with Gerber scripting) did not disappear from the newsstands for long. The metal group returned in a big way in the full-color magazine, Marvel Comics Super Special #1, also released in 1977.

This book’s art team reads like a party bigger than anything that went on backstage after a KISS concert: Alan Weiss, the Buscema Brothers, and Rich Buckler on pencils, with Marie Severin colors and Al Milgrom inking.

“Originally, Alan Weiss was to ink the whole thing, but I inked that whole first KISS special,” Milgrom recalls. “The KISS guys were very popular, they were heavy into promoting themselves.”

“I knew Steve, I knew Alan Weiss,” Buckler remembers of how he received the KISS assignment. “Alan was drawing it and they needed some help. Alan and I used to help each other out. I think I drew a portion of one story. It was a matter of doing the work and getting it in on time. Deadlines always ruled.”

“I enjoyed inking the Buscema brothers,” Milgrom says, “especially Sal, whose pencils were very tight. With John, it was intimidating. I don’t know if I’ll ever be polished enough to ink John’s breakdowns. It was kind of wacky stuff, and Steve was the king of wacky stuff. They put drops of blood in the ink so that every issue would have KISS blood in it. It was a departure.

I’m sure the KISS guys had approval over the story.”

Buckler had no problem jumping into the project. A music-head who had peppered his Deathlok run in Astonishing Tales with Doors references, Buckler was very familiar with the metal group, which had immortalized Buckler and Milgrom’s hometown in one of their most well known songs, “Detroit Rock City.”

“To me, it was a superhero book,” Buckler observes of how he approached the KISS mag’s visuals. “We were all into the music. I believe Alan is still friends with some of the members of KISS.” KISS returned in 1978 for Marvel Comics Super Special #5, but Gerber had left that building. This time, Ralph Macchio wrote the magazine (co-plotted

by Weiss) and a green John Romita, Jr. drew it, with embellishments by Tony DeZuniga. But for a minute there, Gerber and his pals took part in something very hip, cross-pollinating the world of superheroes with what was then one of the hippest and most popular rock bands of the era.

That camaraderie, by the way, wasn’t merely on the page. Milgrom remembers at a party with Jim Starlin where Steve Gerber, Alan Weiss, Alan Kupperberg, and Steve Skeates were also in attendance.

Mid-shindig, Starlin broke into a devilish grin.

Milgrom: “So he calls out, ‘Hey, Steve!’ and one half of the room turns around. Then he calls out, ‘Hey, Al!,’ and the other half looks over.

It was a priceless moment.”

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© 2008 KISS Catalog, Ltd.

by Michael Aushenker

Upon his creation, Morbius was a character on the run. He leapfrogged in short succession from the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man to Dracula Lives #1 (which Gerber wrote) to Marvel Team-Up #23 and 24, in which the vampiric half-breed brawled with the Human Torch and the X-Men. Then Morbius found a home. Adventure into Fear #20 (Feb. 1974), a strange, twisted tale written and drawn by Michael Friedrich and Paul Gulacy, respectively, gave Morbius the spotlight. In this debut solo book, Morbius was tricked by the seductive Satanic priest Daemond into murdering an innocent rabbi who was on a quest to help the Living Vampire chemically conquer his supernatural curse.

By next issue, Gerber entered the picture.

He teamed up with Gil Kane for Fear #21 (Apr. 1974).

However, after only one issue together, Kane left Fear to focus on other titles, including Marvel Team-Up, Savage Tales, and numerous covers.

But Gerber had already racked in high praise from readers by the time Adventure into Fear #22 (June 1974)—drawn by Buckler, inked by Luis Dominguez—hit the stands. Fear #23 (Aug. 1974) saw Craig Russell visualizing Gerber’s text. One fan wrote that Living Vampire was “Gerber’s best work outside of Man-Thing.” Another missive praised Gerber for having “ingeniously combined the elements of horror and science fiction and [having] come up with a truly fascinating comic.” Indeed, by #23, boosted by Russell’s sensitive renderings, Gerber had gone hog-wild, pitting Morbius opposite alien races in a surreal adventure that transcended your gardenvariety vampire tales.

The Gerber/Russell collaboration ran for one more issue before writer Doug Moench took over Gerber’s duties, and Russell gave way to the eccentric renderings of Frank Robbins, who, save for a few issues, stuck with the series through Fear’s finale, #31 (Dec. 1975), “The End of a Vampire.” While neither Gerber nor his most hardcore fans would probably consider Fear’s Morbius residency representative of Gerber’s A-game, the vampire represents yet another misfit monster-hero to the young writer’s growing stable of oddball characters that ultimately became the writer’s trademark.

At roughly the same time that Gerber penned Michael Morbius’ adventures, the gifted writer scripted another miscreant monster-hero who hovered between the dead and the “living.”

“It towers above the shifting sands like a terror out of time. Its centuries-old form is stiffened. Laden with the dust of ages. Yet—it moves—its chest rises and falls in the rhythm of breathing! There can be no doubt—IT LIVES!” – Splash page introduction of the Living Mummy, Supernatural Thrillers #5 Thousands of miles away from Michael Morbius’ America, roaming the Middle East, another “Living” creature came alive, thanks to creators Steve Gerber and Rich Buckler.

The pair introduced the Living Mummy in Supernatural Thrillers #5 (Aug. 1973) with a selfcontained story about an enslaved African tribal prince who eventually reawakens in modern times.

Walk Like An Egyptian Rich Buckler’s cover art, with inks by Frank Giacoia and retouches by John Romita, Sr., to the first Living Mummy appearance in Supernatural Thrillers #5 (Aug. 1973). © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Who can forget the awesome cover of Supernatural Thrillers #5?

A Buckler-esque Living Mummy, carrying off a busty African-American woman (Janice) against a bright yellow sky, chopping a column with his left hand as he shrugs off the shots of a squadron of police firing from behind. “He Lives! He Walks! And Bullets Cannot Stop Him!” In his first pairing with Gerber on this new feature, Buckler, inked

by Frank Chiaramonte, dazzles with a three-page prologue that’s out of control, in which the Mummy creature terrorizes a pair of Israeli soldiers until he realizes that his vehemence is directed at the wrong people. One character describes the Living Mummy as standing eight feet tall, but Buckler drew him a good 12 feet tall––as looming as ROM: Spaceknight––when you take into account the towering figure on that page two splash, those dunes rising and ebbing behind him, a lunar evil eye staring down from the black sky above like a hypnotist’s glare. Buckler’s rendering of the Mummy and the descendent of N’Kantu’s enemy, the Mummy-chasing Dr. Skarab, look fit, buff, majestic, spartan, and larger-than-life. Gerber rises to the occasion, scripting a straight-laced tingler, even as he admits, via Ron’s dialogue, that the events transpiring smacks of “an old B-movie plot!”

Only Gerber could cop to some silliness amid the seriousness.

Supernatural Thrillers #5 tells the origin tale of the pyramid-building N’Kantu’s transformation from African slave of the ancient Egyptians to Living Mummy at the cruel whim of Nephrus. The diabolical high priest wraps N’Kantu in hoses and tubes and casts him to a casket infused with a mystical red fluid—a living burial. The 3,000-year-old slave is awakened to terrify Nephrus’ descendent, Dr. Skarab, and the anthropologist’s colleagues, Ron and Janice.

“Living Mummy” arrived on Buckler’s drawing table not from Gerber, but via another young writer.

“That came to me through Tony Isabella,” Buckler says.

“He walked into the Marvel office and said, ‘I got something called the Living Mummy. [It started with maybe] just a cover, but I remember before long doing the interior.”

Partnering with Gerber on creating issues of Living Vampire and Living Mummy was an organic process for Buckler: “It was very fast or loose,” he says, regarding brainstorming story concepts. “Sometimes it would be just a conversation, sometimes it was just a paragraph.

“You got into the flow with it. The writer knew how much to give the artist. When the art came back to the writer, it was another thing to take upon. The writer and the artist together made the third person, which was the author. I love working that way and I love collaborating.”

The Living Mummy returned two issues later as the headliner in 15-page solo tales spanning from #7–18 (June 1974–Oct. 1975), although Gerber and Buckler bailed early––with #8––when Isabella and Mayerik took over. Len Wein also took a crack at Thrillers when he scripted #10, based on an Isabella/Mayerik plot. Supernatural Thrillers featuring the Living Mummy ended with writer John Warner on the final two issues, and Sutton drawing the capper. Much like Marvel’s Strange Tales, this series routinely sported backup features (reprints from pre-superhero Marvel) as filler.

Both Buckler and Al Milgrom note how a bond had evolved among the younger creators during that decade. These writers and artists socialized outside of Marvel’s offices, and sometimes those gettogethers inspired their best ideas.

Buckler cherishes those early Marvel years. As he recounted in his BACK ISSUE #25 Deathlok discussion, Buckler shared a space with artist buddies Ed Hannigan and Ron Wilson. As with his “Deathlok” feature in Astonishing Tales, Buckler believes that weirdo ideas––such as vampires meeting extraterrestrials, or a Howard the Duck title––flourished with relative ease at the decidedly un-corporate atmosphere of early 1970s Marvel.

“It was very informal,” Buckler says. “There were no story conferences.

You pitched something, they liked it, you would do it. It wasn’t sci-fi or horror or superhero. Those definitions all blurred.”

THE TAO OF STEVE Simon Garth … Michael Morbius … the Living Mummy … Lilith, Daughter of Dracula … Son of Satan … Man-Thing…

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to digest all of these morbid, dead, and undead characters now that their chief writer has passed away.

“Steve was genuine and a great talent,” Mike Ploog says. “He left us way too soon. He will be greatly missed.”

“We liked each other and we were always exchanging ideas,” Buckler says, admitting that his oft-complicated personality sometimes alienated him from certain pros. With Gerber, it was different.

“When I heard about the news that Steve had passed away, what I remember most about him is that he never ever made me feel odd or strange. We were always on excellent terms.

“With Steve, he was always thinking, going where other people don’t go. [He] could think deeper.”

Mere weeks after Gerber’s death, Buckler attended a New York Comic-Con tribute panel to his late collaborator [see article on page 80].

He left early. It was too overwhelming.

“There are a lot more Steve Gerber fans out there than I can imagine,” says Buckler.

“As a member of the board of Hero Initiative (formerly ACTOR), the comic-book industry’s unofficial charity,” Roy Thomas says, “I tried to help when Steve had his final health problems and needed a lung transplant.

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Party On, Garth!

The Zombie zowies two enemies in this gripping painting by (and courtesy of) Pablo Marcos. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

place of a comic book to dispense advice and judgment on an ancient religion, so I wanted the line changed, and Steve was very upset.”

“I used to hang out with Steve, Weiss, Starlin,” Milgrom recalls.

“Once I asked him, ‘So, Steve! Where’s this plotline going?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘I have no idea, Al. I always hope that an idea will come before the deadline on the next issue.’ Steve was all about the journey, not so much the destination. It tickled him [to work that way].”

OH, GERBER THE UNKNOWN…

a couple of months before his death. From what I heard from third parties, I felt things were going as well as they could. I was stunned by news of his death. It still seems a bit unreal.”

So, what is it about Gerber that made his writing unique or different from the other writers of his generation? Why was he best suited for Marvel horror?

“It’s never been about the money,” Buckler says. “Of course, you have to have money to live, but it was never a motivation. To be famous, to be a celebrity, that was never a consideration. When we socialized, we socialized. We didn’t talk about comics. We talked about life, the world.”

Thomas has an idea as to why: “Partly, and early on, at least, I felt he was suited for the horror books partly because I had reservations about his writing of straight superheroes. But I thought his style might loan itself to more offbeat stories—‘offbeat’ meaning, in this case, stories with horrific rather than superheroic. And it did, for the most part.”

At times, Gerber could be a handful, and it seems that if there was ever any tension between Gerber and Thomas, it was over a certain derby-wearin’ white water fowl.

“Usually it was fine, and we got along well ... but we had a few run-ins. With Howard, I simply insisted that he ‘kill off’ Howard. And, probably after complaining and trying to argue me out of it, he did so.

“Another time, I’d guess when I was no longer editor-in-chief, he complained to me about having to change a line—I suspect, in an early Howard story—about ‘the place where I was first laid.’ He didn’t think it should have to be changed, but Marvel didn’t feel like risking trouble over what could be conceived as a smutty line. He asked me what I’d have done if he’d threatened to walk if the line was changed. I told him, I’d say, ‘Goodbye.’”

There was also that Haunt of Horror story…

“He wanted to end a story with a Jewish theme,” Thomas says, “with a line about how ‘the old ways must change.’ I didn’t feel it was the

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So, was Steve Gerber in life as much of an alienated, lonely “outsider” as the characters he often breathed life into?

“I don’t know if he was that much of a loner,” speculates Thomas.

“To some extent, no doubt ... but he had plenty of friends, both when I knew him first in St. Louis, and later in N.Y.C. and then L.A.” It was while living in the latter that Thomas caught a glimpse of emotional turmoil in Gerber’s world.

“I introduced him to Clara (later Clair) Noto, the screenwriter who was a good friend of mine from when we met in New York in 1975, and they went together off and on for several years. The two of them and Dann and I had a number of dinners together, but those weren’t always as pleasant as they could have been, as the two of them would often be in a foul mood about each other. Example: Steve had a thing about birthday presents. He didn’t like to get them or give them. Clair, I felt reasonably, wanted him to acknowledge her birthday with a present of some modest sort, but Steve felt somehow that it was a matter of principle, so he showed up for a foursome Clair birthday dinner one night, minus a present. There was a scene.

“They must’ve been good for each other, though, because they stayed basically friends ... I presume up to the end of Steve’s life.”

Thomas may not be the most reliable authority on Gerber the Man: “He and I were never close, but we got along fairly well most of the time. Still, Steve was very intense. In his inner life, I’m sure he was a loner, as many of us are.”

“I learned of his death through the Internet,” Marcos says. “I called him once to Las Vegas to talk about an idea I have about a new Zombie book. He suggested to wait until the crisis with the comic-book industry changed. It wasn’t a good moment, although he did like the approach.”

By the time Gerber became a professional comic-book writer, it appears that he delighted in pushing the outlaw aspect further than his predecessors. How else might one account for the ungainly, unpretty creatures he tackled with relish—marginal characters that stood on the frayed fringes of the Marvel Universe, outside of those pretty boy superhero circles. These were not your Starks, your Blakes, or Rogerses. Gerber characters embodied the tragic, the cursed, the damned—the characters that, as a kid, probably spooked you too much to take your money, but, years later, you’d seek out and devour.

Perhaps Gerber, as the ultimate outsider, found a way to tap into his deep reservoir of loneliness and rejection, his frustration and disconnect with society, and funnel that disenfranchisement, that alienation, that isolation, and misanthropy into his comics.

And as comic-book readers, we’re all the better … and all the more honest … for it.

MICHAEL AUSHENKER is a Los Angeles-based writer and cartoonist. His comic books include the El Gato, Crime Mangler series, and Those Unstoppable Rogues. He is currently writing the Gumby’s Gang miniseries for Wildcard Ink, and Liberty Girl for Liberty Comics (Heroic Publishing). His latest comicbook, Cartoon Flophouse featuring Greenblatt the Great!, is out now. Visit cartoonflophouse.com.

by

Jason Shayer

It Takes Two, Baby Steve Gerber paired the Thing and Dr. Strange in Marvel Two-in-One #6 (Nov. 1974), and that issue’s penciler, George Tuska, revisited the team-up in this commissioned illustration, inked by Bob McLeod. From the collection of Brian Sagar. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Growing up with the comics of the 1980s, I missed out on most of Steve Gerber’s work. The first I had heard of him was from his dispute with Marvel Comics over the character rights of Howard the Duck. Gerber was one of those creators I figured I would get around to reading sooner or later, and maybe even meet at a comic-book convention.

When I heard that he had died, I decided to learn more about him through his Marvel Comics work.

While Steve Gerber might be better known for Howard the Duck and Man-Thing, he also penned memorable runs on Daredevil, The Defenders, and Foolkiller, and did stints on a variety of other titles.

“I admired Steve’s writing, which was always unique and spoke in its own voice,” says Marv Wolfman. “Steve was one of the few writers at the time who actually had their own voice early on.

Most of us took a long time to find ours, but Steve came with it.” Gerber used that unique voice to tell eccentric stories that focused on character. He had the ability to mix the standard superhero fare with an eclectic sense of humor and keen social satire.

He also captured precious human moments amid the wackiest of circumstances.

By the early 1970s, the creative energy and the explosion of talent that Marvel Comics enjoyed in the 1960s were fading. A diverse collection of nonsuperheroes, like Conan, Dracula, and the Master of Kung Fu, were introduced in an effort to rekindle that 1960s magic. And a roster of new writers, like Len Wein, Steve Englehart, and Marv Wolfman, was emerging. It was in this fertile and experimental environment that Steve Gerber joined Marvel Comics.

© 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

®

As one of his first assignments, Steve Gerber co-created Shanna the She-Devil with Carole Seuling. Shanna was obviously Marvel Comics’ version of the jungle girl archetype with the prerequisite leopard-skin bikini.

Her early stories were derivative of Tarzan and featured clashes with ivory poachers and the discovery of ancient lost cities. What set her apart, though, was her characterization. She was the relentless protector of the jungle and its animals, an environmentalist, and had an underlying hatred of men and firearms.

Unfortunately, the set of girl-oriented early-1970s titles that Shanna the She-Devil belonged to, which included The Cat and Night Nurse, didn’t last long and the title ended abruptly after only five issues. However, Gerber took more of an ownership of the character over the next few years as Shanna made appearances in the titles he wrote. The Rampaging Hulk #9 (June 1978) had a Shanna backup story that Gerber used to take her in a bold new direction. He had written three issues to follow up on that story, but they were abandoned. However, they were published 13 years later in the pages of Marvel Comics’ anthology series, Marvel Fanfare.

In the introduction to Marvel Fanfare #59 (Oct. 1991), editor Al Milgrom stated: “When I contacted him to write the final chapter he had no idea where his original plot was heading. Steve rose to the challenge and resolved things in his usual spectacularly offbeat fashion!”

With this four-issue series, Gerber focused on Shanna’s internal struggles rather than external ones. While Shanna took on a malevolent organization called the Pride, it was a means to bring about a climax in the She-Devil’s psychological conflict, forcing her to deal with her primal side.

Gerber presented Shanna’s broken psyche in a straightforward and effective manner by having her consult with a psychologist (a rather tired cliché in today’s TV and movie world, but inventive in its day).

Shanna discussed the level of violence that plagued her life and how, over the years, death had claimed her close friends, her family, and her beloved animal pets.

Shanna’s unhealthy attraction to death and violence was exemplified by the leopard skin she wore, which was actually the skin of her pet leopard Julani.

The leopard skin, in her mind, operated like a form of spiritual possession, allowing her to let go of her humanity and be taken over by her baser instincts.

Her animal relationships helped keep her connected to her more primal self, especially when she found herself trapped within civilization. To relax, she would playfight with her eight-foot-long python Ananta, which bordered on bondage and was strangely sensual.

What was clear throughout was Steve Gerber’s love for Shanna and his interest in continuing to develop her character.

Jungle Fever Detail from Jim Steranko’s cover to Shanna the She-Devil #1 (Dec. 1972). © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Emerging Voice While he was merely scripting over Bill Everett’s plot here in Sub-Mariner #61 (May 1973), Steve Gerber’s politics and sense of humor were clearly present. Art by Win Mortimer and Jim Mooney. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

®

Steve Gerber’s work on Sub-Mariner was a fill-in role as Bill Everett, the original creator of Prince Namor, had taken ill and would succumb to that illness.

Gerber came on board in the middle of a storyline and scripted the book based on Everett’s plots.

When Don Heck joined as the new artist in Sub-Mariner #64 (Aug. 1973), Gerber finally started to put his own mark on the book and take it into a new direction. Unfortunately, his run only lasted another five issues, six counting Namor’s appearance in Marvel Two-in-One #2 (Mar. 1974).

From a 2006 posting on the Yahoo! Howard the Duck Club (http://groups. yahoo.com/group/howard_the_duck/message/181), Steve Gerber admitted: “It’s not that my heart wasn’t in it, more that I was simply never able to get a handle on either the series or Namor himself. Sub-Mariner and I were a godawful mismatch. The problem, I think, is that I can’t write an imperial hero convincingly. My core nature is too democratic and egalitarian.”

THE MARVEL UNIVERSE WORK OF STEVE GERBER ®

Daredevil was a turning point in Gerber’s writing career. After an assortment of work (a handful of Iron Man issues, a brief run on Sub-Mariner, and the odd fill-in issue), Gerber assumed the role of the new full-time writer with Daredevil #97 (Mar. 1973).

Steve Gerber’s run on Daredevil continued the chronicling of DD’s adventures in San Francisco. This Daredevil hadn’t yet become the shadowy, grim figure he’s now identified as. Gerber’s initial storyline ran until Daredevil #107 (Jan. 1974), and while it featured a gauntlet of supervillains, a terribly predictable mastermind, and the out-of-place involvement of cosmic figures like Moondragon and Captain Marvel, the story’s themes and characters stood out.

This opening storyline was really about Daredevil trying to find his place in the world, just as Gerber was trying to figure himself out as a comic-book writer. In Daredevil #100 (June 1973), Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone magazine, interviewed Daredevil and learned that:

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(Random Gerber issues are not cited.)

• Daredevil #97–101 (Mar.–July 1973), 103–117 (Sept. 1973–Jan. 1975) (script only #97–98; plot only #117) • The Defenders #20–29 (Feb.–Nov. 1975), 31–41 (Jan.–Nov. 1976) • Defenders Annual #1 (1976) • Foolkiller #1–10 (Oct. 1990–Oct 1991) • Giant-Size Defenders #3–5 (Jan.–July 1975) • Marvel Fanfare (Shanna the She-Devil) #56–59 (Apr.–Oct. 1991) • Marvel Presents: Guardians of the Galaxy #3–7 (Feb.–Nov. 1976), 9 (Feb. 1977) • Marvel Two-In-One #1–9 (Jan. 1974–May 1975) (plot only #9) • Rampaging Hulk (Shanna the She-Devil) #9 (June 1978) • Sensational She-Hulk #10–11(Dec. 1989–Jan 1990), 13–23 (Mar. 1990–Jan. 1991) (#21–23 co-written by Buzz Dixon) • Shanna the She-Devil #1 (Dec. 1972), 4–5 (June–Aug. 1973) • Sub-Mariner #58–69 (Feb. 1973–Mar. 1974) (script only #58-63)

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“People make heroes, Jann—we’re born from a gut-level need to help—and a need for help—against the evil that springs from the minds of men to threaten the good.”

It isn’t hard to hear Gerber’s voice in this statement, trying to formulate his take on superheroes.

Another character who stood out in this storyline was Angar the Screamer. He wasn’t so much a villain, but more of a hippie raging against the injustices within the system. But he, too, like Daredevil, was lost and it was Matt Murdock, not Daredevil, who made him question who he was and what he was doing.

With Daredevil #107, the title moved to a bimonthly schedule due to its poor sales. To his credit, Gerber shouldered the blame and boldly announced that he would return Daredevil to his roots. From the letters column in Daredevil #114 (Oct. 1974), Gerber confessed: “I blew it. You see, it sometimes takes a while for a writer to begin thinking of a strip as ‘his.’ And, for me at least, it’s even harder when the book has a long and colorful a history as Daredevil.

“So I set all the wrong goals for myself. I was trying to do Gerry [Conways]’s D.D., or Roy [Thomas]’s D.D., or Stan [Lee]’s D.D., and basically fighting my own instincts about where the strip should go.

“That changed with D.D. #107, the finale of the Terrex series. Because, whether I liked it or not, I had inadvertently steered Daredevil on a course toward a major break with the past. Several long, involved discussions with editor Roy Thomas helped clear my head about characters, the villains, the interpersonal relationships in the strip … and I was on my way.”

Steve Gerber would later tell Kuljit Mithra in a 2004 interview (www.manwithoutfear.com/interviews/ddINTERVIEW.shtml?id=40th): “I basically learned how to write a superhero book my way, incorporating what I had learned about characterization and plotting and pacing from the various horror series I was writing. Over a period of months, I found what you might call my superhero voice. …So, in short, working on Daredevil taught me how to write superhero stories. It meant a lot to me.”

®

Chain of Events (above) DD dodges dangerous dimwits in this Gerber-scripted, Gene Colan/John Tartaglione-drawn original page from Daredevil #100 (June 1973), courtesy of Heritage. (right) The Rich Buckler/Frank Giacoia cover to the centennial ish.

The mandate of Marvel Two-in-One wasn’t difficult to decipher: Use the Thing’s popularity to expose fans to the other great titles that Marvel Comics was putting out.

Gerber fulfilled that mandate rather well as the storylines were heavily tied into titles he was writing at that time (Daredevil, Man-Thing, and Sub-Mariner) or titles that he would write (The Defenders, Marvel Presents).

While Gerber excelled at writing oddball characters and second stringers, he could also write fan-favorites. He faithfully depicted the Thing as the surly, tough-talking but kindhearted, cosmic-ray-enhanced monster. Nowhere was this better seen than in Marvel Two-in-One #4 (July 1974) as the Thing was forced into the role of guardian as “Uncle Benjy” for the naïve alien powerhouse known as Wundarr. This role pushed the Thing out of his comfort zone where he had to restrain his own cantankerous and ill-tempered behavior to deal with Wundarr’s innocent simplicity and his dangerous tantrums.

His short, eight-issue run on the title had the Thing redeem a lot of air miles: sloshing through swamps of the Florida Everglades, getting shot at by the Badoon in the far future, and disguising himself as one of the Wise Men in Arizona as part of a twisted recreation of the birth of Christ.

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Steve Gerber’s stint on The Defenders was his greatest superhero epic. In this 25-issue run, which included an annual and three Giant-Size specials, the infamous “non-team” was taken on some of their strangest and wackiest adventures. Where else could you read about heroes confronting urban terrorism and racism, defending the future from alien invaders, searching for a hijacked brain in a bowl, and foiling the plans of a god-like alien bent on turning humanity into clowns?

Steve Gerber’s The Defenders never shied away from tackling social issues like poverty, the environment, and racism. The Defenders #22–25 (Apr.–July 1975) focused on inner-city decay and how the social system had let down the impoverished. Gerber then contrasted those social conditions with Kyle (Nighthawk) Richmond’s wealth and his apathy in how that wealth was maintained, which turned out to be funding the Sons of the Serpent terrorist organization.

During the Defenders’ team-up with the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Earth’s future was grim as humankind’s reckless behavior caused irreparable damage to the environment, leading to devastating wars over food and resources. However, there were glimmers of hope, perhaps Gerber telling us not to lose faith as humanity continued to rebuild despite the catastrophes that should have destroyed us.

The next threat the Defenders faced was from the Headmen. Steve Gerber pulled together three characters from Marvel Comics’ 1950s horror comics to create this uncanny group of villains bent on taking over the world without violence. The Headmen were composed of Chondu, a side-show magician who dabbled with mystical forces beyond his understanding; Jerry Morgan, a misguided biologist whose experiments on himself caused his bones to shrink, leaving his skin grotesquely wrinkled and loose; and Nagan, a mad scientist with an uncanny talent for transplants whose greatest success was putting his own head on a gorilla’s body. In The Defenders #32 (Feb. 1976), Gerber added Ruby Thursday to their ranks, a woman with an “organic computer” as a head that could take any shape she desired as it was made of malleable plastic.

To compound their troubles, the Defenders had to deal with the return of the near-omniscient Nebulon.

Instead of destroying humanity, Nebulon now wanted to save it from itself. Gerber had this celestial being adopt a human persona and berate the attendants of his self-improvement seminars into admitting that they’re bozos for putting the world in its chaotic state.

Both of these plotlines came to a climax in The Defenders Annual #1 (1976), which used one of Gerber’s more predominant themes as Dr. Strange showed Nebulon what it was like to be human and how humanity’s “most despicable qualities often result in his most towering achievements.”

As Gerber progressed through these epic storylines, he invested time building characters. He also spent a lot of time on the second-string characters, like Nighthawk and Valkyrie, and wove their subplots in and out of his storylines.

Defenders #20 Revisited

In The Defenders #32 (Feb. 1976), Gerber cleverly used Nighthawk’s disembodied state to show through surreal dream-like sequences the people and forces that shaped the life of his alter ego, Kyle Richmond.

Richmond was put through a lot, emotionally and physically, during Gerber’s run. With each obstacle, Richmond dealt with the situation in a very human manner and grew from those experiences.

Gerber’s run on The Defenders can’t be discussed without bringing up the infamous Elf with a gun. It stands as one of the more perplexing mysteries that he left behind. The Elf first appeared in The Defenders #25 (July 1975) and while he only appeared in a few pages over two years, he obviously captured the attention of fans. The Elf with a gun made brief cameo appearances in The Defenders #25, 31, 38, and 40 and a “final” appearance outside of Steve Gerber’s run in Defenders #46 (Apr. 1977).

In each appearance, the Elf tracked down his intended victim and then shot them with his gun.

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Artist Frank Brunner’s reimagining of a scene from Steve Gerber’s The Defenders #20, which featured (among other things) the non-team’s leader Dr. Strange and guest-star the Thing tangling with the Enchantress and the Executioner. Courtesy of Frank Brunner. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Gerber’s Guardians Covers to Marvel Presents: Guardians of the Galaxy #5 (June 1976, art by Al Milgrom and Joe Sinnott) and 6 (July 1976, art by Rich Buckler and Frank Giacoia). © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

was running through The Defenders. There’s no evidence that this gun was anything but a normal gun as it definitely looked like a revolver. After firing the gun, the next panel was filled by an explosion and a dramatic “BLAM,” and that’s all the reader got to see. There was no blood, no reaction from witnesses, and no indication of the weapon’s effect. It was all left to the reader’s imagination and that’s what’s wonderful about it.

Who or what was the Elf? “I am … what I am,” said the Elf, disguised as a Native American Indian chief, in Defenders #38 (Aug. 1976).

In a few of his appearances, the Elf knew his victims by their first names. And in two appearances, he said goodbye to his victims before pulling the trigger.

At the time, Steve Gerber never discussed or attempted to explain the Elf and his motivation; nor did the editors when confronted with letters from puzzled fans.

The writers that followed up Gerber’s run, Roger Slifer and David Anthony Kraft, attempted to resolve this dangling subplot. As the Elf stalked an unsuspecting paperboy, he was suddenly struck by a moving van. All that was left behind was his hat and pompom.

In homage, the panel of the Elf being struck was filled by an explosion with a dramatic exclamation mark.

From a message on the Howard the Duck Club (http://groups. yahoo.com/group/howard_the_duck/message/1757), Gerber said: “I’ve always said that having the Elf run over by a truck was the second best possible resolution. I don’t know what the best would have been, because I was making the story up as I went along. (The Elf made his first appearance for no other reason than that Sal Buscema was getting sick of drawing guys in snake suits; he asked if I could toss in something else for variety, and I did.)

“It sounds incredible when you think about how comics are written today—every beat of every story plotted in excruciating detail before the first word of a script is written—but almost all of my ’70s stuff for Marvel was made up on the fly. It just seemed more fun that way.”

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While Steve Gerber didn’t create the Guardians of the Galaxy, he did broaden and define their universe. He also introduced two new members, the enigmatic Starhawk and the impulsive Nikki, who acted as catalysts allowing us to discover more about their teammates.

Marvel Presents #3 (Feb. 1976) picked up just after The Defenders #29 (Nov. 1975) when the rebellion against the oppressive Badoon rule was underway. The Guardians’ guest appearances in Defenders and in Marvel Two-in-One had set these events into motion, and left the impression that this new series might be a space opera focusing on their underdog battle.

Unexpectedly, Gerber turned the storyline upside-down and within the first issue, he abruptly brought the Badoon conflict to an end.

The aftermath left the Guardians of the Galaxy scrambling to find themselves, as their reason for being had suddenly ended. They were subjected to the uglier side of humanity as racism, resentment, and cruelty made them all feel rather unwelcome on the planet they liberated.

Marvel Presents #5 (June 1976), “Planet of the Absurd,” was Gerber at his satirical best and exemplified how his writing set itself apart from his contemporaries. He highlighted some of the nastier human characteristics by parodying the 1970s, focusing on the lack of political leadership and the apathy of the general public. He contrasted that parody with a hippie-like colony of people obsessed with their existentialism.

His brief run on Marvel Presents demonstrated Steve Gerber’s storytelling versatility as he could effortlessly write horror and science fiction, as well as stories about costumed superheroes.

We Pity the Fools (left) Guess which then-recent movie Steve was parodying in Sensational She-Hulk #19 (Sept. 1990)?

Cover by Dale Keown. (right) Gerber’s vigilante in his spin-off miniseries.

Cover to Foolkiller #2 (Nov. 1990), drawn by J. J. Birch (Joe Brozowski). © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

effects of advertising and branding. He also criticized people’s lack of interest in government and challenged people’s apathy which he felt was fed by mindless entertainment.

While his run on The Sensational She-Hulk wasn’t the typical ® Gerber style, as it was superficial and lacked his characteristic subtext, it will keep you smiling throughout and keep you thinking well after you’ve read it.

® Following up John Byrne’s groundbreaking run on The Sensational She-Hulk would have been a challenge for any writer. Byrne broke down the fourth wall and had the She-Hulk interact with readers and take advantage of knowing she was in a comic book. Who better to take over than Steve Gerber? Byrne himself had obviously been fond of Gerber’s work as he had made use of a few of his memorable villains, the Headmen and Dr. Bong.

Oddly enough, though, Gerber restored order to the title by firming up the fourth wall, and while he made the She-Hulk’s character more serious and rational, the events that occurred around her were anything but that. With his first issue, Gerber made dramatic changes in the She-Hulk’s life by having a judge rule that her superhero reputation tainted her role as district attorney and she was removed from her position.

It’s interesting to compare the two female leads that Gerber wrote. While his Shanna stories were more character-driven and intense, his She-Hulk stories were less about her character and more about the absurd events that occurred around her (as one might expect with a seven-foot-tall, gamma-irradiated, green-skinned woman). From a crossover with Howard the Duck to the thinly veiled parodies of Lex Luthor and Superman to the rather blatant lampooning of the Batman film franchise and Batman universe, Gerber used the She-Hulk as a tool to raise his concerns about the

While the Foolkiller might seem like an offbeat, second-string villain with his flamboyant costume and disintegration gun, each incarnation of the character took his mission to rid the world of fools very seriously.

The easiest mistake to make with the Foolkillers is to group these characters with the contemporary vigilantes of the early 1990s, like the Punisher or DC Comics’ Vigilante. Unlike a vigilante motivated by revenge, the Foolkillers were philosophers and social activists who were willing to go to extremes to deal with what they believed to be genuine threats to humankind. What is interesting, though, was the shift in Gerber’s writing tactics. He didn’t rely on subtleties and subtext to get his point across. What he wanted to say was right there in your face and there’s no way around it other than to confront it.

The original Foolkiller, Ross Everbest, first donned his colorful costume in Man-Thing #3 (Mar. 1974). He was the young protégé of a preacher who set out to destroy the malignancy of fools that he felt threatened the world. Although Everbest met a violent death at the hands of the Man-Thing, his story would continue to motivate others to continue his legacy.

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Foolkiller, the ten-issue miniseries, was published in late 1990 and focused on the third incarnation of the anti-hero, Kurt Gerhardt.

In Foolkiller #1 (Oct. 1990), Gerhardt, an average hardworking man, was pushed into a corner and instead of pretending not to see the violence around him, he chose to do something about it: “We’re all hostages, you know that? Hostages of random, senseless brutality. Makes you wonder, though—what if the tables got turned? What if somebody made them hostages?

The parasites—the animals! What if there were random executions instead of random crimes, Linda? How many of them do you think would have to die before they figured out they weren’t wanted?”

Gerhardt was inspired by the second Foolkiller, Greg Salinger, who, during an interview within the confines of a mental institute by a popular talk-show host, voiced his sweeping judgments on humanity.

Salinger’s condemnation of humanity for its greed, short-sightedness, and wanton destruction of the environment echoed Gerhardt’s own personal philosophy.

Gerhardt made contact with Salinger and began a correspondence.

Salinger was impressed by his newfound protégé and granted Gerhardt access to the Foolkiller costume and his “purification” gun. In a 2006 blog entry (www.stevegerber.com/sgblog/?p=239), Steve Gerber recalled that: “One scene that never got into the limited series had to do with the ‘ray gun,’ which had been passed down from one Foolkiller to the next. At some point, I wanted to have the gun’s casing break open, revealing that it was an empty shell, with no mechanism of any kind inside. In other words, the gun was a conduit for some other kind of energy, presumably originating in the shooter.

I don’t know. Maybe readers would have found that idea too weird. As it turned out, there was just no room for the scene.”

With some initial success, Gerhardt became overconfident and ran into more than he could handle and it nearly cost him his life.

However, Gerhardt rose from his failure and trained himself to be stronger and reinvented himself as the new Foolkiller. He confirmed his new direction by updating the Foolkiller’s calling-card slogan to “Actions have consequences” from Salinger’s “Live a poem, or die a fool” which, in turn, was his take on the original Foolkiller’s “You have 24 hours to live. Use them to repent or be forever damned to the pits of Hell where goeth all fools. Today is the last day of the rest of your life. Use it wisely or die a fool.”

Gerhardt’s depression made him more susceptible to the cruelty in everyday life, and he started to take it personally. As he slipped deeper into madness, he was overcome by his obsession. This concept tapped into the vigilante fantasy we’ve all imagined when hearing of some horrible crime and wanting to take justice into our own hands. You ultimately cheer Gerhardt on in his morally ambiguous crusade, but you can’t help fearing him and disliking him at the same time.

The key to the story’s success was allowing readers to draw their own conclusions. Gerber didn’t judge the Foolkiller’s actions.

The Foolkiller’s actions were presented in an unbiased, factual context letting the reader apply their own morals and principles and forcing them to question and challenge those morals and principles. Gerber’s slow and careful construction of a vigilante allowed the reader to empathize with Gerhardt and even echo his beliefs and concerns.

WRAPPING IT ALL UP Steve Gerber’s strengths as a writer were clearly seen in his human development of superheroes, his eager confrontation of social issues, and his unwavering faith in humanity. Although I never met him, I feel that I have through his work and that his work stands as a testament to who he was.

Marvel’s Essential black-and-white trade paperback series provides you with a great way to immerse yourself in Gerber’s groundbreaking and thought-provoking work. Not only have Howard the Duck and The Man-Thing been collected, but you can also pick up his runs on The Defenders, Marvel Two-in-One, and Daredevil. As for the Foolkiller miniseries, I’ll not only recommend it, but happily join the small, but growing chorus of fans demanding that Marvel Comics reprint these issues in trade paperback form.

JASON SHAYER’s addiction to comic books and his 12-year-old mindframe have caused more than a few people to raise an eyebrow. When he’s not writing or reading, he’s teaching his three-year-old daughter the finer points of comic-book collecting.

Our Favorite Things From the Brian Sagar collection, a Tom Grindberg/ Joe Rubinstein commission featuring a rematch of the Thing and Man-Thing from the Gerber-penned Marvel-Two-in-One #1. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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® by

Timothy Callahan

In March 1976, as Luke Cage joined forces with the Fantastic Four to defeat the Wrecker and Spider-Man battled—yet again—with the Sandman, a strange character popped up on the Marvel landscape. It was the being soon to be known as “Omega” and while the cover of Omega the Unknown #1 may have looked like any other superhero comic, the story inside was anything but typical.

Omega the Unknown didn’t even seem to be part of the Marvel Universe in that first issue, with its strange, passive narration and its elliptical storytelling.

Nary a superhero was to be found, except for the silent, enigmatic being from beyond the stars—a being who seemed to share a psychic link with an Earth boy named James-Michael Starling.

What was the deal with this James-Michael kid, anyway? And who was this costumed alien who didn’t speak? What was the connection between them?

These mysteries were all established in that first issue of Omega the Unknown, written by Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes, with illustrations by veteran artist Jim Mooney.

And although these questions would be answered over the years, none of them were ever answered by the series’ creators, who would move on to other things— other companies, other careers—without ever getting a chance to tell the whole story of the strange relationship between the boy and his counterpart from outer space.

At its launch, Omega the Unknown was certainly a very different kind of superhero comic book, although such was to be expected from Gerber, who, by 1976, had produced the bulk of his acclaimed (and decidedly off-kilter) Defenders run and had created the inimitable Howard the Duck in an Adventure into Fear Man-Thing story.

The multiple exclamation points and dynamic action pose on the cover of Omega the Unknown #1 might have fooled some readers into thinking that they were getting something in the mighty Marvel tradition, but even on the first page, Gerber and Skrenes signaled that the story would be a bit different from the norm:

Anything But Typical The smash-bang cover to the very different Omega the Unknown #1 (Mar. 1976).

Cover art by Ed Hannigan and Joe Sinnott. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Omega’s Alpha Team Writer Steve Gerber and artist Jim Mooney.

“Some unforeseen factor interrupts the orderly flow of events,” says the opening caption, “and without warning, a finely-tuned organism erupts in discord, violence.” Mooney’s accompanying splash page shows a blue-and-red-garbed figure running from explosions against a backdrop of crystalline mountains and a field of stars.

The strangely clinical narration that continued throughout the opening scene hardly matched the dynamic images of destruction provided by Mooney, but the real twist in the first issue occurs on page four, when young James-Michael Starling wakes up screaming from the “agony,” according to the caption, that “may span a universe.”

But Gerber and Skrenes don’t stop there, for as strange as the connection between an Earth boy and a musclebound alien might be, the series really takes an unexpected turn two pages later when a collision with an oncoming tractor-trailer reveals that James-Michael’s mother and father were, well, robots. James-Michael, thrown from the crash, sees his mother’s mechanical head on the ground—a head which warns him of danger: “Don’t listen to the voices,” the robotic head implores, before melting into a pile of smoke and sludge.

Gerber and Skrenes were treading in Philip K. Dick territory here, and the strange paranoia and uncertainty were only enhanced by the appearance of faceless intruders into James-Michael’s hospital room and the timely arrival of the blue-and-red costumed being who made not a single sound. The series was called Omega the UNKNOWN, after all, and the first issue certainly lived up to that title, establishing a string of mysteries that seemed mostly designed to create an unsettling mood. A mood that quietly proclaimed this to be a very different comic book, indeed.

Unfortunately, the series would only last for ten short issues—two of which written by fill-in writers—before its untimely cancellation.

While it lasted, Omega the Unknown may have had some of the surface details of other Marvel comics—guest appearances by the Hulk, fights with villains like Electro or Blockbuster—but it was largely concerned with the perils of the urban environment and the disturbing state of inner-city public schools. The title character barely spoke and had almost no personality of his own; it was really James-Michael Starling’s story that took center stage, as the stranger-in-a-strange city tried to navigate the social and emotional upheavals of mid-’70s New York.

According to a June 14, 2005 blog post at www.stevegerber.com, although the comic featured a mysterious, musclebound alien, much of the reality of the story derived from the personal experience of Gerber and Skrenes, who collaborated equally on their issues. Gerber wrote, “We drew heavily on our own childhoods for aspects of James-Michael’s story and on observation of our neighborhood—Hell’s Kitchen in New York, circa 1975—for the setting of the book.”

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John Romita, Sr.’s first costume design for Omega, done in colored markers. Note the differences in the gauntlets and boots, and the original idea for the midriff omega icon. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Hell’s Kitchen, the section of Manhattan now known as Clinton (but familiar to Marvel readers as the Daredevil’s base of operations during the Frank Miller years and beyond), featured prominently in the Gerber/Skrenes Omega the Unknown issues. In issue #2 (May 1976), appropriately titled “Welcome to Hell’s Kitchen,” James-Michael, now parentless, moves in with compassionate nurse Ruth and her sassy roommate Amber. On the way to their Hell’s Kitchen apartment, James-Michael finds himself exposed to an urban jungle the likes of which he’d never seen or imagined. Amber comments on the “plethora of human misery,” and when they reach their building James-Michael bluntly and dispassionately asks, “Am I mistaken— or is that the odor of human excrement?”

Surely such a line of dialogue had never before appeared in a mainstream superhero comic book.

Gerber and Skrenes added other colorful touches to the depiction of Hell’s Kitchen: a tap-dancing homeless man, cockroaches, bars on the windows, and egg creams. And as James-Michael learns the ways of the inner city with the irrepressible Amber as his guide, Omega (or the silent alien who will soon be given that name) finds himself learning the ways of this unfamiliar world as well. He stumbles across a robbery and even though his massive form and superhuman powers should be more than a match for any human, Omega ends up being rescued by an old codger with a shotgun.

The old codger known as Gramps—a Hell’s Kitchen pawn-shop proprietor—takes Omega in and becomes for Omega what Ruth and Amber are for James-Michael: shelter and support.

Omega the Unknown #2 features some of the trappings of a normal superhero comic, as Electro pops in to kidnap Omega and the Hulk stirs up a bit of trouble on the streets, but the real emphasis of the issue is the anxiety of the unknown as both James-Michael and Omega find themselves in the strange and unusual land of Hell’s Kitchen.

In an interview with columnist Rich Johnston, posted at Comic Book Resources, Gerber discussed what made Omega the Unknown so different from the other mainstream comics on the stands: “It was an oddity in that it was a few years ahead of its time,” said Gerber. “The protagonist of the book, James-Michael Starling, was a kid with a strange super-power.”

James-Michael’s power—the power which linked him to Omega—manifested itself through sudden bursts of energy emanating from his hands. But even though the character had a superpower, he never used it to become some kind of costumed crimefighter.

Instead, he was a strangely detached, intellectual kid with powers he couldn’t understand.

“I wanted to do a series about a real kid who was nobody’s sidekick,” added Gerber, “facing real problems in what today would be called a ‘grim ’n’ gritty’ setting.” As Gerber pointed out, “Omega predated both the Teen Titans and X-Men explosion and the ‘grim ’n’ gritty’ movement by a few years. If it had come later, it probably would have been deemed a little quirky but mainstream.”

Although Omega himself would get into a number of superpowered fisticuffs throughout the series, much of those scenes were ancillary to the struggle of James-Michael as he learned that the public schools were just as treacherous—if not more so— than the streets of Hell’s Kitchen.

In Omega the Unknown #3 (July 1976), James-Michael arrives in a classroom for the first time in his life (he’d been home-schooled by his robo-parents) and gets insulted, bullied, and even accidentally slapped in the face by a teacher. He’s quickly befriended by two of the most important secondary characters in the series: the tomboyish Dian and the bookish John Nedly (called “Nerdly” even by some of the teachers).

James-Michael’s traumatic first day at school ends with him sprawled on the pavement outside—the victim of a bully’s sucker-punch.

As much as Gerber, Skrenes, and Mooney emphasized the urban turmoil and the crumbling pubic-school infrastructure, they were bound in their portrayal by the tenets of the Comics Code Authority. As Gerber indicated in a September 1976 interview with the Marvelproduced fanzine FOOM, “The problem with a strip like Omega, where the characters are at least pretenses at reality, is that you can never go far enough, you can

never show how filthy those streets are in Hell’s Kitchen, you can never show the dope dealers in the corridors of the school James-Michael attends, because the Code won’t allow it.” In reference to a scene from issue #5 (Nov. 1976), in which “Nerdly” Nedly is practically beaten to death by bullies off-panel, Gerber added, “you can’t show what would really happen to somebody if they got beat up as badly as John was beaten up

by Nick and his hoods, because even though [the readers] see it every day, it’s simply not allowed because it’s not ‘within the bounds of good taste.’”

Perhaps as a result of the Code restrictions, Omega the Unknown, while still detailing the struggle of James-Michael as he makes his way in a chaotic world, would increasingly focus on traditional superhero moments. Flamboyantly dressed villains would trade punches with Omega more and more each issue and fill-in writers like Scott Edelman in issue #7 (Mar. 1977) and Roger Stern in issue #8 (May 1977) would tell rather conventional superhero stories within the Hell’s Kitchen setting. Both issues were practically issue-long fight scenes—the former with Omega vs. Blockbuster, the latter with Omega vs. Nitro—and the James-Michael storyline became merely a subplot.

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Moody Mooney Original artwork (by Jim Mooney) to the gloomy splash page of Omega #4 (Mar. 1976). © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Gerber and Skrenes returned to the book with Omega the Unknown #9 (July 1977) and promptly shifted the emphasis back on James-Michael, although not without including another long fight scene between Omega and Blockbuster. But many of the familiar Gerber/Skrenes elements, like random street violence and explicit social criticism, reappeared. Gerber’s Foolkiller character—a selfrighteous crusader who first appeared in Man-Thing— even became part of the story with issue #9. This was a new Foolkiller, though, with a secular mission to rid the world of fools, violently if necessary. The issue ends with the Foolkiller incinerating Blockbuster and shouting an enigmatic warning to all: “Live a poem—or die a fool!”

Yet the Foolkiller would never appear in Omega the Unknown again.

In his 1976 FOOM interview, Gerber had discussed the plans he and Skrenes had for the series, without giving away many specifics: “It has a definite direction,” Gerber said. “It does not have incidents plotted out all the

You wouldn’t know it from this run-ofthe-mill cover… …that its interior story included a disturbing sequence involving bullies nearly killing a supporting cast member. Cover art to Omega #5 (Nov. 1976) by Gil Kane/Frank Giacoia. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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way through issue #100 or anything like that. We know where it is going; we know where James-Michael is going; we know certain things about which characters are going to be introduced into the strip and what part they’re going to play. In some ways, it’s the most calculated strip I’ve ever done, and largely that’s because of Mary’s predisposition toward structure.

We know who the teachers are, for instance, that we have introduced into the story. Ruth and Amber were specifically introduced to play off each other in a particular way and create a particular kind of confusion in James-Michael.” Gerber went on to say, “We do know, even though we’re probably not going to reveal it for quite awhile, what the relationship between JamesMichael and Omega is. So all that stuff actually is ‘plotted’ in that sense. The concepts are all there; exactly how they’re going to take shape, I don’t know.”

Readers would never get a chance to find out.

Omega the Unknown #10 (Oct. 1977) would not only be the last issue of the series, it would be the last Omega story ever written by Gerber or Skrenes.

Issue #10 feels more compressed than most of the earlier issues, shifting the James-Michael plot back to the fore and seemingly moving toward an answer to the question that had driven the series since the beginning: What is the connection between Omega and JamesMichael Starling?

The issue begins with the funeral of John Nedly, who apparently died off-panel from the injuries he sustained from his beating in issue #5. Omega then goes off on a noble but misguided attempt to help Gramps win money in Vegas, while James-Michael and best friend Dian hop on a bus headed to the Starling family home.

Snooping around for clues about his origins, JamesMichael (with Dian’s help) opens a secret door to find two exact replicas of his parents—immobile, deactivated.

The story cuts back to Omega, who is taking advantage of his ill-defined powers to manipulate the games of chance and win big money for Gramps.

Another Gerber creation, Ruby Thursday—a villain from The Defenders—steals their cash and flees into the night.

Dressed in street clothes with only his omega-shaped headband to signal his identity, Omega pursues her, and apprehends Ruby after her car smashes into a lamppost. Mistaking Omega for a “felon,” the police intervene, and Omega is gunned down by the authorities.

Next to Omega’s fallen body, the text in the final panel of issue #10 reads, “The story of ‘Omega the Unknown’ will be concluded in a future issue of ‘The Defenders.’”

Presumably, Gerber was planning on wrapping up the James-Michael/Omega saga when he returned to writing The Defenders, but he never did return.

His quarrels with Marvel would escalate and he left Marvel soon after Omega the Unknown was canceled.

Readers were left hanging.

CANCELLATION AND BEYOND Steven Grant would end up with the task of finishing the Omega story, without any knowledge of how Gerber and Skrenes had plan to tie it all together. Grant explains that Al Milgrom ended up as editor of The Defenders after the fallout from Gerber’s exit, and Ed Hannigan was assigned as the regular writer. Grant says, “By the time Al got the book, virtually all the mail on it was from people wanting to know when Omega would wrap up in the book, and by the time I got to Marvel, in late ’78, Al was sick of it. He wanted Omega out of his life for good.

Ed, however, didn’t want anything to do with it.”

Grant goes on to say, “I’d written a [Defenders] fill-in issue (which ended up being published many years later), featuring a female Yandroth, and Al asked if I’d finish off the Omega storyline so they could get on with their lives. I was eager for any work, so I said, ‘Yes.’ In retrospect it probably wasn’t one of my brighter decisions, but nothing I can do about it now.”

Grant had no access to Gerber’s plans for Omega the Unknown and the editors at Marvel didn’t care much about how the story was wrapped up—just as long as it was wrapped up. Definitively. “The main direction I had was to get rid of him so no one could bring him back,” adds Grant.

“Other than that, it was entirely up to me, with Al looking over my shoulder. I wasn’t especially well-versed in the character, though I’d read all the issues back in my days of working in distribution so I was at least passingly familiar with it. No one had any idea of what Steve intended.

So I mapped out all the dangling plot threads, figured out there were too many to deal with in one issue, so I managed to talk Al into giving me two (I would have preferred three, but was lucky I wasn’t saddled with one). The big problem with Steve’s series—we discussed this sometime later, and it’s frequently been a problem with a lot of series since—is that, at least in what was published, it was all questions and no answers.

“So I then mapped out the possible solutions to the series,” says Grant. “Since I didn’t know what Steve intended, I decided to proceed like Steve in spirit—as completely off the wall as I could manage.

The obvious solution, and likeliest, but for me the least interesting, was that James-Michael Starling would grow up to be Omega.

That’s what a lot of readers thought, and what they expected. So I went with the reverse: Omega would ‘grow up’ to be James-Michael Starling. Then I had to have a reason for the Defenders to get involved, etc. It was like putting together a puzzle. I had to figure out ways to streamline it, since there was a lot of material, like coming off the ending of the series where Omega had apparently been killed. I just left him dead. I couldn’t remember anytime that’d been done, where the hero was supposedly killed in the cliffhanger, and opening up the next chapter it turned out there was no supposedly about it. Say what you will about the story, for me that’s a Steve Gerber moment.

That’s something Steve would have done. The Omega fans were pretty much guaranteed not to like it. I knew a lot of people would be pissed off by the story, but that wasn’t my intent, or my concern. I was just trying to get what I considered an interesting story out of it.”

Grant’s two-parter, which would appear in The Defenders #76–77 (Oct.–Nov. 1979), featured art by Herb Trimpe and a story jam-packed with answers to the questions raised by Gerber and Skrenes. Amidst the fighting with Ruby Thursday and the intervention of the Defenders, James-Michael learned of his true origins, with a little help from the telepathic Avenger, Moondragon. Readers discovered that James-Michael was a kind of advanced biological robot, created by the very same faceless beings who had been hunting him down since the first issue of his series. The connection between Omega and James-Michael was this: Both of them were created as the salvation of a dying race, with Omega as an earlier, less-developed organism than James-Michael. While JamesMichael would grow in the nurturing care of robotic parents on Earth— eventually becoming the heir to the dying culture through a transferal of consciousness into his body—the more rudimentary Omega being would learn the “concepts of morality and nobility” on an alien planet.

It was a convoluted explanation, but an original one, turning the readers’ expectations on their heads. In the story, Grant further explains that the reason the faceless creatures—the robotic creators of both Omega and James-Michael—seemed so intent on destroying both of them was because Omega had become too powerful. The alien race he lived with had granted him the ability to tap into “biospheric energy,”

an energy which would inadvertently destroy the Earth. Omega’s abilities and consciousness were to be transferred to James-Michael, and the faceless pursuers were actually trying to save the Earth by destroying Omega and James-Michael before the lethal biospheric energy was released.

Confronted with that knowledge, and unwilling to destroy Earth, James-Michael turns the biospheric energy inward, imploding in a crackle of light. Grant explains that “both Omega and Starling died by the end of the story because that’s what the editor wanted. I didn’t especially care one way or the other, I was only interested in the story.”

Grant adds, “Ed Hannigan didn’t think I’d gone far enough; his following issue opens with Omega’s corpse being ‘buried’ in the sun and reduced to atoms. He really didn’t want anyone ever mentioning Omega again.”

In retrospect, Grant admits that his conclusion to the Omega saga had some problems: “I had no idea what I was doing at the time, so looking back I’d say it’s structurally a mess, and I’d probably do it differently today, but I still like many of the ideas there. I dislike it in practice, but not in principle.” Grant also says, “I don’t think it was an inappropriate ending to the series, it just wasn’t the one Steve would have done, whatever that was.”

OMEGA REBORN Although Gerber was unhappy with the resolution that he wasn’t around to write, he consoled himself with the fact that nobody else tried to touch the Omega characters after Grant wrapped up the story in The Defenders.

Until a few years ago, that is.

“Decades went by, Marvel did nothing with the series,” wrote Gerber in the June 14, 2005 blog post on his website, “and both Mary and I allowed ourselves to believe they never would. I was convinced Omega had been forgotten, and that was fine with me.

Getting On with Their Lives The Omega “wrap up” issue that was shoehorned into the post-Gerber Defenders. Cover art to issue #77 (Nov. 1979) by Rich Buckler/Al Milgrom. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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“I should have known that nothing in comics is ever allowed to stay dead,” he added. “Gerber characters who get their brains blown out are routinely resurrected.

No series is ever really canceled anymore; it just lies dormant until some writer or artist successfully pitches a new ‘take’ to the publisher. Above all, no trademark is ever permitted to slide into oblivion.”

Gerber was referring to the 2005 announcement that award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem (writer of Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude, among other acclaimed works) would bring back the Omega character in a ten-issue series for Marvel. Gerber complained publicly about Lethem’s involvement with the series, going so far as to register the domain name “omegatheunknown.com,” a website which still features only a single, animated line of text: “Omega the Unknown was created in 1975 by Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes.” Although Gerber never endorsed the series, Lethem’s version finally hit the shelves in the fall of 2007, featuring idiosyncratic art by Farel Dalrymple.

Although the first issue featured almost a word-forword remake of the opening issue of the Gerber/ Skrenes/Mooney version, Lethem and Dalrymple’s Omega the Unknown would ultimately head in a different direction while still exploring some of the same themes and ideas. Lethem explained, in a July 18, 2008 interview with Comic Book Resources, his take on the Omega concept: “A superhero who really doesn’t know the first thing about our planet is nevertheless forced to perform an important intervention on behalf of a human boy, whose fate is tied up with the fate of the universe.

Neither of them is particularly ready for life in New York City, which is too bad for them.”

In a Newsarama interview with Zack Smith, Lethem discussed the impact of the original Omega the Unknown: “I thought it was fantastic. Those first issues, when Gerber

© 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Omega, Robot Fighter

© 2008 Jonathan Lethem.

An Omega sketch by Farel Dalrymple, courtesy of the artist.

Special thanks to Randy Tischler. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

and Skrenes were really allowed to do what they wanted to do and were building this incredible story full of all sorts of weird implications and possibilities … I simply thought it was the best comic book I’d ever read.” But Lethem mourned the fact that the series wasn’t appreciated at the time—by Marvel or by readers: “There wasn’t enough of a precedent for what the creators were doing, and no one trusted it, so they never really had a chance to realize the story they’d initiated. But that whisper of it—the first two issues above all, with all the possibilities inherent in what they’d begun, made it hugely meaningful to me.

“And though I’m not telling their story, not trying to continue or conclude their Omega in the least,” said Lethem, “part of my impulse was to bring a version of Omega to something like fruition.”

“I’m treating it as a legendary text is so often treated in the comic-book world, which is to say those tales are told and re-told in new and strange ways precisely because they were so good,” said Lethem. “In other words, I assume—perhaps absurdly—but I assume for my purposes that Omega is a canonical text, and therefore that anyone would be excited to see it retold in a strange and different way.”

Gerber passed away before seeing Lethem’s series conclude—not that he would have read it anyway, after all of his complaints about Omega’s resurrection. But as Steven Grant points out, Gerber was never one to hold a grudge: “Steve was easily among the most generous people I’ve known in comics, and where he had plenty of good reason to despise me for my connections to his Marvel creations, when we did meet in Los Angeles in the mid-’80s he instead embraced and welcomed me and we subsequently worked together many times in the years since, and ended up being pretty good friends. Since we both lived in Las Vegas, we got together fairly regularly, and I last saw him just before Christmas last year. He was worn out—due to his lung problem he had to carry a portable oxygen tank with him—but very upbeat and optimistic, and had finally been fasttracked for a lung transplant, as soon as lungs became available. He was looking forward to it, talking new projects. It was pretty inspiring. The next thing I heard, a couple weeks later, he had contracted pneumonia—we had a very bad winter here for that sort of thing and everyone was coming down with bad respiratory infections—and in his badly weakened condition he just couldn’t withstand it.

It was very sad, coming off the most upbeat I’d ever seen him.

“It’s a shame he didn’t have more opportunity to give his ideas to the business,” Grant adds, “and a shame the business didn’t give him more opportunities.”

TIMOTHY CALLAHAN is an educator, husband, and father of two budding comic-book fans. His first book, Grant Morrison: The Early Years, premiered in 2007, and he is the editor of a collection of essays about the Legion of Super-Heroes entitled Teenagers from the Future. He blogs about comics at geniusboyfiremelon.blogspot.com and works as a staff writer for Comic Book Resources.

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THING AND GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY by RON WILSON Ben Grimm and the Guardians were first teamed by Steve Gerber in Marvel Two-in-One #5 (inset above), but here’s a rematch by the artist who drew their second team-up (in MTIO #69).

From the collection of Brian Sagar. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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(opposite page) HOWARD THE DUCK AND MAN-THING by FRANK BRUNNER Gerber’s foul-tempered fowl runs afoul of Man-Thing and Dr. Strange in this spellbinding pencil commission. Courtesy of the artist.

GERBER’S GRUESOMES by PABLO MARCOS Illustrated specifically for this edition of BACK ISSUE, a collection of Gerber’s creepiest characters by the Zombie’s pencil-master, Pablo Marcos. Special thanks to Michael Aushenker. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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to save e as he tries this v li a r o d a e d is wanted er by the Red Crawl in o ov s been taken an and Sparacio! Plus, tw t' a th d rl o w m g n to ! lfm an unsuspectiE D story by Nicieza, Wo tain Action and The Phan TH R ILL FILL featuring the original Cap bonus stories The action’s at: MoonstoneBooks.com and CaptainActionNow.com

Available soon!

TM & © 2008 Captain Action Enterprises, LLC

by

Mark Arnold

When EC Comics created MAD magazine as a comic book at the end of 1952, little did the company know that it would start a worldwide phenomenon that also inspired a rash of imitators.

Originally, these copycats popped up on the comic-book landscape during 1954, with bizarre titles like Bughouse, Wild, Whack, and Eh? The knock-offs were so prolific that in issue #17 of MAD, mention was made of all of them. As the imitators did not have the same level of humor or artwork as the original, they quickly died almost as soon as they started, many not lasting more than a handful of issues.

In 1955, editor Harvey Kurtzman threatened to leave MAD unless it was switched to a magazine format. Although it was rumored to have changed to avoid the Comics Code Authority, the change was already in discussions by the time the Comics Code was taking effect. MAD’s new format became an instant hit and soon a new wave of clones burst upon the scene, this time in the black-and-white satirical format, ranging from 52 to 68 pages.

One of those imitators was from (then-Atlas Comics) Marvel’s Stan Lee, who attempted his version under

Crazy’s New Man Among the issues of Marvel’s Crazy edited

by Steve Gerber was #11 (June 1975), which featured a front cover painting by Frank Kelly Freas. In the inset photo, Gerber as Rev. Pierre La Pooj, from issue #6. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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“Off-Kilter” Humor

GERBER INDEX FOR CRAZY • #2 (Feb. 1974): Correspondence School Ads You’ve Never Seen (reprinted in Super Special #1, Summer 1975); College Bulletins of the Future (reprinted in Super Special #1) • #3 (Mar. 1974): Rock ’n’ Rollin’ Stone • #4 (May 1974): Crazy’s Just Plain Folks No. 1 • #5 (July 1974): Realistic Toy Catalogue (reprinted in Super Special #1); Just Plain Folks No. 2; TV/Movies: The Heck We Were, Oozie’s Girls, Billy Jerk, The Starloose (reprinted in Super Special #1) • #6 (Aug. 1974): Man, Myrth & Magic (Gerber photo cameo in article) • #7 (Oct. 1974): Crazy’s Just Plain Folks No. 3; The White House Transcripts • #8 (Dec. 1974): Insipid Romances • #9 (Feb. 1975): Underground Almanac; Ramblings of a Crazyman; Nebbish (all three credited in #10) • #10 (Apr. 1975): Just Plain Folks No. 4 • #11–14 (June–Nov. 1975): Steve Gerber listed as editor • Super Special #1 (Summer 1975): Steve Gerber listed as contributing editor • #11 (June 1975): The Rockicrucians; Crazy’s Who’s Who; Crazy’s Underground Almanac; Gerber (and Wolfman) cameo appearance in “The Nebbish”; Editorial • #12 (Aug. 1975): Buh Zerk (uncredited); Crazy’s Who’s Who; Crazy White Paper Report on the End of the World; The Great “What am I Doing Here?” Test; Editorial: Beat the Scuzzies • #13 (Oct. 1975): Crazy’s Who’s Who; How to Gang Up on Your Hang-Ups and Beat Them into Submission (another Gerber photo cameo in this article) • #14 (Nov. 1975): Crazy’s Who’s Who; Letter in letters column supposedly by Gerber’s parents; And the Birds Hummed Dirges—A Tale of Life Death and a Banana • #15 (Jan. 1976): A Crazy White Paper Report on the Art and Science of Dieting Note: Some of Steve Gerber’s articles listed above were reprinted in the later Super Special reprint issues from #61 (Apr. 1980) to 94 (Apr. 1983) but fall outside the scope of this article.

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(left) “Just Plain Folks,” featuring lengthy exposés on various eccentrics, was an ongoing Gerber series that ran for four installments from Crazy #4–10. (below) Gerber, as drawn by Marie Severin, as seen in issue #11’s “The Nebbish.” © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

the Atlas imprint called Snafu, which lasted a total of three issues in 1955–1956.

Lee was quite proud of this publication, according to a 2002 press release from Heritage Auctions, so it was only a matter of time before Marvel would attempt something in the humor vein again.

After the Marvel Age began in 1961, it seemed fitting that Marvel would lampoon its own characters, and from 1967–1969, it did just that with Not Brand Ecch.

Later issues of Ecch transcended the format and soft parodies of other cultural events such as the Beatles started to creep into the pages, as well as parodies of Archie and the three Ghoulunatics from the Tales from the Crypt series.

Marvel tried again with Spoof during 1970–1972. This was closer in spirit to MAD due to the TV and movie parodies, but the Comics Code was a barrier to what potentially could be done.

Then, in early 1973, the time was right to reprint Not Brand Ecch issues into a new series called Crazy! The title “Crazy” was now available, having long been abandoned from another MAD magazine imitator from the ’50s published by Charlton.

That Crazy! did not catch on, but the title stuck and the time seemed right to start another black-and-white humor magazine as Marvel was expanding its blackand-white line anyway.

Marv Wolfman, Crazy’s original editor, explains how he attained that position: “Stan [Lee] or Roy [Thomas] called me in to create the magazine and edit it.

I’m assuming Stan came up with the original idea to do Crazy. I think they wanted to get into the MAD field. I may be wrong, but I think Marvel had done a humor magazine back in the ’50s [Snafu] everyone copied MAD when it was a hit. I think between the success of MAD and National Lampoon, they just decided to do it again.”

One of the people that Wolfman added to the original staff was a young writer named Steve Gerber, who had just joined Marvel in 1972. “Steve always had an off-kilter sense of humor that I felt translated perfectly for what I wanted to see in Crazy,” Wolfman says. “Stan wanted [Crazy] to be more MAD/Cracked, where I wanted it more Lampoon. We sort of split the difference and Steve’s way of looking at the world was perfect. I also knew he was a funny writer as well as a good one,” according to Wolfman.

Gerber’s first appearance in Crazy was actually in #2 (Feb. 1974), with a piece called “Correspondence School Ads You’ve Never Seen.” In that issue’s editorial, Wolfman describes Gerber as “a self-made religious fanatic who suffers from terminal Ring Around the Collar … born and raised in St. Louis, which probably explains a lot.”

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Issue #9 (Feb. 1975) did not sport writer credits, but this mention was made of Gerber in the editorial: “Steve Gerber dropped by the offices the other day.

He was on the ninth floor. We’re on the sixth floor.

He waved as he dropped by the window.” The credits for issue #9 were belatedly mentioned in #10 (Apr. 1975).

Wolfman “stepped down” from the editorial duties on Crazy with issue #10 (1975) and handed them over to Steve: “I had far too much work and because of the situation there I had to pretty much do Crazy by myself which made it impossible. I was also editing most of the other b&w books at Marvel and writing.

Something had to go, so the mag that took the most time and made me the least money had to go.”

Despite Wolfman’s departure, he was still listed in the credits as “Big Boss” through #14 (Nov. 1975) and edited Crazy Super Special #1 (Summer 1975).

With Gerber in charge, it was “business as usual” and the standard features such as “Commercials That Drive You Crazy,” “Just Plain Folks,” and the “History and Evolution of Moosekind” continued. Gerber himself made a drawn cameo by Marie Severin in “The Nebbish” story in #11 (June 1975), announcing Gerber’s promotion to editor.

It is presumed that Gerber discontinued his editorial duties after issue #14 (Nov. 1975) as his Howard the Duck character was soon to be spun off into its own title. Wolfman speculates, “I don’t know.

Could be. Also, Steve was like me in that we wanted to push the envelope and maybe he couldn’t go as far as he did.”

Gerber’s last appearance in Crazy was in #15 (Jan. 1976), with a leftover article from his editorial

reign called “A Crazy White Paper Report on The Art and Science of Dieting.”

After Gerber’s departure, Paul Lamont took over editorial reins for #15 (Jan. 1976), and then editor Paul Laikin ran the magazine for the next four years.

Crazy was originally a refreshing, funny, and entertaining satire magazine that descended into a shadow of its former self after Wolfman and Gerber left.

Crazy got a final facelift from 1980–1983 with editor Larry Hama, who returned the magazine to form with several funnier features, but eventually the magazine had run its course and ended with #94 (Apr. 1983).

Wolfman comments on why he or Gerber never returned to Crazy and help turn it around: “Those things aren’t our decisions to make. Those decisions come from the publisher. I think they were very happy with what came after us since the magazine lasted for 94 issues. I’d love to [edit another magazine like Crazy], but I don’t think that’ll happen.”

Wolfman’s final assessment of his departed friend: “Steve was genuine and a warm person as well as a really good writer. But even had he not been a good writer he was a good person.”

Natural Lampoons (left) Gerber had a penchant for writing material with a darker slant, like this bogus toy catalog featuring “Baby Barely Alive,” a doll with disfigured limbs, bandages, and a hospital bed with an IV bag. (right) Gerber’s Rolling Stone spoof came complete with record album reviews including one of a fictitious group called “Crow” and their album Hard to Eat. Such attention to detail made these parodies virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.

MARK ARNOLD is a comic-book and animation historian. He is currently at work on a book about Total TeleVision (Underdog, Tennessee Tuxedo), and published his first book in 2006 about the history of Harvey Comics.

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®

Think of Steve Gerber’s output in the 1970s and one could scarcely be blamed for thinking Marvel Comics.

For a DC Comics fan, though, the answer might be something different. It’s all a matter of perspective— and perspective was what Metal Men #45 was all about. “Evil,” its title declared, “Was in the Eye of the Beholder.”

The Metal Men had been one of DC’s most novel creations of the 1960s, a sextet of robots endowed with personalities and idiosyncrasies keyed to their respective metals. Written by the equally idiosyncratic Robert Kanigher and illustrated

by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, the series was a blend of cartoony charm and melodrama that saw the heroes repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt by their creator William “Doc” Magnus. “I had the first Metal Men Showcase issue back before my mom threw out some of my comics,” Walter Simonson recalls. “It is possible that I might actually have read that particular comic to shreds. I thought the flying manta ray was pretty cool.”

The tone of the series took a dramatic shift in 1968, transforming the sextet into fugitives that ultimately had to hide their true nature under “human” secret identities. And Doc was no help at all, having first been rendered comatose and then kidnapped and brainwashed by the dictator of a

by

Junkheaped Cover Dick Giordano’s published cover (inset) for Metal Men #45 (Apr.–May 1976) is a winner, but it’s too bad Walt Simonson’s original cover for that issue, seen here (scanned from its publication in The Art of Walter Simonson trade paperback), wasn’t used.

TM & © DC Comics.

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John Wells

nation called Karnia. By the end of 1969, Doc Magnus was the enemy, employing a robot army and a hydrogen bomb as his conflicted creations were dispatched to kill him. Metal Men ended with #41, its principals left in a stalemate with their creator.

Cutting its losses, DC returned to square one in 1972, reprinting Showcase #37’s first Metal Men story in The Flash #214 and reviving the group in its original form—minus Doc—in a Batman team-up (The Brave and Bold #103). While sales on a 1973 reprint series (Metal Men #42–44) weren’t up to snuff, the heroes were popular enough to get two more shots with Batman in 1974 and 1975 (Brave and Bold #113, 121).

It stood to reason, then, that a new Metal Men comic might sell. Gerry Conway, newly returned to DC as an editor, quickly put it on his to-do list, scheduling a one-shot story for an early issue of First Issue Special or Super-Team Family. His choice of scripter was at once surprising—given the man’s exclusive presence at Marvel—and inspired. “I asked [Steve Gerber] to write it,” Conway confirms. “I’d always been a fan of both Steve’s writing and the Metal Men, and I imagined it would be interesting and fun to get his take on them.”

Once written, though, Gerber’s story wound up in limbo. As Walter Simonson recalled in The Art of Walter Simonson (1989), the script wound up “in a drawer somewhere.” Simonson explains that “Carmine Infantino, the publisher at DC at that time, was the gentleman who actually wanted me to draw the story.

He liked my work and really supported my early work at DC.” The result was electrifying, so much so that Infantino bypassed plans to run the story as a one-shot and instead declared it to be the first issue of a revived Metal Men comic (starting with #45, where the reprint series had left off).

The strapped-for-cash Metal Men opened the story by cracking a safe, a deceptive sequence that pulled back to reveal that the team was on a cross-country lecture tour. A question about Doc Magnus’ status— prompting a polite “Next question”—segued to the genius’ current home in a Washington, D.C. sanitarium, where he’d been forcibly admitted “at the ‘suggestion’ of the C.I.A.” It wasn’t working out too well. Bad enough that innocuous pictures inspired declarations like “Trample! Raze! Annihilate!” [see bottom right]. The images of the Metal Men sent Doc into a homicidal rage.

An enormous amount of information—the identification and background on the six Metal Men and their creator—was conveyed in those opening pages.

What made it impressive—and a testament to Gerber’s skill—is that the reader wasn’t even conscious of it.

It’s only in comparison to a modern comic’s lack of basic stage-setting that one notices at all. Indeed, the economy of the entire story—setting aside the fact that Steve had no choice in the matter—gave the issue an intensity that’s helped it live on in the memories of everyone who read it.

However old-school the technical details, Gerber’s dialogue was very much contemporary. Discrimination (against robots). A robber unmasked as an unemployed bellhop trying to feed his baby. And the crux of the story: A government bureaucrat who declared that, homicidal rages to the contrary, Doc was “cured”— because the military had spent all the money they’d allotted for him. “Budgets are budgets,” the man named Whittier declared. “Unless Magnus can produce, we’ll have to consider his therapy a failure and scrap the project.”

Gerry’s Friend

So a compromise was reached (over his physician’s objections) and Doc presented his patrons with a towering robot he called the Plutonium Man. The government’s General Casper (a holdover from the 1960s strip) was horrified at the prospect of such a lethally radioactive being but Whittier was delighted. Pulling a gun, he demanded to see more—and got it in spades when Magnus released the Plutonium Man into the environment.

Whittier, it seems, was an agent of Karnia, one who’d worked his way up in the ranks of the US military complex with the idea of using Doc Magnus’ genius against the US—whom his nation blamed for giving them no reparations after the destruction the Metal Men had unleashed there.

“No military aid … no economic aid … no offers of nuclear reactors … but then, Karnia has no oil resources, does it?”

The Plutonium Man was Doc Magnus’ rage personified and it went berserk when it came faceto-face with the Metal Men—even as they recognized Doc at its core. In the span of a few pages, Tin, Lead, Iron, Mercury, and Gold fell one by one, futilely trying in vain to stop the radioactive terror.

And Whittier finally grasped the enormity of what he’d done. Rather than have Karnia’s name besmirched further, he made a suicide run for the super-robot, firing bullets into its fail-safe systems before he was reduced to cinders. Seizing the opportunity, the last Metal “Man”—the curvaceous Platinum, a.k.a. Tina—enveloped the Plutonium Man, containing its power long enough to trigger the “China Syndrome” (doubtless the first time most readers had heard the phrase).

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(above) From the pages of Marvel’s housezine FOOM #7, 1970s-vintage photos of Metal Men editor Gerry Conway (left) and writer Steve Gerber. (below) Walter Simonson’s typography enlivens his energetic art on the rampunctuous three-panel sequence from Metal Men #45.

Photos © 2008 Marvel.

Metal Men TM & © DC Comics.

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In all their years together, Tina had never stopped carrying a torch for Doc Magnus. And he’d never reciprocated, dismissing her behavior as a “faulty responsometer.” But her sacrifice and the sight of her blistering-hot remains at his feet reached the part of Doc’s mind that no amount of operations or therapy had been able to touch.

“I’m going to rebuild them, General,” Magnus would declare in the epilogue as he cradled Tina’s platinum skull. “All of them—rebuild what I once was.”

“He owes it to the Metal Men,” Magnus’ doctor observed, “and, much as I hate to admit it, to Whittier.

Odd … such self-sacrifice from so petty a man.

More than petty. Before all this, I’d actually have called him evil.”

Few stories conveyed as clearly the presence of both Gerber-the-boy and Gerber-the-man. There were the jabs at the government war machine and dark parallels of the three-panel reaction shots that typified a Bob Kanigher script. But there was also a fannish familiarity with what had gone before, from an evocation of the first Metal Men story—itself featuring a radioactive menace that destroyed the team—to the resolution of loose ends from the 1969 cliffhanger. And then there was the genuine affection for the characters themselves, one that came across most clearly as each of the Metal Men perished. Such death scenes were a staple of the Silver Age series, but rarely did they carry as much weight as they did here. Tina’s last thoughts before she

Happier Days Simonson’s 1976 rendition of the Metal Men and their creator, Dr. Will Magnus.

TM & © DC Comics.

stopped the Plutonium Man (“At least I got to see Doc once more…”) and the effect her demise had on Magnus were agonizing.

If Gerber was a particular fan of the Metal Men in his youth, Gerry Conway is unaware of it: “But he certainly was a fan of comics, and well versed in the various writers and writing styles.” When all was said and done, Conway concludes, “I just remember I enjoyed Steve’s take on it.”

Simonson, likewise, no longer recalled precisely what details Gerber brought to the story’s visuals.

“As a full script, there would have been panel descriptions as well as dialogue,” Simonson says. “I’m sure I took a few liberties here and there as I was laying out the story, trying to make the visuals work as effectively as possible. I would guess that the ‘trample raze annihilate’ typographical display was mine, taken from Steve’s caption. I lettered this particular comic and always liked playing with letter forms.

“As far as Steve emulating Kanigher’s approach, I couldn’t say,” he continues. “Since the issue was done full-script and Steve had already gone back to Marvel, we didn’t talk while I was doing the issue.

I was given the script and ran with it.

“I really enjoyed drawing it,” Simonson adds.

“It was a nice change for me. I’d already drawn an adventure strip in “Manhunter” [Detective Comics #437–443] and a magic strip in “Dr. Fate” [First Issue Special #9], work that required a rather serious kind of drawing. The Metal Men comic lent itself to a free-form sort of cartooning, and to some playful typography, both of which delighted me. And I thought it was a cool story to boot.

“DC, and Carmine in particular, liked what I’d done with the art on Steve’s issue. And I presume that they’d liked Steve’s story as well. But since Steve had gone back to Marvel, using him to write new stories wasn’t an option. So a new writer, Gerry Conway, was given the assignment to write new Metal Men issues and I was kept on as the penciler/inker.”

After two issues with Conway (including a Plutonium Man encore in #47) and another set with Marty Pasko (#48–49), an exhausted Simonson made his departure. The series continued through late 1977 (#56) with Pasko and Joe Staton and was scheduled for a multi-part Conway/Ramona Fradon revival in 1978’s Adventure Comics before the “DC Implosion” put an end to it.

Despite the fine work of all the writers who followed, though, it’s still the Gerber effort that we remember best and one whose influence extended from his generation to the next. Grant Morrison, who declared it “one of my all-time favorite comics” in a May 8, 2007 Newsarama interview, would make effective use of Doc Magnus’ mental struggles— and the Plutonium Man—in the pages of DC’s weekly series 52.

Metal Men #45 was one of those perfect storms of creativity, one that DC fans can look back on … and marvel.

JOHN WELLS knows more about DC Comics history than just about anyone, and is kind enough to share that knowledge from time to time with BACK ISSUE readers.

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TM & © DC Comics.

Golden Years Gerber’s Mister Miracle cast, as illustrated by Michael Golden: Scott Free, Big Barda, Alianna (a Gerbercreated character), and Oberon.

Courtesy of Modern Masters.

TM & © DC Comics.

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The most violent and dramatic instance in DC’s Mister Miracle #23 (Apr. 1978) comes at its end as Mister Miracle breaks his mental shackles with a cry of revelation.

Scott Free, a New God born on peaceful New Genesis, raised on dreaded Apokolips, and once-established super escape artist on Earth, has taken one of his greatest steps forward, admitting a deep sense of humanity that he had internally developed but never recognized.

It is a pure Steve Gerber moment. The surrounding trappings, that of strong defensive mechanisms within Mister Miracle’s psyche and the familiar pacing of 1970s superhero storytelling, fall away to reveal a soul standing bare and in shock, yet rich in future potential.

Mister Miracle has changed, writer Gerber has promised a new direction, and the reader craves more.

Gerber and up-and-coming artist Michael Golden picked up in Mister Miracle #23 where writer Steve Englehart and artist Marshall Rogers had left off in MM #22, both in plot and cliffhanger. Gerber immediately

Last Issue Special The Michael Golden/ Russ Heath cover to the unpublished Mister Miracle #26.

(Courtesy of Modern Masters editor Eric Nolen-Weathington.)

TM & © DC Comics.

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dropped Mister Miracle, after his confrontation with Darkseid on Apokolips, into a place equal parts otherdimensional and Free’s subconscious. There Scott met the androgynous mentor Ethos and was subjected to a series of mental scenarios involving those closest to him: his wife, Big Barda; his little buddy, Oberon; his nemesis, Darkseid; and his best friend, Orion.

Scott Free emerged with a greater sense of self, the human aspect having finally taken center stage.

However, Gerber had no intention of discarding the messiah complex Englehart had set in motion—he simply shifted the locale and changed the choice of sheep Free would abide over as a self-appointed shepherd.

Mister Miracle was now intent on raising the human race’s awareness of the threat of Darkseid, while also once again taking up the mantle of super escape artist.

Not a bad start for Gerber in what, according to editor Larry Hama, was essentially a series of fill-in issues until Len Wein, having returned to DC from a stint at Marvel Comics, took over as ongoing writer.

Before Scott could set his plans in motion, there were a few preliminary details he needed to attend to (presented in Mister Miracle #24, June 1978). First he returned to Apokolips to retrieve Oberon (stranded there since #22). Then he traveled to New Genesis to pick up the fully recovered Big Barda. After that it was back to Earth for some quality time with his wife and some much-needed rest. Then Scott made preparations to move out west to California. Finally he stopped by Thaddeus Brown’s office and rehired his struggling friend as his promotions manager. With that, the foursome hit the road and journeyed to Las Vegas, where Scott would perform his first act as a reinstated modern Houdini. In the space of 17 splendidly constructed and entertaining pages, Gerber returned Mister Miracle to his original roots established by Jack Kirby in the first issues of MM published in the early 1970s.

The rousing triumph of Scott Free’s escape from an immaculately sealed steel coffin dropped into the Colorado River, punctuated by Oberon’s unleashed enthusiasm at witnessing his friend’s return from certain death, is the highlight of issue #24, well executed

by Gerber and Golden. “Probably the main discussion I had with Steve about writing the book,” recalls Hama, “was explaining to him what I thought Golden’s strong points were and having him deliberately work towards them. ‘He gives good machines and gonzo crowd scenes,’ something like that.” This last page, with Mister Miracle hovering in the sky above the crowd, body poised in full angelic descent and arms outstretched as if reaching in communion to the cheering throng—with Oberon’s right arm pumping excitedly upward—is Gerber and Golden clicking on all cylinders. It also bodes well for Scott Free in gaining the positive attention of the masses so as to preach his crusade against Darkseid.

Mister Miracle’s messianic venture did not escape the notice of the Lord of Apokolips, of course, who sought to nix the revival as quickly as possible by having Granny Goodness thwart her former pupil’s mission, as revealed in the beginning of Mister Miracle #25 (Aug.–Sept. 1978). Granny enlisted the aid of an individual introduced in the previous issue, the young Alianna, member of the mysterious Hubbard family. Alianna, daughter of Rex and Ida Hubbard of Glendale, California, had acquired and developed some enhanced physical powers as a result of a childhood accident. Though always in

Super Escape Artist A 2007 Michael Golden sketch from the Paradise Con in Toronto. Courtesy of Murray Roach.

Mister Miracle TM & © DC Comics.

intense pain, Alianna had been able to channel the pain into superb fighting skills, and Granny added her intense training methods to make Alianna a powerhouse to challenge and defeat Scott Free. Meanwhile, Scott and company had arrived from Las Vegas and been escorted to their new home in Laurel Canyon, near Glendale, and no sooner had they begun to settle in when Alianna appeared in the house, instantly subduing Barda and Oberon. Scott was able to hold his own and defeat Alianna.

Granny then appeared, not the least bit impressed by her new pupil. Alianna wasn’t impressed with Granny, either, as she felt she was only undergoing combat training, not a murder mission.

It’s not good to disobey Granny Goodness, of course, and she informed Alianna that her parents were murdered the moment she failed. Granny also told Scott that, as with all messiahs, there is a balancing factor involved, and that one day Scott would confront his anti-Christ.

That is how Mister Miracle #25 concluded, with many questions to be resolved: Were Alianna’s parents really dead? Were Big Barda and Oberon okay? Did Scott Free meet his own anti-Christ? Was “freedom” really a four-letter word, as the title for next issue’s story stated?

The answer remains startling: We may never know.

Unfortunately, Mister Miracle #25 was not only the end of Gerber’s run on the book, but also of the Mister Miracle title.

Mister Miracle #26 was scheduled to be released in July, the second month of the DC Explosion, the company’s highly publicized addition of eight pages of story to all its standard 36-page books (which subsequently became the DC Implosion, which is another tale, and a far more lengthy one). But then Mister Miracle was abruptly canceled prior to the Explosion, along with Return of the New Gods, Secret Society of Super-Villains, Aquaman, and Shade, The Changing Man. Scott Free would eventually return to team up with Superman in DC Comics Presents #12 (Aug. 1979) in a tale written by Englehart, but it did not pick up from where MM #25 left off.

While researching a comic book that never existed, I’m uncertain if Gerber even wrote the Mister Miracle story in #26. According to

the letters column in Mister Miracle #24, writer Len Wein would soon be taking over the book. When I asked Wein if he recalled the issue he was starting with, he remembered only plotting a few issues. Since Mister Miracle #26 was scheduled for publication I’m assuming it was completed and that Gerber had at least that book to his credit, but, honestly, I am simply not sure. Hama, Bob Rozakis, and Paul Levitz, gentlemen all, were unable to confirm my suspicions, and Michael Golden was not available for an interview by this issue’s deadline. However, in Eric Nolen-Weathington’s Modern Masters Volume 12: Michael Golden (TwoMorrows Publishing, 2007), Golden notes that there may be one Mister Miracle story that did not see print. So for the time being there remains a mystery to be solved.

There is, of course, no mystery to the quality of Steve Gerber’s writing on Mister Miracle. It was a brief, truncated run that had, in its own way, the potential to be up to par with Jack Kirby’s earlier work on the character. Gerber’s was a subtler, more introspective take on Scott Free, dynamically illustrated by Golden and inker Russ Heath in issues #24 and 25 (Joe Giella provided “softer”’ inks over Golden in #23). If this team had been able to remain on the title they may have accomplished a classic for the late 1970s. Instead, we have a fondly remembered great start, and a forever might-have-been. Perhaps one day that lost Mister Miracle story will come to light, which means there may be one “last” Steve Gerber story for all of us to enjoy.

JIM KINGMAN purchased his first comic book, DC’s World’s Finest Comics #211, on a family road trip in March of 1972, and has been reading and collecting comic books ever since (with no end in sight). He has been writing about comics since 1993, and currently edits and publishes Comic Effect, a small-press fanzine emphasizing the fun in reading comics. He also has a monthly column on comics at silverbulletcomicbooks.com.

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In the early 1980s, Steve Gerber wasn’t known as a DC Comics writer, with only one issue of Metal Men and three of Mister Miracle to his credit. Yet DC’s Dick Giordano tapped him to pen a four-issue Superman spin-off miniseries, The Phantom Zone (Jan.–Apr. 1982), teaming Gerber with his frequent Howard the Duck partner, penciler Gene Colan. The pairing was, as expected, magical and macabre. Gerber’s harsh interpretation of the merciless Phantom Zone villains took readers into a dangerous terrain that longtime Superman editors Mort Weisinger and Julie Schwartz had never dared visit.

Schwartz did eventually “go there,” bringing Gerber back to wrap up his Phantom Zone story in the last issue of the Superman team-up series DC Comics Presents.

As hinted at in this interview, conducted in early 2006 for my TwoMorrows book The Krypton Companion, Steve Gerber had planned a return to Krypton when, in the mid-1980s, he and Frank Miller proposed a reboot of Superman during DC’s campaign to revitalize the Man of Steel. I had hoped to one day revisit this topic with Mr. Gerber and explore it in depth, but, alas, his vision of a new Superman continuity joins his unfinished Omega the Unknown series as one of the great mysteries of his writing career. Gerber did twice return to the Superman mythos, however, with the 1999 miniseries A. Bizarro and the 2000 miniseries Superman: Last Son of Earth.

– Michael Eury

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MICHAEL EURY: Most readers assumed that the Phantom Zone miniseries was DC’s response to the Phantom Zone villains appearing in the movie Superman II, but given the peculiarities of scheduling, that might not be the case. Was the Phantom Zone comic indeed inspired by the movie’s success?

STEVE GERBER: The short answer is “yes.” I’m glad we stuck with the comics version of the villains,

Villains Unleashed Superman, trapped in the Zone with reformed Kryptonian bad guy Quex-Ul, can’t help his cousin Supergirl as the Zone escapees pillage Earth. Scan of the original Gene Colan/Dick Giordano cover art to The Phantom Zone #2, courtesy of Tom Ziuko.

TM & © DC Comics.

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GERBER’S SUPERMAN STORIES • The Phantom Zone #1–4 (Jan.–Apr. 1982) • DC Comics Presents #97: Superman and the Phantom Zone Villains (Sept. 1986) • A. Bizarro #1–4 (Aug.–Nov. 1999) • Superman: Last Son of Earth #1–2 (2000)

Gerber’s First Superman Adventure into Fear #17 (Oct. 1973), introducing Gerber’s Superman homage, Wundarr. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

though, even if Zod’s Italian fascist-inspired uniform looked a little goofy.

EURY: You’d done very little work for DC prior to this.

How were you chosen to write Phantom Zone?

GERBER: As best I recall, Dick Giordano approached me about it. It’s not something I would’ve come up with myself, because I was never a big fan of the PZ villains.

EURY: Phantom Zone was edited by Dick Giordano.

Why didn’t Superman line editor Julie Schwartz oversee it?

GERBER: Again, this is a guess: Dick may have thought I would have had difficulty working with Julie, whose approach to story and character was very different from my own. I would probably have agreed with that judgment, and so, probably, would Julie. Much as I liked and admired Julie, I don’t think we would have been a good fit as editor and writer over the long term.

EURY: Did you bring your former Howard the Duck collaborator Gene Colan on board, or was he Dick’s pick?

GERBER: As I recall, I asked for Gene, and Dick immediately agreed. I knew exactly what Gene’s Superman would look like before he even set pencil to paper, and he didn’t disappoint me. What really blew me away was Gene’s Clark Kent! He looked real and human, maybe for the first time in the character’s history. Gene was suffering a little from typecasting at both Marvel and DC. At Marvel, he’d become the Dracula guy; as a result, at DC, he became the Batman guy for a while. They thought of him as an artist who could create a certain kind of eeriness and mood.

Which was true, of course, but it hardly defined Gene’s limits. He was capable of doing really wonderful sci-fiflavored action stuff, too.

EURY: You had written a Superman pastiche almost ten years earlier when you introduced Wundarr into the Man-Thing series in Adventure into Fear #17 (Oct. 1973).

What’s the story behind Wundarr’s creation?

GERBER: Nothing except my love of the Superman character and my desire to do a little parody/homage.

EURY: According to Roy Thomas, Stan Lee was miffed over Wundarr. Did you catch any heat from Stan or Roy? GERBER: Actually, it was DC who was miffed.

Marvel was the miffee. What I had intended as parody, DC saw as plagiarism. From what I was told, there were angry words exchanged, but it never got anywhere near a courtroom. Marvel agreed to do another Wundarr story that would set him drastically apart from Superman—which is what I had always intended— and that was that. (Wundarr’s home planet never exploded. His father was the alarmist the Krypton elders supposed Jor-El to be.) I’m sure Roy must have conveyed to me Stan’s displeasure with the incident.

Under the circumstances, of course, Stan had every right to be displeased. I’m still amazed, though, that DC took it so seriously.

EURY: The Phantom Zone reintroduced Daily Planet employee Charlie Kweskill, formerly the Zone villain Quex-Ul, whose powers and memories were erased by gold kryptonite in his sole prior appearance in Superman #157 (Nov. 1962). Were you aware of this character prior to your developing Phantom Zone, or was Kweskill a discovery during your research?

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San Diego Comic-Con 1982 Steve Gerber gets devil horns from Althaea Yronwode, daughter of editor cat yronwode, at a Comic-Con function the year Phantom Zone was published.

Photo courtesy of Alan Light.

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GERBER: I’d read the story when it was originally published, but the strangeness of it really popped out in the research stage. Here was this Kryptonian, living and working among humans, even believing himself to be human, but carrying deeply repressed memories of a prior—and villainous—existence on another world. These huge concepts were tossed around very casually during the Weisinger years.

Quex-Ul never appeared again, nor was his presence at the Daily Planet ever mentioned. For me he became the “hook” that made the PZ villains understandable on a human level, the character who could lead the others out of the realm of caricature.

EURY: While on that topic, how well versed were you in Superman’s Kryptonian history before Phantom Zone?

GERBER: As well versed as anyone who grew up reading and loving the Superman books of the late ’50s and early ’60s. I vividly remember reading the first Phantom Zone story—which actually appeared in Superboy or Adventure Comics, if I recall—when it was

How many Kryptonians does it take… …to open the door of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude?

Four, with Zod directing, as seen in this Gene Colan pencil page from Phantom Zone #2. Courtesy of Tom Ziuko.

TM & © DC Comics.

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originally published. Well versed enough to remember that the “Map of Krypton” printed in the first Superman Annual, a comic book I hadn’t looked at for almost two decades, made reference to a place described as the oldest city on Krypton. I can’t recall the name of that city at the moment, but the very notion that it existed seemed to open up huge new possibilities. It suggested that different locales on Krypton might have different cultures, different architectures, different economic and sociological realities. I’ve always been skeptical of the one planet/one culture concept.

EURY: Phantom Zone #1’s cover copy asked, “A Humane Method of Criminal Confinement … or a Dimension without Hope?” How did Phantom Zone reflect your personal views of the real world’s penal system?

GERBER: I didn’t write the cover copy for that issue and didn’t see it before it reached the stands. To be honest, I wasn’t thinking much about earthly penal systems at that time. I was trying to decide whether Jor-El had created a humane system or a really easy way to warehouse criminals out of sight and mind.

EURY: The often-violent Phantom Zone pushed the envelope for DC super-hero fare of the day, examples being Colan’s depiction of man-hater Faora Hu-Ul’s victims in issue #1 and pyrotic Az-Rel setting Nam-Ek on fire in #2. Any problems with the Comics Code during the miniseries?

GERBER: None that I know of.

EURY: In issue #2, members of the Metropolis S.W.A.T. team are wounded by their own bullets, ricocheting off of Kryptonian villains they were firing upon. This type of realism had long been absent from Superman stories. What was Julie Schwartz’s reaction to your darker handling of Superman’s world?

GERBER: I can only speculate. There must have been something about it that he liked, or he wouldn’t have invited me to write the last issue of DC Comics Presents a few years later.

EURY: The Kryptonian escapees come close to igniting World War III, their actions triggering a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and what was then the U.S.S.R. Did this spark any controversy during this pre-Watchmen DC era?

GERBER: Again, not that I recall.

EURY: How do you respond to readers who argue that the Phantom Zone villains and other Kryptonian survivors— Krypto, Supergirl, the Kandorians, etc.—weakened Superman’s appeal as the “Last Son of Krypton”?

GERBER: I think they were right, to some extent.

At age 13 or so, I could get past Krypto, Supergirl, the PZers, and even the entire city of Kandor. They were interesting concepts. They generated interesting stories. For me, the line was crossed when Supergirl’s parents turned up alive. When that happened, I pretty much gave up on the Superman books. I didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out Jor-El and Lara had survived, too.

EURY: You penned a sequel to your miniseries, DC Comics Presents #97’s (Sept. 1986) “Phantom Zone: The Final Chapter,” penciled by Rick Veitch and inked

by Bob Smith. This time you worked with editor Schwartz, on one of his last Superman stories. What was Julie’s attitude about the impending changes with the character he had edited for 16 years?

GERBER: Just a guess, but from talking to him at the time, I think he felt a kind of relief, as if a burden had been lifted. He never asked for the Superman books. I think he would’ve been very content to edit his revival characters, JLA, and Strange Adventures for his entire career.

Earth’s Lesser-Known Kryptonian Kryptonian criminal Quex-Ul (who became “Earthman” Charlie Kweskill) first appeared in Superman #157 (Nov. 1962), and was revived by Gerber in The Phantom Zone.

Man of Steel A Superman sketch done for Gerber

by Dave Simons, who contributed it for print.

TM & © DC Comics.

EURY: In “Final Chapter” you revealed the Zone’s sentience, a fascinating concept. For the benefit of those who didn’t read this tale, would you offer a recap?

GERBER: As best I remember: The Phantom Zone, it turned out, was not a separate dimension, but a field of consciousness surrounding a being called Aethyr.

That field had physical limits, so it was actually possible to cross the landscape of Aethyr’s consciousness and come out on the “other side” of the Phantom Zone.

That was the basic idea. The ramifications of it were much more complex.

EURY: While DCCP #97 was published concurrently with Alan Moore’s imaginary tale “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?,” your “Final Chapter” was the in-continuity send-off to Superman’s pre-Crisis adventures, with the Bizarro World, Mr. Mxyzptlk’s fifth dimension, and Argo City being destroyed. Looking back on “Final Chapter” twenty years later, I realize that your story would have provided a fresh starting point for Superman, without the necessity of the Man of Steel reboot. Do you agree?

GERBER: Not that story, exactly, but something like it, told in an extended format and greater depth, might have worked. The series was suffocating under decades’ worth of accumulated clutter and needed a thorough housecleaning, but I felt the reboot threw away a lot of good stuff along with the junk.

Superman TM & © DC Comics.

EURY: I’m curious about the proposed revamping of Superman you pitched to DC in 1985 with Frank Miller. What were your plans?

GERBER: That would take hours. Conceptually, what we wanted to do was recreate the character with a contemporary sensibility, while adhering as closely as possible to the spirit of the Siegel and Shuster original. That’s vague, I know, but it had to do with Superman’s place among humanity and his role as a force for social justice, a theme that, judging from the character’s first year, was very important to Jerry Siegel.

MICHAEL EURY, who claims to have been raised in the Bottle City of Kandor as “Myk-El,” is the editor of BACK ISSUE and has authored or co-authored several books on comics history, including the forthcoming The Batcave Companion.

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“Lords of Light!” “Demon Dogs!” “Riiiiiide!”

Thundarr the Barbarian faithfuls will instantly recognize the aforementioned battle cries as frequently uttered by the titular cartoon savage, a blond, muscle-bound, Conan-like adventurer who traveled a post-apocalyptic Earth (circa 3994 A.D.), conquering tyrants everywhere. Unlike Robert E. Howard’s famous dark-maned savage, however, Thundarr (voice by Bob Ridgely) has never been a thief or a pirate. Rather, he’s a true hero through and through (which makes sense, since Thundarr was essentially a children’s television program), willing to risk life and limb time and again to right wrongs, promote freedom, and exact justice, most notably against evil wizards hellbent on enslaving and lording over humankind.

THUNDARR STRIKES Produced by Joseph Ruby and Ken Spears (of RubySpears Productions), with story-editing by Steve Gerber (who co-created the show with Ruby), Thundarr the Barbarian debuted on Oct. 4, 1980, at 10:30 AM (Eastern Standard Time) on the ABC Television Network (at the same time as Popeye on CBS and Batman and the Super 7 on NBC). Markedly different than other Saturday morning fare of the era, Thundarr was an animated series with real bite, an honest-to-goodness action/adventure show, despite heavy-handed restrictions employed by network censors of the time.

In The Comic Times #4 (Jan. 1980), Gerber remarked that “the difficulty with the Saturday morning show was to make the Broadcast Standards and Practices division of the network accept any conflict at all, much less physical conflict.” In Fantastic Films #20 (Dec. 1980), Gerber stated that “we have a number of severe limitations. With all of the mayhem that goes on in our show, the Program Practices will still not allow our main character to throw a punch or to hit anybody. He can do all kinds of acrobatic things, but he can’t even trip anyone.”

Trinity Alex Toth character designs for Ookla, Thundarr, and Ariel. © 1980 Ruby-Spears Productions.

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Brett Weiss

Even with censors breathing down their necks, Gerber and company managed to pull off an exciting half-hour of television each week. As long as the violence portrayed was not easily emulated by children, Thundarr could battle bad guys in a relatively convincing manner. For example, though left jabs to the face, uppercuts to the jaw, and kicks to the crotch would never have passed muster with the censors, hurling giant boulders at villains and jump-kicking nasties in the chest were considered acceptable. In addition, the show had plenty of explosions, vehicle crashes, ray blasts, and other forms of light fantasy violence.

Predictably, Gerber did get frustrated at times during the creation of the show, as evidenced by his remarks in Fantastic Films #20: “What I would have liked to have seen … is a character barbaric enough to be able to defend himself and perhaps even kill when necessary in order to stay alive or to protect his friends from a menace that couldn’t be dealt with in any other way.

The big thing that we’ve had to overcome is that the censors tend to treat children as if they’re not just morons, but lunatics, potentially dangerous creatures.”

In Comics Feature #10 (July 1981), Gerber sounded a bit more positive regarding what he envisioned with Thundarr and the resultant outcome: “We wanted to make the show as nearly pure adventure as we could, without the kind of cloying, preachy, mealy-mouthed social-consciousness crap that hobbled shows like Shazam, Isis, and, for a time, Super Friends. We wanted to do adventure, suspense, and, insofar as it was allowed, horror—in other words, to remain true to the spirit of the sword-and-sorcery genre. We’ve done more, actually, than I expected we’d be able to.” In The Comic Times #4, Gerber called the show “considerably better than what you usually find on Saturday morning.”

Ironically, one network restriction—the fact that knives and other sharp objects were taboo on Saturday morning TV—led to the creation of a beloved

Thundarr trademark, the powerful Sunsword, which is nothing less than one of the coolest weapons ever seen in a cartoon series. The Sunsword attached magnetlike to Thundarr’s wrist guards and was activated and deactivated similar to a lightsaber. It could absorb magic, slice through concrete and steel (and, one must presume, lop off a wizard’s head like a knife through butter), and much more. When swung, the weapon made a deep, satisfying, electronic sound like something coming out of an Atari 2600 video game.

Despite the coolness of Thundarr’s Sunsword, the iconic (at least in this writer’s mind) implement failed to make ToyFare magazine’s list of “The 50 Greatest Fictional Weapons of All Time,” a feature that appeared in issue #125 (Jan. 2008). What did make the list, though, was He-Man’s Power Sword (weighing in at number two, just behind Green Lantern’s power ring), which pales in comparison. Sure, the Power Sword could transform the meek Prince Adam into the musclebound He-Man and the cowardly Cringer into the armored Battle Cat, but the Sunsword got much more use in terms of actual combat.

He-Man was more on par with the Super Friends in its reluctance to show heroes kicking bad-guy butt.

Must-See TV ABC’s and NBC’s comic-book ads for their Saturday morning lineups, each including Thundarr.

Thundarr © Ruby-Spears Productions. ABC © ABC-TV. NBC © NBC-TV. Other characters © their respective copyright holders.

THUNDARR AGENTS Although he relied heavily on the mighty Sunsword, Thundarr valued his friends even more. Unlike Conan, who usually traveled solo, Thundarr rode (via horseback) side by side with two constant companions: the beautiful, busty Princess Ariel (voiced by Nellie Bellflower) and the big, brutish Ookla the Mok (voiced by Henry Corden).

In every episode, the trio would work as a team to vanquish their foes, despite dealing with the occasional personality clash and some degree of internal conflict (at least compared to the Super Friends, who never had a cross word with one another).

Classy, articulate, and well read, Ariel was in stark contrast to the noble, but savage and oftentimes angry, Thundarr. When Ariel would comment on their surroundings, Thundarr would likely brush her off.

For example, in the episode “Master of the Stolen Sunsword,” Ariel tells Thundarr that they are in Beverly Hills and that it used to be one of the wealthiest cities in the world, to which Thundarr replies: “What of it.

It’s the wizard and my Sunsword that matter now.”

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In addition to being brainy and gorgeous, Ariel is a formidable sorceress, using her powers to form makeshift prisons, create temporary bridges, teleport herself, reanimate ancient machinery, and more.

Ariel was most likely of Asian descent, as referenced in the episode “Battle of the Barbarians,” in which she mentioned that her ancestors may have lived in a place similar to Chinatown. Ariel is a great character, but Gerber wanted her to have more of an attitude.

In Comics Feature #10, he said she was “supposed to be more sophisticated, and a little bitchier, more colloquial and sardonic.” Predictably, network execs insisted that she be more likable.

Part-wolf, part-ape, part-man, and all emotion, Ookla, though always loyal to the cause, is at the opposite end of the food chain from Ariel (with Thundarr somewhere in between). Instead of actual speech, the fur-covered Mok makes raw, guttural sounds, not unlike Chewbacca the Wookiee. Luckily, Ookla didn’t need words to battle the various wizards, mutants, werewolves (who, Gerber had lamented, weren’t allowed to actually bite anyone), humanoid lizards, and other enemies the horseback heroes would frequently encounter. Along with his fists and feet, Ookla did use weaponry, such as a large stick or bows and arrows.

In Comics Feature #10, Gerber credited Joe Ruby with the idea of the threesome. Gerber also gave Ruby props for providing the perfect writing environment (“alone in a little room with nothing but a typewriter, some paper, a few reference, sources, and a lot of peace and quiet”) and for creating the relatively original (compared to the typical nuclear disaster or environmental catastrophe scenario) “cosmic disaster concept, the runaway planet causing the cataclysm that wiped out civilization on Earth.”

In terms of the actual series itself, specifically the notion of doing a sword-and-sorcery cartoon, Gerber claimed in Comic Feature #10 that he “took the idea of doing a barbarian series for Saturday morning to Joe Ruby, and he liked the concept … and that Joe

In the Heat of Battle The Sunswordwielding Thundarr and his friends wage war. © 1981 Ruby-Spears Productions.

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proposed it to ABC.” This would appear to conflict with an interview published on Thundarr.com, in which Ruby takes credit for the original idea for the series after reading an article on the then-forthcoming Conan the Barbarian movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Ruby goes on to say that he “considered two writers, and decided on Steve Gerber, who had done some scripts for us the year before.”

Regardless of Ruby’s claims and whether or not his memory is accurate, he does hold Gerber in high regard.

In the Thundarr.com interview, Ruby sums up Gerber’s work on the series thusly: “Steve’s contribution was instrumental in making Thundarr a success. As well as being highly creative, he had an absolute grasp of the characters, and a writing style that brought them to life unlike any animated adventure before.”

He also said that “Gerber, a comic book writer, seemed the perfect fit” and that he and Gerber worked together in developing the series bible.

Clearly, as co-creator of the show and as writer of many of the episodes, Thundarr is as much Gerber’s baby (pun intended) as it is anyone’s.

In addition to Gerber, other noteworthy comicbook writers who worked on the show include Mark (Groo the Wanderer) Evanier and Roy (Conan the Barbarian) Thomas. Thomas tells BACK ISSUE, “I’m afraid I have virtually no memories of writing that Thundarr episode—not even what it was about, or whether we (I think Dann and I were doing it together) finished it or had to have Steve do it for some reason [Dann Thomas is Roy’s wife]. I liked the concept very much, but just don’t recall.”

One prominent comic-book writer who worked on the show and responded promptly to my inquiries was Martin Pasko, whose memories were quite clear on the subject. “When Steve got involved with Ruby-Spears, I was his only friend who’d known him in New York who was also in Los Angeles, and so I became his confidante as he was developing the show. Technically, I ‘co-wrote’ with Steve the majority of the first season episodes, though it was more like he dictated and I typed. There were only four writers of those first 13 shows: Steve, me, Buzz Dixon, and Mark Evanier.”

Pasko also mentions that Ruby-Spears staff writers contributed scripts, but that Gerber pressured Ruby into “killing their scripts altogether.”

Pasko went on to discuss how he “was brought in as a story-editor on the second season, because after delivering Ruby-Spears’ first number one show, Steve was too valuable to the studio in development to write as much on Thundarr, so we brought in a lot of our comics friends—guys like Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway—who we knew could deliver solid first drafts, and then Steve and/or I would do production rewrites in response to the demented network notes. For the rest of the order, we relied mostly on Buzz [Dixon].”

One contribution Pasko made to the show was the naming of Ookla. He got the idea for the memorable moniker while walking with Gerber past a gateway to the UCLA campus. More importantly, Pasko provided Gerber with “emotional support” and tried to convince him to “stop beating himself up because the show wasn’t as quirky and original as he thought it should be.” Obviously, Pasko has a great deal of respect and appreciation for Gerber, calling him “a friend who gave me an entire career I wouldn’t have had otherwise, a career that put some serious money in my pocket and an Emmy on my mantel.”

THE THUNDARR UNIVERSE The world of Thundarr the Barbarian is an intriguing one, especially given the program’s various networkrelated constraints. Late in the 20th century, a rogue planet passed dangerously close to Earth, cracking the moon in half and creating disasters all over the planet. Two thousand years after this upheaval (which is when the series actually takes place), the bifurcated moon can be seen in the night skies, and Earth runs rampant with all manner of mutated creatures, from serpent men to humanoid lizards to giant rat beasts. The changes to Earth also unleashed a seemingly endless supply of magic, much of which is manipulated by evil wizards, who combine the supernatural powers with old technology to create killer robots and other tools of destruction and control.

One especially cool aspect of this grimly compelling future is the liberal implementation of Earth artifacts.

In the first episode, “Secret of the Black Pearl,” a wizard uses magic to animate the Statue of Liberty, employing it in battle against Thundarr and his

pals. In “Valley of the Man Apes,” Ariel and Ookla repair and commandeer an old US war plane.

Viewers will also recognize many Earth landmarks and cityscapes, including Mount Rushmore, the La Brea Tar Pits, and the ruins of New York City. All but two episodes take place in a distinctly recognizable part of the world, with locations as diverse as San Antonio, Texas; Cape Canaveral, Florida; and Central America.

Along with comic-book writers, comic-book artists were an integral part of the Thundarr team as well.

The legendary Alex Toth, who also worked on Super Friends, did the original designs for the three main characters while Jack “King” Kirby, co-creator of many Marvel stalwarts, reworked Toth’s original models, designed most of the show’s settings and supporting characters, and created all the villains’ weaponry.

Watch any given episode of Thundarr, and you’re likely to see characters similar in appearance to those found in Kirby’s New Gods, including Gemini (the only repeating villain on the show), a Darkseid-like alien who shoots beams from his eyes.

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Don’t Ask— Just Watch It! Jack Kirby-reworked Thundarr design art. © 1981 Ruby-Spears Productions.

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In The Comic Times #4, Gerber showed his utter respect for Kirby: “I am completely in awe of him. He is truly a remarkable talent … He has a totally visual mind; I have never seen anyone who can match him in comics or in any other visual medium.

What Gene Colan can do manipulating facial expressions and body postures, Jack can do with inanimate objects and machines.

Jack is unparalleled as a designer of costuming and setting … His depiction of the heroic figure has become a classic in its own time.” Marty Pasko is a big Kirby fan as well, giving the prolific creator credit for coming up with certain Thundarr story ideas (including some Kamandi stuff that Jack never had a chance to develop while at DC).

Gerber also mentioned in Comic Times #4 how Kirby was “vastly underrated by fandom,” but that quote no longer applies (Evanier’s recent book Kirby: King of Comics and TwoMorrows’ own The Jack Kirby Collector are but two examples of the many accolades heaped upon Kirby in the last two decades). Despite (or because of) Kirby’s acknowledged greatness, his highly detailed original drawings for Thundarr had to be simplified by the model department in order to fit within the limited confines of Saturday morning animation. (In the case of Thundarr, the animation process involved double printing 12 drawings for each 24-frame second of film time). In addition, to help sell the series to the networks in the first place, Alfredo Alcala (Savage Sword of Conan) was brought onboard to ink some of Kirby’s early sketches.

LONG LIVE THUNDARR! Thundarr the Barbarian lasted just two seasons, for a total of 21 episodes, all of which ran on ABC (the show moved to NBC, but that network was only interested in airing reruns). After Thundarr was canceled (despite high ratings), fans of all ages deluged ABC with letters (shades of Star Trek), many of which were signed by entire school classes. To this day, the program has thousands of admirers, especially among thirty- and fortysomethings who remember it with a great deal of fondness.

Brent Frankenhoff, editor of The Comics Buyers Guide, sums up the appeal of the show nicely: “Melding post-apocalyptic fiction with elements of both fantasy and science-fiction stories, Thundarr the Barbarian was a step above much of the animated fare of that era and on a level of sophistication (at least to my 14-year-old eyes) with Challenge of the Super Friends. I kept watching and waiting for a comic-book version of the series, but, alas, there never was one as far as I know.”

Frankenhoff goes on to say: “When I first saw an episode of Thundarr, I was reminded most of Hanna-Barbera’s The Herculoids, another series with plenty of action and SF trappings to attract viewers of many ages. After I first began receiving Cartoon Network’s Boomerang channel at my house a few years ago, the Thundarr marathons were among my favorites to watch. Princess Ariel is still fun to see. I rank her right up there with Zatanna and Black Canary for comics and cartoon hotties. And, of course, seeing a comics convention band named Ookla the Mok always gives me a chuckle.”

Frankenhoff is hardly alone among those in the comic-book industry in his affection for the cranky blond barbarian and his loyal companions.

Talk to most any artist, writer, retailer, or anyone else in the field who was a kid when the show was on and you’ll likely get a similar response. Brian Denham, penciler of Iron Man: Hyper Velocity and Thunderbolts: Breaking Point Special, shows particular enthusiasm when talking about the show, calling it “one of the most exciting things on TV at the time … it was as if your toy box exploded onto the screen and everything that was cool was mixing it up together for 30 minutes every Saturday morning— the perfect companion to a sugar-topped bowl of Cheerios.”

Denham acknowledges Thundarr’s spiritual predecessors, namely Conan and Star Wars, espousing the view that Thundarr is actually superior to Star Wars, at least in terms of characters and their distinctive traits. “Thundarr had Luke’s lightsaber, but it was cooler because it was made from the sun and flames danced upon its tip, and it shot beams of light like a blaster. The dark-haired Ariel was way cooler than Luke’s sister and could zap lighting bolts out of her hands. Ookla the Mok could kick more alien, wizard booty than Chewie ever did. While the threat of a Wookiee ripping someone’s arms off was kind of cool, we never saw it in the movies. But every Saturday Ookla was tossing someone around into a pile of other demon dogs. That show was rockin’ it!”

As with most Thundarr fans, Denham credits the names appearing in the, um, credits for the show’s critical success: “How can you deny a program created by Steve Gerber, Alex Toth, and Jack Kirby?” Denham calls Thundarr the Barbarian a “precursor to other shows like ThunderCats” and lamented the fact that the show was canceled before its time: “While Thundarr lasted only a brief two years and 21 episodes, he kicked much wizard butt and had his fair share of women. He carved a wanton path of destruction of adventure in the hearts and minds of kids in the ’80s and continues to do so almost thirty years later.”

Johnny Loyd, an animation buff who works part-time for Planet Superhero (a company that manages celebrity appearances at conventions), says that “Thundarr the Barbarian is, in its own way, a mix of Mad Max and Star Wars,” citing the post-apocalyptic setting of the former and the characters of the latter. Lloyd goes on to say that the show had good stories, but wishes the writers would have fleshed out the backgrounds of the characters a bit more, especially Princess Ariel.

As a kid, Loyd found “Master of the Stolen Sunsword” to be an especially fascinating episode since it offered some insight into the

Waiting for the DVD Boxed Set This vintage VHS collection has yet to see a DVD upgrade. © 1981 Ruby-Spears Enterprises, Inc. 1987 Ruby-Spears Enterprises, Inc.

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mysteries of Thundarr’s weapon. After recovering the Sunsword, Thundarr had to dip it into a pool to become its master again.

As with Jonny Quest, Star Trek: The Animated Series, The Simpsons, SpongeBob SquarePants, and various other cleverly written cartoon programs, Thundarr the Barbarian can be enjoyed by adults as well as kids. Former comic-book writer and Electronic Games magazine co-founder Bill Kunkel, who was around thirty or so when Thundarr made its debut, calls it “a favorite series of mine when originally broadcast” and “one of the few shows that actually got me out of bed on a Saturday morning. It was really that good.”

Like Denham, Kunkel praises the Thundarr creative team. Although Alex Toth is widely recognized among pros and seasoned fans alike as a brilliant craftsman, Kunkel still thinks he hasn’t quite gotten his due, calling him “among the most underrated artists in the history of comics and animation (he created, among other characters, Space Ghost) and the look he fashioned for that show was just amazing—Thundarr’s steed alone was a trip and a half.” Kunkel also gave props for the show’s excellence to other members of the Thundarr staff: “The series used some of the best comic-book writers of the period.”

Unfortunately, despite a seemingly loyal fan base and the recent wave of nostalgia for all things ’80s, Thundarr has never been officially released on DVD, though several online petitions (including one at Thundarr.com) keep fans hopeful. A few episodes were released on VHS back in the day, but those tapes are now hard to find. When they do show up for sale on eBay or at conventions, they usually go for at least $30 in nice condition, scaring away casual fans who remember the show with fondness, but are unwilling to pay primo prices for outdated technology. Luckily, as Frankenhoff mentioned earlier, the series does show up on cable television, namely via Boomerang, the retro cartoon channel that spun off from Cartoon Network.

Unlike the more commercially successful He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which enjoyed an expansive action-figure line released over several years (in fact, He-Man was actually based on a series of toys), there were no Thundarr action figures produced during the show’s original run. However, some merchandise was available to kids of the

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era, including a Milton Bradley board game, a Whitman coloring book, and the requisite lunch box with thermos. In 2004, more than two decades after Thundarr ceased production, Toynami released a nicelooking action figure for each of the three main characters, Thundarr, Alriel, and Ookla. Toynami also included the trio in their I-Men mini-figures lineup, in which Thundarr and Ariel were packaged together while Ookla was stuck with Vapor Man from the Galaxy Trio.

In the missed-opportunities department, Mickey Elfenbein of Xonox (a division of K-Tel) stated in an interview published in the March 1984 issue of Video Games magazine that “the Thundarr the Barbarian character itself fits into a storyline that is ideally suited to a video game.” He also said that “Ruby-Spears, who owns Thundarr the Barbarian, was easier to work with in this particular project than they have been with regard to other characters.” Regrettably, despite serious potential, a Thundarr video game never came about (although Xonox did release the similar-sounding Tomarc the Barbarian, a dreadful, almost unplayable cartridge for the Atari 2600 and the ColecoVision).

Unlike He-Man, Thundarr the Barbarian never spawned a feature film (though Buzz Dixon reportedly wrote an unused movie treatment that, among other things, fleshed out the backstories of the main characters).

And, unlike Super Friends, Thundarr lacks any household names among its band of selfless heroes. What the series does offer, however, is a rollicking good action/adventure yarn that fans and pros alike can look back on with a great deal of fondness and appreciation.

Steve Gerber (not to mention Alex Toth and Jack Kirby) may no longer be with us, but his legacy lives on (at least in part) through a terrific television program that left an important mark on pop culture.

Former comic-book store owner BRETT WEISS is the author of Classic Home Video Games, 19721984 (McFarland, 2007).

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Sludge with a Grudge Gerber’s other swamp-man vs. the Incredible Hulk in an undated pinup

by Shaun McManus and John Nyberg.

Courtesy of Heritage Comics. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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By 1993, it was common knowledge among fans and professionals alike that Steve Gerber was a prolific writer, a writer with a penchant for some of comicdom’s most offbeat premises and strangest concepts.

In his early career, Gerber built a reputation for writing gory or supernatural characters such as Morbius, Son of Satan, the Zombie, and, of course, his celebrated work on the sympathetic bog-man, the Man-Thing. Regardless of the fact that he was, at times, admittedly uneasy with this reputation as the “Man-Thing guy,” Steve decided to revisit the muck-monster concept while working on Malibu’s Ultraverse line in the mid-1990s. The fruits of these new labors bore Sludge, a monster—according to the writer’s own words—that was vastly different from his previous work.

For those unfamiliar with the comic, Sludge’s origin differed greatly from most of Gerber’s traditional “sympathetic hero” work.

First of all, Sludge started out as NYPD detective Frank Hoag.

Hoag was a crooked cop on the take from the mob, a far cry from the idealized scientists and geniuses that usually become swamp monsters. A large part of Hoag’s take consisted of doing the mob’s dirty work, but when they wanted Hoag to kill a fellow officer he refused. Hoag’s mob handlers were enraged by their lackey’s rebellion and in spectacular fashion rubbed him out in a hail of gunfire and explosions, then dumping his body into the New York sewers.

Along with Hoag, thousands of gallons of experimental biological toxic waste were dumped as well. The mysterious chemicals healed Hoag and resurrected him in the sewers as Sludge, a muck-man made of sewage, fighting to use what was left of his fragile, once-human mind.

Gerber seemed to take the idea of creating this new character very seriously. His desire to take the concept and create something wholly new and original can be seen not only in the fact that the character was not exactly admirable, or that he lived in the sewers, but in Gerber’s own words. In a 1993 interview with Shaun McLaughlin in The Malibu Sun, Gerber responded to the following question: Here’s a question that’s in a lot of people’s minds: What’s different about Sludge from the other muck-monster you worked on?

GERBER: Well, let’s not be coy about it. Let’s just say “Man-Thing.”

This is a question that a lot of people have asked. They’ll look at the character and ask: “Is this your new version of Man-Thing?”

Then they’ll ask: “What other ‘thing’ is this like? Is it like Swamp Thing? Is it like the Thing thing?” And the answer is “no” to all.

Sludge is radically different from Man-Thing. I don’t want to give too much of the story away, but we can discuss what Sludge isn’t.

He’s not an empathic creature. He’s not tied to any particular locale. He’s not mindless. He has nothing to do with swamps.

And he is not in any way magical. Those are some pretty striking differences to begin with. And unlike Ben Grimm, Sludge is not a guy you could dress in a tux and introduce into polite society.

He smells really bad.

Gerber also went on to state that the biggest challenge in creating Sludge was making a conscious decision not to waste time worrying about creating obvious differences between it and the Man-Thing, but just letting the character “become itself.”

Unlike most heroes, Sludge had a slightly skewed view of the world. In one issue penned by Gerber, Sludge steals a newspaper from his friend, a blind man named Chas. Later, when he rescues a news reporter from an alien, he demands 35 cents in return so he can repay his friend.

In a similar fashion to Gerber’s Man-Thing, Sludge is an untouchable hero. Any human flesh he comes into direct contact with becomes horribly disfigured, heightening the isolation of the character in Gerber’s storylines.

Although the Sludge series (Oct. 1993–Sept. 1994) was not particularly long-lived when compared to Gerber’s other creations, the character struck a chord with fans and spawned special editions and guest appearances. The character even made recurring appearances on the Ultraforce animated television series (1995).

Slimy Star Covers to (above) Sludge #1 (Oct. 1993) and (right) #3, by Aaron Lopresti (who signed #1’s cover) and Gary Martin. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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He’s no Simon Garth… …actually, the Zombie in Sludge #6 (above, Feb. 1994) was Don Johanssen. And Lord Pumpkin raises cain in issue #6 (right). Art by Lopresti/Martin. © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Unlike the altruistic and sympathetic characters that Gerber had handled at Marvel, Sludge was crude, cynical, and had no reservations about killing or maiming those who stood in his way.

It was these aspects of the character that made it stand out to many fans and drew people into the world that Gerber had created.

Gerber stated that he felt that he portrayed the character in a more believable realistic way than traditional superhero comics.

Gerber’s stories of the blue behemoth often touched—intentionally— on the definition or concept of what it means to be a hero, often delving even further into the realm of good or bad, right or wrong, depending on your point of view. Unlike most comics series which portray the spandex-clad hero in a perpetually positive light, always on the side of right, Sludge was often written in the grey area. One of the most exciting things for fans was that Gerber went beyond the grey, portraying his protagonist at times on the downright wrong side of a fight or situation, serving his own desires to restore his humanity or to be released from his muck-bodied prison by death. It is this right vs. wrong battle that is affected by each reader’s individual point of view. Each person’s individual perspective greatly colors their perception of the story, making the experience unique to each reader. It is often this aspect that gets fans so excited when they talk about the series.

Through the relatively small number of issues fans have been fortunate enough to enjoy, Gerber guided the character through several key transitions of development that made Sludge more than just a series about a swamp monster. After his transformation from Detective Frank Hoag to Sludge, the character went from sympathetic outcast to desperate suicidal anti-hero. As the series progressed the character learned and developed skills, just like a person in real life, learning to deal with his own emotions and fractured mind. By the time Swamp of Souls [see sidebar] was written, Gerber had crafted a hero that moved beyond a tortured soul to a reformed criminal with a new direction and hope for the future—the search for love.

Around the same time that the Sludge series had completed its first year of issues, Marvel purchased Malibu’s Ultraverse line.

Unfortunately, Marvel decided to pull the plug on the Ultraverse titles just as Gerber was completing his script for Sludge: Swamp of Souls, a giant-size feature that would reveal new details about Frank Hoag’s past life and bring about an entirely new direction for the future of the character. Luckily for diehard fans, the nearly complete script can be found on Gerber’s website at stevegerber.com.

Unfortunately for Sludge fans, we may never learn what Gerber had in mind for the further development of the character and his future; we can only look back on those stories that we were lucky enough to have. Those of us with a soft spot in our heart for Sludge may well have to create our own stories, enjoying the most enduring gift that Steve Gerber ever gave us: the chance to dream.

Writer MIKE GAGNON loves all things comic booky, especially the monster variety. More on his work can be found at www.mikegagnon.ca.

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SLUDGE’S COMIC-BOOK APPEARANCES • Sludge #1 (Oct. 1993): Crooked police detective Frank Hoag is dumped into the New York sewers with the biowaste that causes his rebirth as Sludge. He later confronts a street gang after they commit a drive-by shooting. This is when Sludge fist discovers/displays his power to disfigure flesh.

• Sludge #2 (Nov. 1993): Sludge murders several mobsters, including a revenge killing against one of the men who had attempted to kill him as Frank Hoag. In the process, the assassin Bloodstorm shoots the monster with an explosive arrow, apparently leaving him dead with his entrails spilling out on a New York pier.

• Sludge #3 (Dec. 1993): Crazed citizens throw Sludge’s body into the Hudson River, where the beast’s form actually heals and revives as he floats in the murk. Hoag’s depressed mind attempts to drown himself as a final escape form his muckencrusted prison, to no avail. After giving up on suicide Sludge is captured by the Rivermen and taken to their boss, Lord Pumpkin. Pumpkin offers Sludge the gift of death in exchange for doing his dirty work. In the end, the muck-man refuses the offer.

• Sludge #4 (Jan. 1994): Sludge encounters an alien albino alligator-man named Veffir Voon Iyax living in the sewers. He saves reporter Shelly Rogers from Iyax before beating the alien to death. Sludge demands 35 cents from Rogers as payment for saving her life so that he can pay back his blind friend Chas for a newspaper he took earlier.

• Sludge #5 (Feb. 1994): Sludge confronts mutated zombie Don Johanssen, granting him a mercy killing by smothering his face into his chest (thereby disfiguring Johanssen and fusing the flesh of his face to the point that he suffocates). Sludge is jealous that the zombie can die and be released from his torture, and is unaware he’s being secretly watched by Lord Pumpkin.

• Sludge #6 (Mar. 1994): Sludge witnesses a ship explode in New York Harbor. He attempts to save a survivor by pulling her to shore, in the process disfiguring the flesh on her wrist.

Later, he has nightmares about his former love, Edna, and attempts to kill himself via a high-voltage cable. Hoag’s depressed mind finally gives in and takes up Lord Pumpkin on his offer of doing his dirty work for the promised release of death.

After killing two of Pumpkin’s organized crime rivals, Sludge demands to be relieved of his misery and Pumpkin refuses.

• Sludge #7 (June 1994): Lord Pumpkin orders Sludge to kill Marcello, the mobster whom he had once worked for as Detective Frank Hoag, and who had ordered the hit on Hoag that led to his becoming Sludge. The monster battles his way into Marcello’s penthouse, revealing his identity to the mobster before fusing the flesh of his face shut and throwing him from the roof of the building.

• Sludge #8 (July 1994): Pumpkin orders Sludge to join him and his number-one man Pistol in attempting to ambush and kill the assassin Bloodstorm, who works for Pumpkin’s rival Vittorio Sabatini. While attempting to force Bloodstorm to eat Zuke buds, a plant that makes humans go crazy, Sludge discovers that the

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plant causes great pain when it comes into contact with his flesh, but also temporarily turns his hand human again.

• Sludge #9 (Sept. 1994): Lord Pumpkin sends a drugged Bloodstorm after Sabatini, and Sabatini sends the woman Sludge saved from the harbor in issue #6, now a cyborg, after Pumpkin. In the chaos, Sludge decides to obtain more Zuke plants before Pumpkin’s base of operations is destroyed.

• Sludge #10 (Oct. 1994): Sludge eats several Zuke plants and absorbs one into his stomach. Nothing happens at first, but eventually his mind clears and he is able to think as Frank Hoag again and temporarily has a more solid, humanoid body.

• Sludge #11 (Nov. 1994): The effects of the Zuke plants wear off and Sludge degenerates back to his regular self with no known source of obtaining more.

• Sludge: Red X-Mas (Nov. 1994): Sludge saves Pumpkin’s former lackey Pistol, left abandoned since Pumpkin’s fortress was destroyed, from his enraged father and his minions.

• Sludge #12 (Dec. 1994): A witch uses a spell to take control of Sludge, in the process causing a battle between the monster and the hero called Prime.

• Ultraverse Premiere #8 (Dec. 1994): Sludge breaks free of the witch’s powers, banishes her and her minions to another dimension, and saves Prime from the same fate as his enemies.

Prime correctly ascertains that their powers both come from the same place (the biological experiments of Dr. Ferdinand Lalama) but manifest in very different ways. Sludge bemusedly responds, “If we’re twins, you got all the looks.”

• Ultraverse Premiere #10–11 (Jan.–Feb.1995): Sludge tracks down a child molester that he was unable to convict as Detective Frank Hoag. Sludge disfigures the man and uses his information to take down an Internet snuff-film ring headed by insane psychiatrist Dr. Lilith Ridlin.

• Sludge: Swamp of Souls (unpublished): This unfinished project would have delved into Sludge’s past life as Frank Hoag, revealing hidden details and expanding further on the character’s origin. The story reveals that Hoag had fallen in love with a hooker named Edna, who he had been blackmailing for sex and using to collect info on criminals. A mob stooge later throws acid into Edna’s face, permanently scarring her.

The huge amount of money that it would have cost for surgery to fix Edna’s face was one of the main reasons that Hoag got in deeper with the mobsters who would later attempt to kill him. In present day, Sludge is attacked by the former followers of Veffir Voon Iyax and Iyax’s brother in an attempt at revenge for killing the alien. The attack leads Sludge to create a strange alliance with Princess Die of the Godwheel (the homeworld of Iyax and Lord Pumpkin). After defeating their enemies, Sludge discovers that the Godwheel is the source of the Zuke plants. He brings a large supply back to Earth and uses regular doses to temporarily turn human in order to try to find his lost love Edna, who has long ago moved away without any way to find her. The nearly complete script can be found at www.stevegerber.com.

In 1998 and 2004, writer Steve Gerber unleashed two wildly original series on unsuspecting comics readers. Nevada, from DC’s Vertigo line, was the tale of a girl, her ostrich, and a dimensional rift. Hard Time, initially from DC’s short-lived Focus imprint, was the story of a 15-year-old boy in prison. They were very different books, but each challenged readers to put aside their preconceptions of what to expect from a mainstream publisher. Those who went along for the ride were not disappointed.

Nevada was a book 21 years in the making. In an interview I did with Steve Gerber for Westfield Comics in 1998, he explained the genesis of the series: “The inspiration came from an old issue of Howard the Duck, the ‘Dreaded Deadline Doom’ story in #16 (Sept. 1977). That issue was divided into eight or ten two-page stories with single illustrations by different artists. One of those stories was the ‘Obligatory Comic Book Fight Scene,’ a battle among a Las Vegas chorus girl, an ostrich, and a killer lampshade.

It ended with the chorus girl becoming one with her headdress and conquering the universe, or something like that. I really don’t remember.

“For twenty-odd years now, people have been asking me, ‘When are you going to bring back the showgirl and the ostrich?’ In a market dominated by Spawn, that’s not a question you take terribly seriously.

But then, oddly enough, Neil Gaiman asked that question of me—in public—on CompuServe. And other people chimed in and said: ‘Yeah. When are you gonna do that?’ At that point I decided, ‘Okay, maybe this is worth a closer look.’ Another reason I hadn’t proposed it to any publisher before then was that I didn’t have a decent title for it. It was Vera of Vegas for a while and then Viva of Vegas.

Try saying that four times fast. Imagine having to ask for it at the comic-book store. ‘Do you have a copy of Vee-vih-ahvee-voo-voogas?’

Anyway, I eventually hit on the name Nevada, and then Neil’s message popped up on the computer, and I thought, ‘Well, now’s as good a time as any.’ So I proposed it to Vertigo and, somewhat to my astonishment, Karen Berger liked it and wanted to publish it.”

Childhood Lost

by

Roger Ash

Brian Hurtt’s original cover artwork (sans character montage, which appeared inside his shirt on the original, shown elsewhere in this article) to Hard Time Season Two #7 (Aug. 2006), spotlighting Ethan, the series’ teen-turned-inmate. From the collection of Jonathan Bolerjack.

TM & © DC Comics.

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TM & © DC Comics.

A GIRL AND HER OSTRICH

The artist chosen to bring Nevada to life was Phil Winslade. “I was at a London Comic Con and had heard just before that Steve was doing something for Vertigo and I knew Karen Berger was there, so we had a chat about it,” Winslade recalls. “I don’t remember Steve working in comics at the time and really wanted to work with him. Karen knew my work and was having trouble finding an artist Steve and she could agree on. I did a sample/character sheet and Steve was made familiar with my work and I got the gig.”

Nevada was introduced in a ten-page story in Vertigo: Winter’s Edge #1 (Jan. 1998) in a Christmas story that combined the traditional birth of Christ story with grade school Christmas pageants and stereotypical Las Vegas excess. It set the “anything can happen” tone for the miniseries.

Nevada and her ostrich, Bolero, perform in the Nile Hotel and Casino. A series of bizarre murders at the hotel catches the attention of mobster, Mr. Di Vesuvio, whose head, through a bizarre operation, now resembles a lava lamp (the updated version of the killer lampshade) and it can do some mighty strange things. A drunken, homeless mystic, Ogden Locke, makes some ominous predictions about Nevada. Egyptian hieroglyphics appearing in the hotel’s computer programs lead Nevada’s friend, Rip Lefkowitz, to make a startling discovery about the light shining from the top of the hotel. When he shows this to Nevada, she is taken into the light and goes … someplace else. Here she learns

First Quack at “Nevada” Gerber’s showgirl-andostrich inspiration for what became Nevada, from Howard the Duck #16 (Sept. 1977).

Art by Tom Palmer. (right) Pull your head out of the sand long enough to eyeball this incredible page from Nevada #4 (Aug. 1998), from the collection of Matthew Lee. Art by Phil Winslade and Steve Leialoha.

Howard the Duck art © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. Nevada art TM & © DC Comics.

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about a rift between space and dimensions and how other-dimensional beings are traveling to Earth in the beam of light from the Nile Hotel. She has been chosen to be the new rift warrior who must stop these beings from traveling to Earth, and in the process, keep the universe from being destroyed.

The book was as bizarre as it sounds, but Gerber performed an amazing juggling act to make it all work.

“Being a real Howard and Man-Thing fan, I was expecting odd characters,” says Winslade. “One of the appeals of Steve’s work for me is his sense of the surreal, so I was hoping for things that would stretch me.

“Bolero was a sweety to draw, once I got the knack of him. He had to be convincing as an ostrich, but expressive too (especially as a mute). Steve wanted him to reinforce and enhance the emotional drama of the situation, much like a Greek chorus, but he also needed to have a personality of his own rather than just be a cipher for Nevada. I liked the scenes where his emotion doesn’t conform to Nevada’s and his persona comes to the fore.”

“What was great about Nevada, and also with Steve working for Vertigo, was he really had the freedom to do whatever he wanted to do,” says series editor Karen Berger. “He hadn’t had that opportunity since the ’70s working on his own material at Marvel.

As out there as some of his ideas might be, he could just go for it, which is one of the reasons why I enjoyed working with him so much.”

Nevada returned one last time in a short story in Vertigo: Winter’s Edge #2 (Jan. 1999), where one of the rift beings attempts to take revenge on Nevada for killing his brother. The story ends with the promise that “The demolition continues in Nevada II.” Gerber told me that Nevada was planned as a series of miniseries.

“Instead of grinding out a monthly book, whether we’ve got a good story to tell that month or not, we’re treating it more like a paperback series, a series of novels.” But Nevada II never happened. Why? “I think it was a combination of Steve’s own schedule, because he was not known for being a deadline king by any stretch of the imagination, and sales,” Berger says. “It was a series you either loved or hated.

There was no great demand to see more, to be honest.

I think we were both very happy with the way he tied up the miniseries.”

But Nevada did return, sort of, as part of a Vertigo parody in issue #4 of the Marvel Max Howard the Duck miniseries (June 2002) when Howard and Beverly meet Utah and her Gastornis (a prehistoric flightless bird), Ravel.

“The Howard thing was nice, although it would have been nice to draw the characters properly again,” recalls Phil Winslade. “I was just happy to be working with Steve again and over the moon to be drawing Howard. That episode was challenging, but that and the next two issues of Howard, to me, were Steve at his best: satirical, outrageous, and unafraid. The really fortunate thing for me was I realized this when I was drawing them and had a ball.

“Nevada will always have that bittersweet feeling for me, as it was only the beginning of those character’s adventures. The first series was the setup for the weirdness ahead. With Steve’s imagination and the solidity and strength of the characters, the book (whoever drew it) could have been one of the greatest comics by one of the most revolutionary, insightful, and brave writers of his generation.”

A BOY BEHIND BARS Even though Nevada never returned, Steve Gerber did.

In 2004, he broke new ground with the series Hard Time. The book began as part of the DC Focus imprint, which intended to focus on superheroes in settings other than the DC Universe. The setting of Gerber’s new series was a prison. A very strange place for a superhero story.

Mary Skrenes, Gerber’s friend and sometimes co-writer, recalls the beginnings of Hard Time: “After his disappointing stint with Stan Lee Media, I encouraged Steve to move back to Vegas. I hoped that we could hang out once in a while and have some laughs. We had always talked and e-mailed a couple of times a month, but I missed Steve’s on-the-spot situational quick wit.

“He moved back but, with his dusk-’til-dawn writing schedule and my being the GM of the lighting and grip rental company I had built with my husband, it was nearly impossible to get together. One evening we made time for dinner and Steve showed me three concepts he had pitched to DC. One of them was Hard Time.

“He asked me if I would be interested in writing with him if DC chose one of the ideas. He reasoned that we would schedule the time to hang out because we would be working. I was actually drawn to one of the other concepts, but Hard Time was picked.

“I told him that I would work with him to develop and write the series, but I didn’t want DC to know.

He argued with me, but I didn’t need the money and

I really didn’t want to ever deal with an editor again in my life. (As it turned out, Joan [Hilty]’s editorial contributions improved more than one critical scene.)

Eventually Steve nagged me into taking credit for my work. He was right, of course. I’ve never invested more into a character.”

In an interview I conducted with Steve Gerber for Westfield Comics in 2005, he described his writing sessions with Skrenes: “We get together at her house, in person, on opposite sides of the same desk, tossing ideas back and forth, yelling and screaming at each other when necessary, taking turns at the keyboard, working the script out page by page and panel by panel. I would say the collaboration works like a marriage, except that Mary already has one of those.

Which might make it more like an illicit affair, except that her husband, J. R., is in the next room and hears everything that’s going on and occasionally has to stick his head in and tell us to hold it down so he can hear the football game.

“Anyway, we usually finish those sessions with something approaching a final draft. I take that home, do some final edits and polishing on it, and send it off to DC.” So what was Hard Time about? Gerber described the basics of series like this: “Hard Time is the story of Ethan Harrow, a high school student who took part in what he thought was a prank—a fake high school shooting—that turned real, leaving five people dead. Ethan was tried, convicted, and sentenced to

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Hard Knocks A Brian Hurtt unused cover sketch for an unspecified issue of Hard Time.

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fifty years in prison. Now, behind bars, he’s discovering that he has a strange power, the ability to release his consciousness from his physical form. His body is imprisoned, but his mind is not. And his roaming psychic force can act directly, often violently, upon the physical world.”

Hard Time, at its most basic, is a prison drama of a young boy who is sentenced to do time in an adult prison and tries his best to survive amidst all the various factions that control prison life. Even though his psychic force does help in that matter, he doesn’t rely on it completely. He defeats one of his first major adversaries, a Jesus-crazed inmate named Gantry who sees Ethan’s psychic force as a demon, by building a makeshift taser.

No superheroics were involved at all.

But Hard Time is not just the story of Ethan. Gerber and Skrenes peopled the book with a number of strong supporting characters. George Cole is a prison veteran who schools Ethan on the etiquette of prison life.

Arturo Lopez is a gang banger who is trying to do right by his pregnant girlfriend on the outside and climb the ladder in his gang, the Diablos. Curly, Ethan’s cellmate, takes on a sort of father-figure role. Curly’s granddaughter, Red, has an impact on both of their lives, including giving Ethan a very special present on his 16th birthday. And there is the transgender inmate, Cindy, who always manages to be in the middle of things. On the outside, aside from Red, Ethan’s lawyer and mother each play important roles. There are many other characters, but the strangest, and maybe the most important, are “Fruitcake” Mullins, Alyssa Nichols, and Mrs. Millicent Teabury.

“Fruitcake” is regarded by many as the nut of the prison. He believes he occasionally channels the Sumerian priestess, Kaga na Yu’usha. When he meets Ethan, she comes forth and recognizes the power in Ethan’s psychic self, his “khe-chara.” According to “Fruitcake,” Kaga na Yu’usha was the result of breeding between humans and aliens and had her own khe-chara, which she could control. He believes that Ethan may be descended from Kaga na Yu’usha. True or not, he becomes Ethan’s occasional mentor in how to harness and shape his khe-chara.

Alyssa is a fellow student who Ethan saved from being shot. She resides in a rest home where she is haunted by visions of the school shooting and desperately wants Ethan to contact her. One day, she is introduced to another resident of the home, an elderly woman named Millicent Teabury. She introduces Alyssa to her good friend, Kaga na Yu’usha.

The artist chosen to draw Hard Time was Brian Hurtt, who impressed Gerber with his ability. “It’s daunting enough for an artist to draw a book like JLA or Avengers, where there may be a cast of thousands, but at least each character is identifiable by costume,” Gerber said. “Brian has had to deal with a very wide array of characters— inmates, guards, prison officials, high school shooting victims, lawyers, parents, goth girls, and so on—none of whom wears a costume, and he’s still managed to make each character instantly recognizable on sight. And he makes it look so natural, so effortless, that I doubt even the most devoted Hard Time readers realize how extraordinary a feat it is.”

“Oz meets My So-Called Life” A gallery of Hard Time covers by Brian Hurtt.

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The first “season” of Hard Time ended after 12 issues, the longest-running book in the DC Focus imprint. Getting to that point didn’t come easy.

“We (meaning Steve) had a six-issue guarantee,” says Skrenes. “So, we plotted a six-issue story arc in brief strokes. Steve got the go-ahead and we wrote the first six. We didn’t know if they’d go for more. We got the okay to do two more issues.

“Try doing two more issues, after developing all those characters and the location from scratch, plus doing a damn good story arc with a kick-ass ending.

What are you going to do with a book that might be canceled? You try to do something that won’t leave the reader too frustrated.

“Then we were given four more issues. Take those two dangling issues and add four issues and forge them into another six-issue story arc. No problem.

Happens all the time.

“By the end of the first 12 issues, all of the other [Focus] titles that started with Hard Time had been canceled. We had our own single title and they wanted it to start with number one, thus Season Two.” In Hard Time Season Two, Mary Skrenes was added to the writing credits and new inmate Cutter was introduced.

Cutter was infamous for committing brutal murders and cutting bizarre patterns into his own skin. Ethan learns that Cutter can also hurt his khe-chara.

At the end of six issues, Ethan has a victory of sorts over Cutter. Unfortunately, the book was canceled but, according to Skrenes, they were given one more issue to wrap up the story. Hard Time Season Two #7 (Aug. 2006) takes place 49 years after issue #6, a takeoff of sorts on the then current DC “One Year Later” event. The issue takes the form of Ethan’s parole hearing, in which we learn what has happened to the main characters. It was a nice way to give closure to the series. The final two pages leave readers with a mystery. Ethan is released from prison and is picked up by a car driven by an undisclosed character. On his blog at the time the book came out, Gerber refused to reveal who was in the car.

Does Mary Skrenes know?

“Of course, Steve and I know who is in the car.

Just like the secret of James-Michael in Omega the Unknown, which was canceled without being brought to a satisfactory conclusion, we’ll take it to our graves.

Besides, isn’t it more fun to imagine the various people it could be and how they would affect Ethan’s future?”

It was during the writing of Hard Time that Gerber was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, the disease that would play a part in his death. “He broke the news that he needed a bilateral lung transplant,” says Skrenes. “He was concerned about how we would continue to write Hard Time. He looked so upset.

Because I had always been adamant about working at my place, he thought that this would change my mind.

I could see him closing himself up in his apartment, never going out except to buy food for his three cats or to the multiple doctors he saw regularly. Nope.

“I told him he still had to come to my house. I’m allergic to cats and just because he needed a lung transplant was no excuse not to come over. He did a double-take and then laughed his ass off. We wrote three or four more issues, including the finale, at my house.

“Hard Time was so special to both Steve and I because we created a world and characters and suspense and horror and laughter. We had done it before, but not for thirty years. And we both knew, not ever again.”

Ethan’s Super Power

Even though Nevada and Hard Time didn’t last long, they both show the creativity and diversity of Steve Gerber’s writing and are worthy additions to the library of any Gerber fan.

The Hard Time hero’s super secret, as seen in this 2006 convention sketch

by Brian Hurtt.

Courtesy of Nathan Turner.

All the Steve Gerber quotes in the article came from two interviews I conducted with him for Westfield Comics. Thanks to Brook Anthony for allowing me to use them here.

Also, thanks to Alex Segura at DC. ROGER ASH has never been to Nevada or been in prison. He would like to go to Nevada sometime.

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Peter Sanderson At 11 a.m. on Saturday, April 19, 2008, there was a memorial held at the New York Comic Con entitled “Steve Gerber and F.O.O.G.: Friends of Ol’ Gerber.”

Among the friends present in the audience were Alan Kupperberg, Jim Starlin, Alan and Pauline Weiss, and Len Wein.

Also present was Steve Gerber himself, his ashes held in a container prominently displayed on a table onstage.

The master of ceremonies was Mark Evanier, who began by remarking to the audience, “Like all of you I can think of a lot of people I’d rather have dead than Steve Gerber. Some of them are guests at this convention.”

Indicating the container, Evanier said, “Steve is represented by his ashes here. Later we’ll celebrate by going upstairs and flinging them in the faces of various publishers.”

First came a video presentation created by animation writer Buzz Dixon. It began with ominous lines: “What sinister plot called him forth? What is his terrifying mission?” There followed a montage of covers from Gerber’s comics, accompanied by the Beatles’ Revolver, and ended with an image of Howard the Duck giving way to a photograph of Gerber.

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The first speaker was Evanier, who recalled how he had been warned years ago, “Watch out for Steve; he’s crazy.” Subsequently, Evanier found himself talking to someone at a gathering at Sergio Aragonés’ home.

“He had a great laugh,” and Evanier realized this was Steve Gerber. They ended up talking till 4 a.m. at an IHOP and became friends. “I don’t know anyone who didn’t like Steve,” Evanier said. “In this business to be undespised is amazing.”

Evanier recalled once being with Gerber when they heard a woman scream outside the window. Gerber “did a Barry Allen on me,” Evanier said, and was heading outside before Evanier could react. There turned out to be no danger, but Evanier was impressed by “that immediate compassion for a stranger.”

Gerber’s brother Michael then presented what he called “a portrait of the artist as a young man.”

He remembered how Steve discovered the 1950s Adventures of Superman television series. “My sister said it was a mystical experience for him.” This is when Steve started creating his own superhero stories.

“In our home, Scott paper towels became comic books when they were folded.” When his aunts bought him a movie camera, Steve made his own superhero movie, casting himself in the lead, using double exposure to make it look as if he were flying.

Evanier introduced Gail Simone as “a writer that Steve championed.” She explained that they “never met in person,” communicating only by e-mail and phone.

It began when Gerber read her comics series Birds of Prey and sent her an e-mail saying, “I hope to hell you know how good you are.” Simone told the audience she wanted to write back, “You know you’re effing Steve Gerber, don’t you?” Simone spoke of how “a lot of us … who wrote more offbeat comics” were “inspired” by Gerber’s body of work. “It had given me the courage to pitch concepts that might be turned down.”

Next Evanier introduced Paul Levitz as “a publisher who doesn’t get ashes thrown in his face,” though Levitz then volunteered not to be so spared. He then spoke of the “generosity” that Gerber had shown him back when Levitz was publishing a fanzine, The Comic Reader. On staff at Marvel, Gerber would take the time to do typewritten notes about “what was in every Marvel comic.” Levitz characterized Gerber as “one of the people who taught you by example.”

Quoting Gerber’s longtime collaborator, Mary Skrenes, saying that Gerber had “made it a more civilized business,” Levitz praised Gerber for being “one of the first people who pointed out the injustices” in the way that the comics industry used to treat its writers and artists.

Former Marvel editor Hildy Mesnik first met Gerber when they were both working for the Los Angeles office of Sunbow Productions, which made such animated series as Transformers. She introduced a comedy video that the L.A. office had made as a

Packed House On the floor at the New York Comic Con. Photo courtesy of New York Comic Con. Christmas card for the New York office, in which Gerber played to the grumpy side of his image, telling a caller on the phone that “Optimus Prime is dead…. No, we’re not sorry.”

Next up was Buzz Dixon, who told what he called “the quintessential Steve Gerber story.” Once Gerber was forced to declare bankruptcy, and had to appear in court for what is usually only ten to 15 minutes.

But when Gerber stated his name and occupation, “I’m a comic-book writer,” the court clerk turned out to be a fan. “You’re declaring bankruptcy!” the clerk exploded. “No! There is no justice! You should be honored!” Dixon said, “Steve was thinking, ‘Shut up and sign the papers,’” adding that “he had fans who loved him in the most inappropriate times and places.”

Dixon expressed his astonishment that Gerber was “so happy, so upbeat” in his final days in the hospital.

“He was in a much better mood than in that video.”

Comics and animation writer Martin Pasko said he learned to write animation when Gerber asked him to help him with a few scenes for Thundarr the Barbarian.

Claiming to have served only as Gerber’s “typist,” Pasko told the audience, “I would look into his mind” and realize “I can’t think like this. This man’s a genius.”

Gerber’s most famous creation, Howard the Duck, was turned into an infamous disaster of a movie. In 1988, Pasko was working at Universal Studios, at the time that Martin Scorsese was making The Last Temptation of Christ.

Believing Scorsese’s movie would bomb, people at the studio referred to it as “Christ the Duck.” Pasko had lunch with Gerber and wondered, he said, “Do I tell him?”

Finally Pasko did, only to be greeted by “the longest, loudest, warmest laugh I ever heard Steve emit.”

Gerber’s daughter Samantha Voll reminisced about what a warm, caring father he was, but confessed, “I didn’t know a lot of my dad’s writing as a kid because I wasn’t allowed to read it.” But now she has, and she declared, “I’m truly glad his legend will live on through his writing.”

The final speaker was Mary Skrenes, who had collaborated with Gerber in writing work from Omega the Unknown in the 1970s to the recent Hard Time.

“I’m going to dump Steve all over New York,” she said, referring to the ashes. “This was his favorite place in the world.” And that is what she proceeded to do that weekend.

“A writer that Steve championed.”

Gail Simone at the Gerber Memorial, with Mark Evanier listening. Photo courtesy of Margaret Liss.

Comic-book scholar, critic, and educator PETER SANDERSON was a contributor to the Who’s Who in the DC Universe and Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe series, and has written, co-written, or to contributed to a host of comics-related books including The Marvel Vault. Read his online “Comics in Context” column at www.quickstopentertainment.com /category/comics-in-context/.

Ashes to Ashes The remains of Steve Gerber.

Photo courtesy of Matthew E. Hawkins.

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DAVE SIMONS

Artist www.dave-simons.com

While I didn’t know Steve Gerber personally, I wouldn’t have had the career I did without his creation, Howard the Duck. I cut my inking eye-teeth on the black-and-white Howard the Duck magazine over Gene Colan’s pencils, which led to my further inking work over Colan on the Dracula and Hulk magazines and later, in color on Captain America.

Writer www.povonline.com

MARK EVANIER

When people asked Gerber what Howard the Duck’s voice should sound like, he used to tell them Burgess Meredith. I always thought Howard sounded like Steve Gerber.

I really did, and not just because so much of that comic was autobiographical … and therefore, nearly impossible for anyone but Steve to write. But Steve had this great laugh when something struck him funny, and many things struck him funny. It was a rich, full laugh that somehow echoed off his back teeth and sounded a lot to me like Howard’s “Waughhh” sound should sound.

I liked Steve, liked him a lot. I liked making him laugh and hearing that sound. I liked just talking with him because he was one of the smartest, sharpest people I’ve ever met. I didn’t like hearing all the many problems and crises that seemed to define his life but I like the way he faced them all, refusing to let them punch him too hard in the face. Most of the time.

Here’s my “How I Met Gerber” story. I’m sure there are many others in this magazine. Here’s mine.

Before I met him, someone at Marvel had warned me about Gerber, warned me he was insane. They didn’t mean ha-ha eccentric insane, the way a colorful writer is sometimes deemed insane. They meant insane in the way Charles Manson was insane. Gerber, this person told me, was inches from taking an assault weapon up on some tower and blowing away total strangers by the dozen. “Watch out for him,” they said.

I remember that because it was one of the all-time stupidest, most wrong-headed things anyone has ever said to me … and boy, have there been a lot of contenders for that honor.

But I didn’t know it was inaccurate that night up at Sergio’s. It was after a San Diego Comic-Con of the mid-’70s—1977, I’m guessing.

Maybe ’78. The con hadn’t ended for some of us. It had just moved to the big house in the Hollywood Hills that Sergio Aragonés owned in those pre-divorce days. We drove up there and spent Sunday evening sitting by the pool, eating Numero Uno pizza and talking.

I found myself in a long conversation with this guy with glasses.

He knew me but if I’d been introduced to him, I’d somehow

Sad Goodbye A tribute illo by Dave Simons.

Howard the Duck © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc., but created by Steve Gerber.

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missed the name. I had no idea who he was and after twenty or so minutes of good verbal intercourse, it seemed kinda awkward to say, “By the way, who are you?”

So I just listened and tried to figure it out. At one point, he mentioned some comic he’d written for Marvel—I forget which one now—and I thought, “Hmm … the only person I can think of who wrote that book who I don’t know is Steve Gerber. But this couldn’t possibly be Steve Gerber. He isn’t holding hostages. He seems to be unarmed. We’ve been here nearly half an hour and he hasn’t bitten the head off a live chicken.”

A few minutes later, he said something else that marked him as Gerber and I thought, “Hey … maybe that guy in New York didn’t know what the heck he was talking about.”

Steve had just moved to Southern California—to Burbank, actually.

After Sergio’s shindig let out, we drove our separate vehicles to my place and I gave him some pillows and furnishings I was going to toss out. Then, because neither one of us wanted the evening to end, we went to Canter’s Delicatessen and sat there ’til 3:30 a.m., talking about whatever we were talking about. By the time I staggered back home to bed, I’d met a new close friend I’d known all my life.

That’s my “How I Met Gerber” story. Between that and the “How We Lost Gerber” story, there were many tales … working together at Hanna-Barbera and at Ruby-Spears Animation, going through his battles with Marvel over the Duck, the many aftershocks from that lawsuit, et al.

The last issue of Howard that Steve did before it all went kablooey was one I was supposed to write as a fill-in, and I was very honored that he entrusted me with his most personal creation. Then his lawyer suggested Steve get “current” with Marvel on deadlines as rapidly as possible because the divorce was going to be nasty enough without Marvel charging that he was late and owed them pages. One way to get him caught up was for him to dialogue that issue instead of me … so he dialogued it.

In hindsight, I was glad. Otherwise, Steve Gerber’s last issue of Howard the Duck would have been written by me instead of by Steve Gerber. I’m sure I would have disliked it because I’ve disliked every other appearance of that character not written by Steve.

There was something about the guy … and about his writing.

He had a sense of perception about human beings that was just, to use a word I usually avoid, awesome. He was also utterly noncompetitive where others were concerned. Someone else’s success did not threaten him in the slightest … or if it did, he never let that show. I’m sure this issue will be full of a lot of folks saying how much Gerber helped them, Gerber encouraged them, Gerber made them feel they could do that which they feared they could not do...

That was Steve.

The end … the end was sad and by “end,” I mean the last few years as he battled that ugly disease that chipped away at him, steadily adding new complications to an already too-complicated life.

His actual death was—and I sure hope people understand what I mean by this—almost a relief. Because I’m about 95% convinced that if he’d lived long enough to have the lung transplant, he’d have gone through months of pain and frustration and he still wouldn’t have had much of a life for very long.

We often talked about what he was going through ... and he spoke of it without excessive alarm and with admirable courage. The rhetoric wasn’t all that different from when in the early days of personal computers, we’d spent hours discussing how to configure software, write macros, install memory chips, etc. It was a problem, there to be solved to whatever extent it was solvable. The last dinner we had together was at the local outlet of Maggiano’s, an Italian chain. Steve had the Braised Beef Cannelloni and he had to keep pausing between bites to readjust the oxygen feed going into his nostrils. Yet another problem.

In a sense, Steve lived from problem to problem, from crisis to crisis.

Since I admired so much about him, I have to remind myself not to admire or emulate that. Still, when there is adversity, I can only hope to meet it with as much sanity and perspective as Steve wielded against the many distractions that comprised his life.

To those of you who never met him: I don’t have to tell you what a fine writer he is. The work’s being reprinted and I suspect it always will be, over and over, returned to print constantly for new generations. What I must tell you is what an extraordinary person you never got to know.

Golden Years (left to right) Steve Gerber, Jack Kirby, Mark Evanier, and Frank Miller in 1985 at L.A.’s Golden Apple Comics.

Photo courtesy of Ryan Liebowitz and Jerry Boyd.

J. DAVID SPURLOCK

Publisher, Vanguard Productions www.vanguardproductions.net

The news of Steve Gerber’s passing was very disturbing and moved us deeply. He was one of our all-time favorites. I read most of his work for Marvel. He was hip and savvy and we felt he was part of our generation—one of us.

I continued reading his brilliant Howard the Duck well after I had given up Fantastic Four and most other mainstream titles. His work in favor of creator rights was heroic and of great importance.

Rest in Peace, Steve Gerber, you are well remembered.

Writer

J. M. DeMATTEIS

I didn’t know Steve personally but I certainly knew him through his work.

Gerber was a brave writer, unafraid to reveal the deepest parts of himself—his passions, obsessions, ideas, and emotions; the fullness of his humanity—through his stories. “What’s the big deal?” you may ask.

“Isn’t that what writers are supposed to do?” Well, we expect that of our finest novelists, but we don’t always expect it of our comic-book writers. And we certainly didn’t expect it of our comic-book writers— no matter how talented they were—in the l970s.

But Steve Gerber was a mold-breaker. He had an individual voice at a time when many of Marvel’s writers—even the very best of them— were burying their individuality beneath a layer of Stan Lee-isms.

He stepped into the Marvel Universe, looked around at the towering structures that Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko had erected, bowed in deference to their collective genius, and then started kicking those towers down with ferocious glee. His work on Defenders (where he injected a Monty Pythonesque lunacy into the superhero genre), Howard the Duck (the first overground underground comic book), and Man-Thing (his most impassioned, and compassionate, writing) ranks among the best work of that impressive decade. Hell, it ranks among the best mainstream comics work by anybody ever.

I wouldn’t be the writer I am today if I’d never encountered Steve Gerber’s work. Every story I read—the ones that soared and the ones that went down in flames—was evidence that mainstream comics could be so much more than I’d ever imagined. That there was no creative door that couldn’t be kicked in, no creative wall that couldn’t be torn down.

Thank you, Steve, for your extraordinary body of work. © 2008 J. M. DeMatteis.

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STAN LEE

“The Man” … ’Nuff said!

Steve Gerber was one of scriptdom’s most valuable rarities, an extraordinary writer who refused to follow the beaten track. His concepts were wild, far out, and intensely original. In the case of Howard the Duck, I think the word “brilliant” would be eminently justified.

Steve was a true pro, talented, dependable, and dedicated to his craft.

His scripts were professional, polished, and sometimes even controversial, but they always contained that most valuable of elements—surprise.

I regret that I never had the chance to work with Steve, much as I would have liked, but ever since first being introduced to his writing, I’ve been a Gerber fan—and always will be.

DAVID ANTHONY KRAFT

Writer and comics fandom writer/publisher

Steve was an integral part of my salad days in comics and those memories are still as strong and fresh as can be.

I helped Gerber plot more than one Howard the Duck story back in the day (not to mention Captain America, Defenders, KISS, etc.; he was always writing himself into a corner), and remember late evenings stuffing envelopes with HTD for President buttons while watching Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman at the Mad Genius Associates studio with Steve, Mary Skrenes, and Jim Salicrup.

Gerber embodied the zeitgeist along with Starlin and like luminaries.

He was an inspiration. My hat is off.

JOE CASEY

Writer www.godlandonline.com

For me, Steve Gerber was the first writer to take Marvel Comics to a place beyond the obvious Stan Lee paradigm. With his characters, with his stories, with his ideas … he was willing to push the boundaries in a wholly unique way, writing in a style not at all dependent on Stan’s established “voice” (that so many of his contemporaries adopted in their work). Those books still stand up as some of the most glorious mindf**ks that you’ll ever find in so-called “mainstream” comics. I don’t know if there’s a higher compliment than that…

PAUL LEVITZ

President and Publisher, DC Comics www.dccomics.com

Perhaps he still haunts Hell’s Kitchen—at least I feel Steve there in memory, when my path pulls me down 9th or 10th Avenue. I don’t remember the addresses anymore, and the diner’s gone, but a bit of Steve’s spirit remains. Sitting there, restless, sleepless, pouring in coffee through a cigarette smoke haze, and filling his notebooks. He watched life, and even death, from that perch, and with laconic sarcasm wove it all into stories in the last days when comics were supposed to just be safe, mindless entertainment for kids by anonymous craftsmen. He didn’t seek the comfort of safety for himself or offer it to his readers, his sharp intelligence fought mindlessness by word and subversive deed, and he was willing to provide entertainment as long as you were willing to reach to the more provocative challenges of art. And if he wrote beautifully when anonymously working in the style of others, how much more gloriously when he abandoned the safety of craft for his own, unique and powerful voice.

Ducks in a Row Howard sketches by artists (top) Gabrielle Morrisette, who contributed this scan; and (bottom) Andy Kuhn, scan courtesy of Roger Ash. Howard the Duck © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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TONY ISABELLA

Writer www.worldfamouscomics.com/tony

Steve Gerber was one of the first people I met when I went to work for Marvel Comics in the fall of 1972. I didn’t know his work well at that point—he had yet to fully come into his own—but I liked him from the moment he made a point of coming to the office I shared with Sol Brodsky to welcome me aboard. Then and now, I’m of the opinion that, if you didn’t like Steve, there was something fundamentally wrong with you.

Steve didn’t actually come into his own. It was more like he exploded into his own. In what now seems like the blink of an eye, he became one of the best, most innovative, most influential writers of my generation. His work on Defenders, “the Living Mummy” in Supernatural Thrillers, Man-Thing, Marvel Two-in-One, Son of Satan, Tales of the Zombie, and, of course, on Howard the Duck and Omega the Unknown, just plain crackled with his skilled and passionate voice.

Cocky as I was in those days—and I could be insufferable—I was still smart enough to study his work. Every now and then, when I’m reading a comic I wrote back in the day or something I’ve just written, I can spot the occasional Gerber influence. It’s a rare writer that can become part of another writer’s approach to the work. Steve wasn’t just a rarity. He was unique.

Some of my best work at Marvel was a direct result of Steve’s ready willingness to share his fertile imagination with and support other writers. Early in my run on Ghost Rider, I’d written Johnny Blaze into a corner. He’d lost his protection against Satan and his soul would surely follow. It made for one hell of a cliffhanger, but I had no idea how I was going to get Blaze out of this situation. Steve and I were talking about this, when half-joking, half-serious, he said: “Why don’t you have God save him?”

It was an absolutely brilliant idea and I ran with it for the rest of my two-year run on the series. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that I was far from the only writer to benefit from Steve’s generosity.

He was as giving a person as there was.

I got to hang around with Steve a bit during my brief time in New York City. When I was dating a woman who was a close friend of Mary Skrenes, Steve’s writing partner, I spend many an evening at Mary’s apartment. It wasn’t exactly the Algonquin, but, being in the presence of such good and talented people, I felt the nobility of being a writer. Yeah, I know that sounds extreme. But, in an industry that so often feeds upon creators, those times when you’re absolutely certain that you’re doing important work keep you going through the times when others try to convince you otherwise.

That was one more I owed Steve … and Mary … and the lovely Lark Russell, who I hope is happy and well.

Many people have written about what a good friend Steve was.

I can vouch for that.

When New York had beaten me down to within an inch of my life and I decided to move back to Ohio, my departure was imperiled by a rent dispute with my landlord who a) wouldn’t give me an itemized final bill, and b) suddenly insisted on being paid in cash instead of the usual check. Steve and about a dozen friends had come to my apartment to help me load my possessions into a rented van. The apartment manager called the police, who threatened to throw me in jail. Steve, Paul Levitz, Paul Kupperberg, and others— forgive me for not mentioning them all—dug deep into their wallets and saved me from a night in the hoosegow.

A couple years later, I moved back to New York for less than a year. It was an ill-fated move in many ways, one of them being that my roommate who, despite my always giving him my half of the monthly rent, had not paid the rent for a couple of months.

Which led to our being evicted.

Steve and the other members of the Mad Genius Studio took me in. He, Mary Skrenes, Jim Salicrup, and David Anthony Kraft let me crash on their office sofa for a couple weeks while I found another apartment. Despite the inconvenience of having me under foot, they never asked for a dime in rent.

Dean and Steve (left to right) Dean Mullaney, former Eclipse Comics publisher (and, more recently, an IDW comics archivist), and Steve Gerber “conning” in San Diego in 1982. Photo by Alan Light.

When New York City beat me down a second time, I moved back to Cleveland. I didn’t have any contact with Steve for a pretty long time. The last time I saw him in person was either at a San Diego convention or one of the parties Marv Wolfman used to throw after San Diego conventions. Steve was as friendly and as welcoming as the day we first met. After that, we did manage to exchange a few e-mails every year. I wish there had been more e-mails and a lot more meetings. That this is the nature of the comics industry does not diminish my chagrin that I can’t manage my time well enough to tell people that I love, people like Steve, that I love them more often than I do.

And this where I take a moment to cry…

The 1970s were a chaotic time in American comics. There were so many new creators coming into the field and many of us, myself most definitely included, didn’t always conduct ourselves as nobly as we should have. But I never knew Steve to knowingly do anybody a bad turn. He was as great a man as he was a writer.

I know I didn’t mention a bunch of other terrific Gerber comic books earlier. His editorship of Crazy and his incredible KISS comics and Foolkiller and Destroyer Duck and, most especially, the brilliant Hard Time for DC Comics. The last one is the one I frequently point to when someone claims the writers of my generation can’t cut it anymore. It was fresh, brilliant, moving, and every bit as good as Steve’s best work from decades earlier.

If I failed to adequately describe the treasure that is Steve Gerber, I apologize. I hope I have, at the very least, given you some idea of what he meant to me.

God bless and keep you, Steve Gerber.

You will be missed. © 2008 Tony Isabella.

TOM DeFALCO

Writer, former Marvel Comics editor-in-chief http://apps.facebook.com/comicbooks/creators/ tom-defalco/writer I didn’t really know Steve Gerber, but I certainly admired his work.

He was a master wordsmith with a wild imagination. He created characters filled with humanity and stories that still haunt me.

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ROGER SLIFER

Writer, editor, animation writer and story-editor I don’t remember my first encounter with Steve in the mid-’70s—he was probably kicking a file cabinet, flinging his briefcase to the floor, or raging impotently at the notoriously slow elevator at Marvel’s 575 Madison Ave. offices. Invariably, these displays of rage—outrage, really—were because Marvel’s accounting department had once more screwed up, and the freelance check he came in to pick up was not there. “I can’t believe they [the accounting department] keep their records in shoe boxes!” I can still hear his voice in my head.

Some might have found his behavior off-putting.

But I felt I had found a kindred spirit. Besides, there were some explanations for Steve’s behavior—Steve had always had a sleep problem (years later he was diagnosed with sleep apnea) and I think he compensated by drinking about 12 cups of coffee a day. No wonder Steve seemed a bit … high-strung in those days.

So Steve and I quickly became good friends.

Many hours were spent, after work, sitting together at the Brewburger on 57th Street, down the block from Marvel. Here I was, a 19-year-old fresh-faced kid from the Midwest, newly arrived in New York City.

Whereas Steve was six years older, a guy with a lot of writing and life experience, and the regular author of comics like Daredevil, The Defenders, and yes, of course, Howard the Duck.

Hours would pass as we talked about philosophy, politics, religion, movies, books, or the stories he was working on at the time. He opened my eyes about many things—for here was a guy who was engaged at

It’s Hammer Time!

The early-1980s independent comics series Destroyer Duck was created by Gerber and friends to help fund Steve’s legal actions against Marvel Comics to obtain ownership of Howard the Duck.

Here, courtesy of The Jack Kirby Collector, are Kirby’s pencils to page 1 of DD #2.

Destroyer Duck © 2008 Steve Gerber estate. Art © 2008 Jack Kirby estate.

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observing everything in the world around him and providing insights that never would have occurred to me. Or most others, I suspect.

Others in that period had certainly helped to tutor and inform me: Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, even brilliant prodigies like the young Jim Salicrup, but Steve was the only one I considered a true mentor—probably because he was the only one who I felt was schooling me in life as well as in comics.

Steve was just an unending fount of knowledge, experience, and creativity. I always felt honored to be in his presence—sort of like getting to hang out all the time for free with a professor at college, but without the stodginess or any sense of self-importance.

And, for an up-and-coming writer, there was the joy of helping him plot on occasion. Steve was very skilled at coming up with great, cliffhanger endings for his stories.

But typically, when you’d say, “Steve, that’s brilliant! How do you plan to pay it off in the next issue?” he’d reply, “I have no idea.” And he wasn’t kidding. He’d bring his story to what he felt was a startling climax—and have no idea at the time how he was going to resolve it! As a result, when the deadlines were pressing in upon him, he would sometimes seek an assist from other writers, including Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Dave Kraft, and, of course, his dear friend and sometimes co-writer Mary Skrenes. I remember one particular Defenders Annual had no less than five “co-plotters.” But in the end, of course, the brilliance was always Steve’s. His ear for dialogue, his inimitable style of characterization, his observations on the human condition—they were all uniquely his.

I remember those times very fondly.

Flash forward to the late ’70s. Steve had moved to Las Vegas. I was going for a visit and then we were driving out together to the San Diego Comic-Con, and from there on up to L.A. It was the first visit to California for both of us. I remember driving across the desert in his old, white van and talking to him about the fact there was no horizon line because of the desert expanse.

After Comic-Con, we drove on to Los Angeles.

I remember cruising down Hollywood Blvd. (again, the first time for us both) and was surprised how relatively untrafficked it was. (See, it was a long time ago!)

We got out of the van and took a stroll down the sidewalk.

It wasn’t long before we were accosted by two solicitors (no, it’s not what you think!) from the nearby Scientology building. They were trying to get us to come inside and “get tested.” We knew what we were getting into, but, for a lark, decided to go along with it. We were taken inside, separated, set behind a weird contraption.

We were made to hold a couple of metal rods which were supposed to measure our “energy,” after which we were given our “diagnoses” and told not to reveal them to anyone. But we swiftly extricated ourselves from our captors and, of course, immediately compared notes. Turns out we’d both, unsurprisingly, been diagnosed as “depressed” and were—you guessed it— desperately in need of Scientology’s “help.” Which they were willing to provide—for a fee, of course.

Instead, we quickly fled the scene, foregoing our prescribed “treatment.” (Although I think in his later years Steve may have gone on an anti-depressant.

Myself, I remain—cheerfully or tearfully—unmedicated.)

We had a good laugh and continued our tour of the city.

Not long afterward, Steve was story-editing an animated series based on Plastic Man for Ruby-Spears.

They had one writing slot left for that season and Steve offered to let me write it if I submitted an approvable premise. I submitted a few, including one which featured

pastries that came to life (years before Spielberg did the same, I might add!). Steve was interested, but before we could proceed, the powers that be decided that they wanted an episode based on a particular holiday. And they already had another writer in mind to write it.

Since that would be the last episode of the season there would not be any left for me. Nonetheless, Steve paid me a $100 “kill fee” for the work I had done—and he paid it out of his own pocket!

That’s the kind of guy Steve was. He had asked me to do premises and therefore he felt he had an obligation to pay me something for the work I had done. Whether the company involved felt obliged or not.

Flash forward to 1984. Steve was story-editing G. I. Joe for Sunbow Productions. He offered me some writing work. This was very fortuitous for me because I had just had a big falling out with DC Comics over The Omega Men. As a result, I was abruptly without an income and, among other things, trying to pay my monthly rent on an apartment in Manhattan. Around this time, I remember loaning my last $1,000 to my girlfriend at the time with the proviso that she absolutely, positively, had to pay me back by the time my rent was due, otherwise I was screwed. She didn’t. I mention this only to contrast her behavior with Steve’s. There are just some people you always know you can count on.

I should point out that, prior to this, I had never written an animation script in my life. That didn’t matter to Steve. He knew my comics work; he had respect and confidence that I could transfer my skills to another medium. That was all there was to it. I know there were many other writers over the years that he treated with similar deference.

A lot of comics writers were able to make the transition to animation because of Steve.

Working for Sunbow was such a delightful creative experience for all of us, I had also told Steve that if Sunbow (whose main office was based in New York) ever had an opening on staff to please recommend me.

Shortly thereafter, they did and he did. They hired me and I went on to spend several great years working for a wonderful company.

Steve never even mentioned that he had recommended me. I had to call him to get confirmation. The bottom line is, Steve is responsible for my entire animation career.

I tried, in some small part, to repay him years later when I was producing and story-editing Yu-Gi-Oh for 4KIDS Productions. I hired Steve to write a Halloween story from the existing animated material.

It featured a giant pumpkin as the main villain and some assorted ghoulish creatures as sidekicks. The story was both creepy and humorous. You can see why I would think of Steve to adapt this story

for the American audience. He did his usual brilliant job, nailed our featured characters instantly, and delivered a terrific two-part story.

I recommend it to anyone looking for an obscure Gerber work.

As someone who knew the energetic, caffeine-fueled Gerber, the last few years have been more difficult. After Steve left Los Angeles and moved back to Vegas, I didn’t see him as frequently but we stayed in touch by phone and by e-mail. And when one day he told me he was going to need a lung transplant, I was shocked and appalled.

Steve’s deteriorating health had one bittersweet silver lining for me, personally: it meant I got to see him a bit more frequently.

He was in L.A. on a more regular basis, undergoing a battery of tests at UCLA. Whenever he was in town, we tried to get together for dinner or at least a cup of coffee. I tried to be part of his L.A. support group which included Mark Evanier and Gordon Kent. And even though Steve had slowed down a little, now accompanied by an omnipresent oxygen tank, he remained in high spirits. Or, at least, I should say, he was no more cynical and fatalistic than usual. He was still eager to share his views on pop culture and politics—and copies of his latest issue of “Dr. Fate” [in DC’s Countdown to Mystery].

The last time I saw him, at the Coffee Bean in Westwood, he was happy that he was finally about to go on the transplant list and get a new set of lungs, a new lease on life.

Even the final month, when he ended up at the hospital in Las Vegas—on an emergency basis, I was later told—he appeared (from my limited perspective) to be going strong. He was writing “Dr. Fate” from his bed, still striving to make his deadlines, not knowing that his own, final deadline was only days away. We exchanged e-mails at the end of January.

I told him I was going to try to make a trip out to see him later that week.

But he held out the possibility that he could be out of the hospital and either at home or in a rehab facility the week after. So I decided to wait.

I wish I hadn’t. That e-mail was the last communication I had with him.

With his passing, I still feel very privileged that he was my mentor and my friend. I have no clever quips to make about ducks or rats.

Steve was very human to me.

F.O.O.G. Another lawsuit-funding project was the 1982 F.O.O.G. (Friends Of Ol’ Gerber) Portfolio. Shown here are F.O.O.G. prints by (below) Dave Sim and (right) Bernie Wrightson; scans courtesy of Gabrielle Morrisette.

Cerebus and art © Dave Sim. Captain Stern and art © Bernie Wrightson.

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Send your comments to: E-mail: euryman@gmail.com (subject: BACK ISSUE) Please inquire before sending attachments.

Postal mail: Michael Eury, Editor • BACK ISSUE 118 Edgewood Ave. NE • Concord, NC 28025

While production on this issue was drawing to a close, I was saddened to learn of the passing of ROBBIE GREENBERGER, son of my old friend, former co-worker, and occasional BACK ISSUE contributor Bob Greenberger.

Writing obituaries is an alltoo-familiar task for me, but this is the most difficult one yet. Robbie Greenberger lost his valiant struggle against leukemia on August 15, 2008, at the age of twenty. Twenty. His passing defied the natural order.

It’s one of those horrible occurrences that makes us wonder why these things happen to those whose lives have barely begun.

Robbie is survived by his father, Bob, mother, Deb, and sister, Kate. BACK ISSUE offers its condolences to the Greenbergers.

Please make a donation to the charity below in Robbie Greenberger’s name.

Alan, since the illustration in question was a hybrid of two different images, art credits were not listed as they normally are with single, unaltered images. But you’re absolutely right—credit is indeed due, for both you as well as Jack Kirby, artist of the X-Men #1 cover.

BACK ISSUE regrets the omission. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, and my apologies.

Also, Glen Cadigan, who contributed the scan for #29’s cover, writes: The cover of BACK ISSUE #29 was not intended by Dave Cockrum to be an X-Men cover during his second run on the series, but to be the cover corner block, that illustration in the top left corner of every Marvel comic. It was rejected because it had Colossus in the lead instead of Cyclops, who was the more logicial choice as the team’s leader. The block which they went with instead corrected that problem, and they recycled the unused artwork in X-Men: Special Edition, which is where I found it.

Thanks, Glen.

– M.E.

UNION JACK ATTACK I’ve just torn open my monthly comics food parcel (I live 60 miles from the nearest comics shop) and I’ve rabidly devoured BACK ISSUE #29, which just may be the perfect issue. I loved the retrospective on Captain Britain—it instantly transported me back to 1976 (I remember the year well … it was the last time we had two consecutive rain-free days in Wales) and the guilty pleasure that was Captain Britain. I say “guilty” because, being Irish, with very Irish parents, a superhero garbed in the Union Jack of Britain was not necessarily the smartest thing to bring into the house. But I just fell in love with that original costume—it was so colorful and—gasp— we could see it in color INSIDE the comic, not just on the cover! It’s hard to convey how big a deal that was in the ’70s

The Tommy Fund for Childhood Cancer Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital 20 York St. New Haven, CT 06511-3202

I was paging through your new issue, number 29, and noticed on page 17 an article titled, “The Beauty of the Beast.” The accompanying illustration features, superimposed over the cover of X-Men #1, an image of the Beast from Defenders #131. I drew that image, and I am wondering why there is no artist’s attribution. It occupies about a quarter of the page, and I cannot seem to spot a similarly sized image sans attribution in your publication. I would appreciate a correction, printed in a similarly prominent location.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

– Alan Kupperberg

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© 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

in the UK. It was still only thirty years after the war and color comics seemed a fanciful, hedonistic dream. And then Captain Britain arrived and, suddenly, I wondered what it might be like if we got a color television, too!

Thanks for a gem of an issue—how about a Herb Trimpe feature sometime? Herb practically defines certain periods of comics history and deserves some fanfare (even if his British Police helmets in Captain Britain did look like pepper pots!).

– John Roche John, did you miss BI #28? That “Heroes Behaving Badly” issue included a Hulk interview with the incredible Herb Trimpe.

– M.E.

THE ORIGINAL CAPTAIN COMET

© 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Fans of Captain Comet, whose career was neatly summarized by John Wells in BI #29, may not be aware that the first appearance of the name “Captain Comet” was in Anthony Boucher’s 1942 detective novel Rocket To the Morgue (first published under the pseudonym of H. H. Holmes). The book is set in the then-nascent world of professional science fiction; “Captain Comet” is a pulp superman obviously intended to be the story’s analogue of Edmond Hamilton’s Captain Future. I’m not sure if Julie Schwartz, who himself was the model for the novel’s agent character, “M. Halstead Phyn,” remembered the nomenclatural similarity, but Boucher did. In his Afterword to the 1951 edition, Boucher wrote: “I created a character called Captain Comet to parody all the inter-galactic supermen, and sure enough, there is now a comic book featuring the hyperspatial adventures of Captain Comet.” Just another reason why I love the character; Boucher is also one of my favorite writers.

– Mike W. Barr

NO LONGER LOST I’m a huge X-Men fan and really enjoyed this issue dedicated to the mutants, but I am writing to let you know of a correction to the “Lost Angel Stories” article by Dewey Cassell. The article detailed stories of the Angel taking place during the time between X-Men #67 and 93, when it was a reprint magazine. One of the stories was a fight between Angel and the “Dazzler” that was printed as a backup story in Ka-Zar #2 and 3 and Marvel Tales #30.

The article says that this story has never been reprinted, but in fact it was included in Marvel Masterworks: X-Men vol. 5 along with issues #43–53 of the X-Men series.

The article also mentioned that many fan sites have not included that story when listing X-Men or Angel appearances.

I initially became aware of these issues from the website www.chronologyproject.com that allows you to search for a Marvel character and then attempts to list all appearances in order of timeline for the character that are in continuity (no What If? or Ultimate Universe appearances, etc.). I thought you might like to let your readers know this to help in their search for back issues.

– Tony Tobin Our own Dewey Cassell responds: Tony, you are quite correct—my goof. I confess I missed the Masterworks reprint. I guess I should have said “obscure,” rather than “lost,” Angel stories. Thanks for the catch. And the Marvel Chronology Project is a great website. It is one of the few that includes references to both of the “obscure” Angel stories.

– Dewey

RETURN TO ATLANTIS Got the latest BACK ISSUE (#29) and of course the first thing I did was go to the letter page (yes, I have “letterwriteritis”!) and was very, very, VERY pleased to see that you had published my Sub-Mariner letter.

The only problem is … you spelled my name wrong. It is not “Jeff Taylo” but “Jeff Taylor” (if you’d also missed the “a” it would have been “Tylo,” which at least would have been a good Ukrainian name...).

Oh, well, I guess it could have been worse … at least I wasn’t hit by a meteor, as I like to say (and no, I don’t know why I like to say it).

Oh, and speaking of streaking space phenomena, I loved the article on Captain Comet. I always enjoyed his appearances in Secret Society of Super-Villains and DC Comics Presents and, like the author, always wished DC had done more with him.

Also enjoyed the articles on Captain Britain, the Angel, and the Beast. Haven’t read the rest of the articles yet (too busy complaining...), but I am sure I will enjoy them just as much when I get to them.

And I have really been getting a kick out of the AA Comics stuff that you and Alter Ego have been doing, but something just struck when I was reading the latest chapter (and no, it wasn’t a meteor!). Instead of Kid Lantern, wouldn’t have been better to call him TEEN Lantern?

Only thing to mention is I also remember James Bond Jr. (and isn’t awful when the sex symbols of our youth show up as kids’ cartoons?), and I recall that his archenemy was Goldfinger’s daughter Goldie Finger (ouch!).

Anyway, that’s it for now. Sorry, to give you a hard time about the name, but if I don’t protect it, who will?

– Jeff Taylor Jeff, rather than a true typo it was actually a copy-and-paste slip-up, where the last letter in your name dropped off during an edit. And you’re right, it could have been worse: Imagine our embarrassment if this had happened with a sentence ending in “Shite”! Nonetheless, our apologies.

Glad you’re enjoying Bob Rozakis’ AA Comics history. I gave Bob this issue off due to our Gerber tribute, but the AA saga returns next issue.

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Back to your original reason for writing: issue #27’s Sub-Mariner article. Its author, Bruce MacIntosh, offers the following comments (with his mentions of Jeff “Taylo” edited to “Taylor”):

Next issue: “Tech, Data, and Hardware,” with JOE STATON and ETHAN VAN SCIVER’s “Pro2Pro” interview “Drawing Green Lantern: Then and Now”; a Who’s Who roundtable between MARV WOLFMAN, LEN WEIN, and BOB GREENBERGER; AA Comics Who’s Who pages (!); a guided tour of the Met’s Superhero Fashions exhibit; spotlights on ROM: Spaceknight and Dial “H” for Hero; and an in-depth interview with ELIOT R. BROWN, who discusses the behind-the-scenes of the Marvel Universe Handbooks as well as the Marvel Bullpen of the ’70s and ’80s. With art by SAL BUSCEMA, ALEX SAVIUK, ED HANNIGAN, KEITH POLLARD, JOHN BYRNE, and an unpublished Superman Who’s Who page by CURT SWAN. Look for Eliot Brown’s astounding Spider-Mobile schematic cover. Don’t ask—just BI it! See you in sixty!

Your friendly neighborhood Euryman, Michael Eury, editor

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S U B M IS S IO N G U ID E L IN E S BACK ISSUE is on the lookout for the following comics-related material from the 1970s and 1980s: Unpublished artwork and covers Original artwork and covers Penciled artwork Character designs, model sheets, etc.

Original sketches and/or convention sketches Original scripts Photos Little-seen fanzine material Other rarities Creators and collectors of 1970s/1980s comics artwork are invited to share your goodies with other fans!

Contributors will be acknowledged in print and receive complimentary copies (and the editor’s gratitude).

Submit artwork as (listed in order of preference): Scanned images: 300dpi TIF (preferred) or JPEG (e-mailed or on CD, or to our FTP site; please inquire) Clear color or black-and-white photocopies BACK ISSUE is also open to pitches from writers for article ideas appropriate for our recurring and/or rotating departments.

Request a copy of the BACK ISSUE Writers’ Bible by e-mailing euryman@gmail.com or by sending a SASE to the address below.

Please allow 6–8 weeks for a response to your proposals.

Artwork submissions and SASEs for writers’ guidelines should be sent to: Spider-Mobile © 2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. BACK ISSUE TM & © TwoMorrow s.

© 2008 Marvel Characters,

Inc.

Upon receiving BACK ISSUE #29, I immediately perused the letters column to see if there was any reaction to the contents of #27 (and particularly, my Sub-Mariner article) and was initially disappointed to read of Jeff Taylor’s reaction. His discontent focused on the omission in that article of discussion about Bill Everett’s contribution to the latter run of Subby’s first series in the early ’70s.

I certainly appreciate your response, Michael, however, because you are correct: Sub-Mariner appeared in a long-box worth of Marvel comics over the course of the ’70s and ’80s alone, and I merrily (re-)read and dissected every one of those 300 issues in preparation for my article. That research naturally did include the ten issues for which Everett performed the artistic work (which began with Sub-Mariner #50, June 1972).

Discussion of this period did, in fact, make it into the first drafts of my article, but I was forced for several reasons to excise those paragraphs from the version that saw print. The first was simply for space limitations. As you correctly stated, summarizing twenty years of a character’s appearances in comics is already a daunting task, especially when the piece was already twice as long as the assignment and I needed to figure out what could be trimmed without losing the “flavor” of the article. Unfortunately, the discussion of Everett’s early ’70s contribution to Subby’s series was one of those sections that had to go, along with fun and interesting details about his adventures with the Avengers and Defenders and about a dozen other writers and artists who also contributed to the Avenging Son’s eponymous series.

The other fact that influenced the removal of discussion of Everett’s early ’70s stint on Sub-Mariner was that Roy Thomas had just recently covered that (final) period of the artist’s career in BACK ISSUE’s sister publication, Alter Ego (#70, July 2007). Specifically, in his interview the former Marvel editor described Everett’s late work as “spotty,” because “he wasn’t able to do it on a regular monthly basis.” It was my understanding that Thomas was not characterizing the quality of Everett’s work as much as his regrettable lack of consistency during a period of troubled health late in life.

Nevertheless, I intentionally avoided inclusion of this quote or reference to Everett’s late work because I didn’t want to diminish the artist’s otherwise brilliant career.

On the other hand, I do appreciate Mr. Taylor’s comments, because it indicates that there is already a built-in audience that will appreciate what will eventually become the fifth installment of my upcoming series of 26 online articles, “The A to Z of Golden Age Comic Creators” for The Pulse (www.comicon.com/pulse). While the Everett piece may not focus too much on his later stint on Sub-Mariner, I promise not to short change the artist since that piece will focus specifically on his career. It will also later appear in a book about Golden Age creators that I will publish detailing the careers of many whose contributions to our beloved pasttime have been largely ignored.

Thanks for the opportunity to respond. The letters column is one of the great things about ’70s and ’80s comics—and therefore one of my favorite things about BACK ISSUE magazine!

Your brother in arms, Bruce MacIntosh

I s s u e

Michael Eury, Editor BACK ISSUE 118 Edgewood Ave. NE Concord, NC 28025

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DICK GIORDANO: CHANGING COMICS, ONE DAY AT A TIME MICHAEL EURY’s biography of comics’ most prominent and affable personality! Covers his career as illustrator, inker, and editor, peppered with DICK’S PERSONAL REFLECTIONS on his career milestones!

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JUSTICE LEAGUE COMPANION VOL. 1 A comprehensive examination of the Silver Age JLA written by MICHAEL EURY (co-author of THE SUPERHERO BOOK). It traces the JLA’s development, history, imitators, and early fandom through vintage and all-new interviews with the series’ creators, an issue-by-issue index of the JLA’s 1960-1972 adventures, classic and never-before-published artwork, and other fun and fascinating features. Contributors include DENNY O’NEIL, MURPHY ANDERSON, JOE GIELLA, MIKE FRIEDRICH, NEAL ADAMS, ALEX ROSS, CARMINE INFANTINO, NICK CARDY, and many, many others. Plus: An exclusive interview with STAN LEE, who answers the question, “Did the JLA really inspire the creation of Marvel’s Fantastic Four?” With an all-new cover by BRUCE TIMM!

THE KRYPTON COMPANION Unlocks the secrets of Superman’s Silver and Bronze Ages, when kryptonite came in multiple colors and super-pets scampered across the skies! Writer/editor MICHAEL EURY explores the legacy of classic editors MORT WEISINGER and JULIUS SCHWARTZ through all-new interviews with NEAL ADAMS, MURPHY ANDERSON, CARY BATES, RICH BUCKLER, NICK CARDY, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, KEITH GIFFEN, ELLIOT S! MAGGIN, JIM MOONEY, DENNIS O’NEIL, BOB OKSNER, MARTIN PASKO, BOB ROZAKIS, JIM SHOOTER, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, and other fan favorites! Plus: Super-artist CURT SWAN’s 1987 essay “Drawing Superman,” JERRY SIEGEL’s “lost” imaginary story “The Death of Clark Kent,” MARK WAID’s tribute to Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, and rare and previously unpublished artwork

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Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ISSUE magazine celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through recurring (and rotating) departments like “Pro2Pro” (dialogue between professionals), “BackStage Pass” (behind-the-scenes of comicsbased media), “Greatest Stories Never Told” (spotlighting unrealized comics series or stories), and more!

Go online for an ULTIMATE BUNDLE, with all the issues at HALF-PRICE! 6-ISSUE SUBS: $40 US Postpaid by Media Mail ($55 First Class, $63 Canada, $91 1st Class Intl., $112 Priority Intl.).

BACK ISSUE #1

BACK ISSUE #2

BACK ISSUE #3

“PRO2PRO” interview between GEORGE PÉREZ & MARV WOLFMAN (with UNSEEN PÉREZ ART), “ROUGH STUFF” featuring JACK KIRBY’s PENCIL ART, “GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD” on the first JLA/AVENGERS, “BEYOND CAPES” on DC and Marvel’s TARZAN (with KUBERT and BUSCEMA ART), “OFF MY CHEST” editorial by INFANTINO, and more! PÉREZ cover!

“PRO2PRO” between ADAM HUGHES and MIKE W. BARR (with UNSEEN HUGHES ART) and MATT WAGNER and DIANA SCHUTZ, “ROUGH STUFF” HUGHES PENCIL ART, STEVE RUDE’s unseen SPACE GHOST/HERCULOIDS team-up, Bruce Jones’ ALIEN WORLDS and TWISTED TALES, “OFF MY CHEST” by MIKE W. BARR on the DC IMPLOSION, and more!

HUGHES cover!

“PRO2PRO” between KEITH GIFFEN, J.M. DeMATTEIS and KEVIN MAGUIRE on their JLA WORK, “ROUGH STUFF” PENCIL ART by ARAGONÉS, HERNANDEZ BROS., MIGNOLA, BYRNE, KIRBY, HUGHES, details on two unknown PLASTIC MAN movies, Joker’s history with O’NEIL, ADAMS, ENGLEHART, ROGERS and BOLLAND, editorial by MARK EVANIER, and more! BOLLAND cover!

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BACK ISSUE #4

BACK ISSUE #5

BACK ISSUE #6

BACK ISSUE #7

BACK ISSUE #8

“PRO2PRO” between JOHN BYRNE and CHRIS CLAREMONT on their X-MEN WORK and WALT SIMONSON and JOE CASEY on Walter’s THOR, WOLVERINE PENCIL ART by BUSCEMA, LEE, COCKRUM, BYRNE, and GIL KANE, LEN WEIN’S TEEN WOLVERINE, PUNISHER’S 30TH and SECRET WARS’ 20TH ANNIVERSARIES (with UNSEEN ZECK ART), and more! BYRNE cover!

Wonder Woman TV series in-depth, LYNDA CARTER INTERVIEW, WONDER WOMAN TV ART GALLERY, Marvel’s TV Hulk, SpiderMan, Captain America, and Dr. Strange, LOU FERRIGNO INTERVIEW, super-hero cartoons you didn’t see, pencil gallery by JERRY ORDWAY, STAR TREK in comics, and ROMITA SR. editorial on Marvel’s movies!

Covers by ALEX ROSS and ADAM HUGHES!

TOMB OF DRACULA revealed with GENE COLAN and MARV WOLFMAN, LEN WEIN & BERNIE WRIGHTSON on Swamp Thing’s roots, STEVE BISSETTE & RICK VEITCH on their Swamp work, pencil art by BRUNNER, PLOOG, BISSETTE, COLAN, WRIGHTSON, and SMITH, editorial by ROY THOMAS, PREZ, GODZILLA comics (with TRIMPE art), CHARLTON horror, & more! COLAN cover!

History of BRAVE AND BOLD, JIM APARO interview, tribute to BOB HANEY, FANTASTIC FOUR ROUNDTABLE with STAN LEE, MARK WAID, and others, EVANIER and MEUGNIOT on DNAgents, pencil art by ROSS, TOTH, COCKRUM, HECK, ROBBINS, NEWTON, and BYRNE, DENNY O’NEIL editorial, a tour of METROPOLIS, IL, and more! SWAN/ANDERSON cover!

DENNY O’NEIL and Justice League Unlimited voice actor PHIL LaMARR discuss GL JOHN STEWART, NEW X-MEN pencil art by NEAL ADAMS, ARTHUR ADAMS, DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI, ALAN DAVIS, JIM LEE, ADAM HUGHES, STORM’s 30-year history, animated TV’s black heroes (with TOTH art), ISABELLA and TREVOR VON EEDEN on BLACK LIGHTNING, and more! KYLE BAKER cover!

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BACK ISSUE #9

BACK ISSUE #10

BACK ISSUE #11

BACK ISSUE #12

BACK ISSUE #13

MIKE BARON and STEVE RUDE on NEXUS past and present, a colossal GIL KANE pencil art gallery, a look at Marvel’s STAR WARS comics, secrets of DC’s unseen CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS SEQUEL, TIM TRUMAN on his GRIMJACK SERIES, MIKE GOLD editorial, THANOS history, TIME WARP revisited, and more! All-new STEVE RUDE COVER!

NEAL ADAMS and DENNY O’NEIL on RA’S AL GHUL’s history (with Adams art), O’Neil and MICHAEL KALUTA on THE SHADOW, MIKE GRELL on JON SABLE FREELANCE, HOWIE CHAYKIN interview, DOC SAVAGE in comics, BATMAN ART GALLERY by PAUL SMITH, SIENKIEWICZ, SIMONSON, BOLLAND, HANNIGAN, MAZZUCCHELLI, and others! New cover by ADAMS!

ROY THOMAS, KURT BUSIEK, and JOE JUSKO on CONAN (with art by JOHN BUSCEMA, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, NEAL ADAMS, JUSKO, and others), SERGIO ARAGONÉS and MARK EVANIER on GROO, DC’s never-published KING ARTHUR, pencil art gallery by KIRBY, PÉREZ, MOEBIUS, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, BOLLAND, and others, and a new BUSCEMA/JUSKO Conan cover!

‘70s and ‘80s character revamps with DAVE GIBBONS, ROY THOMAS and KURT BUSIEK, TOM DeFALCO and RON FRENZ on Spider-Man’s 1980s “black” costume change, DENNY O’NEIL on Superman’s 1970 revamp, JOHN BYRNE’s aborted SHAZAM! series detailed, pencil art gallery with FRANK MILLER, LEE WEEKS, DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI, CHARLES VESS, and more!

CARDY interview, ENGLEHART and MOENCH on kung-fu comics, “Pro2Pro” with STATON and CUTI on Charlton’s E-Man, pencil art gallery featuring MILLER, KUBERT, GIORDANO, SWAN, GIL KANE, COLAN, COCKRUM, and others, EISNER’s A Contract with God; “The Death of Romance (Comics)” (with art by ROMITA, SR. and TOTH), and more!

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BACK ISSUE #18

DAVE COCKRUM and MIKE GRELL go “Pro2Pro” on the Legion, pencil art gallery

by BUSCEMA, BYRNE, MILLER, STARLIN, McFARLANE, ROMITA JR., SIENKIEWICZ, looks at Hercules Unbound, Hex, Killraven, Kamandi, MARS, Planet of the Apes, art and interviews with GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, KIRBY, WILLIAMSON, and more! New MIKE GRELL/BOB McLEOD cover!

“Weird Heroes” of the 1970s and ‘80s!

MIKE PLOOG discusses Ghost Rider, MATT WAGNER revisits The Demon, JOE KUBERT dusts off Ragman, GENE COLAN “Rough Stuff” pencil gallery, GARCÍALÓPEZ recalls Deadman, DC’s unpublished Gorilla Grodd series, PERLIN, CONWAY, and MOENCH on Werewolf by Night, and more! New ARTHUR ADAMS cover!

“Toy Stories!” Behind the Scenes of Marvel’s G.I. JOE™ and TRANSFORMERS with PAUL LEVITZ and GEORGE TUSKA, “Rough Stuff” MIKE ZECK pencil gallery, ARTHUR ADAMS on Gumby, HE-MAN, ROM, MICRONAUTS, SUPER POWERS, SUPER-HERO CARS, art by HAMA, SAL BUSCEMA, GUICE, GOLDEN, KIRBY, TRIMPE, and new ZECK sketch cover!

“Super Girls!” Supergirl retrospective with art by STELFREEZE, HAMNER, SpiderWoman, Flare, Tigra, DC’s unused Double Comics with unseen BARRETTO and INFANTINO art, WOLFMAN and JIMENEZ on Donna Troy, female comics pros, art by SEKOWSKY, OKSNER, PÉREZ, HUGHES, GIORDANO, plus a COLOR GALLERY and COVER by BRUCE TIMM!

“Big, Green Issue!” Tour of NEAL ADAMS’ studio (with interview and art gallery), DAVE GIBBONS “Rough Stuff” pencil art spotlight, interviews with MIKE GRELL (on Green Arrow), PETER DAVID (on Incredible Hulk), a “Pro2Pro” chat between GERRY CONWAY and JOHN ROMITA, SR. (on the Green Goblin), and more. New cover

by NEAL ADAMS!

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“Unsung Heroes!” DON NEWTON spotlight, STEVE GERBER and GENE COLAN on Howard the Duck, MIKE CARLIN and DANNY FINGEROTH on Marvel’s Assistant Editors’ Month, the unrealized Unlimited Powers TV show, TONY ISABELLA’s aborted plans for The Champions, MARK GRUENWALD tribute, art by SAL BUSCEMA, JOHN BYRNE, and more! NEWTON/ RUBINSTEIN cover!

“Secret Identities!” Histories of characters with unusual alter egos: Firestorm, Moon Knight, the Question, and the “real-life” Human Fly! STEVE ENGLEHART and SAL BUSCEMA on Captain America, JERRY ORDWAY interview and cover, Superman roundtable with SIENKIEWICZ, NOWLAN, MOENCH, COWAN, MAGGIN, O’NEIL, MILGROM, CONWAY, ROBBINS, SWAN, plus FREE ALTER EGO #64 PREVIEW!

“The Devil You Say!” issue! A look at Daredevil in the 1980s and 1990s with interviews and art by KLAUS JANSON, JOHN ROMITA JR., and FRANK MILLER, MIKE MIGNOLA Hellboy interview, DAN MISHKIN and GARY COHN on Blue Devil, COLLEEN DORAN’s unpublished X-Men spin-off “Fallen Angels”, Son of Satan, Stig’s Inferno, DC’s Plop!, JACK KIRBY’s Devil Dinosaur, and cover by MIKE ZECK!

“Dynamic Duos!’ “Pro2Pro” interviews with Batman’s ALAN GRANT and NORM BREYFOGLE and the Legion’s PAUL LEVITZ and KEITH GIFFEN, a “Backstage Pass” to Dark Horse Comics, Robin’s history, EASTMAN and LAIRD’s Ninja Turtles, histories of duos Robin and Batgirl, Captain America and the Falcon, and Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, “Zot!” interview with SCOTT McCLOUD, and a new BREYFOGLE cover!

“Comics Go Hollywood!” Spider-Man roundtable with STAN LEE, JOHN ROMITA, SR., JIM SHOOTER, ERIK LARSEN, and others, STAR TREK comics writers’ roundtable Part 1, Gladstone’s Disney comics line, behindthe-scenes at TV’s ISIS and THE FLASH (plus an interview with Flash’s JOHN WESLEY SHIPP), TV tie-in comics, bonus 8-page color ADAM HUGHES ART GALLERY and cover, plus a FREE WRITE NOW #16 PREVIEW!

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“Magic” issue! MICHAEL GOLDEN interview, GENE COLAN, PAUL SMITH, and FRANK BRUNNER on drawing Dr. Strange, Mystic Art Gallery with CARL POTTS & KEVIN NOWLAN, BILL WILLINGHAM’s Elementals, Zatanna history, Dr. Fate’s revival, a “Greatest Stories Never Told” look at Peter Pan, tribute to the late MARSHALL ROGERS, a new GOLDEN cover, plus a FREE ROUGH STUFF #6 PREVIEW!

“Men of Steel!’ BOB LAYTON and DAVID MICHELINIE on Iron Man, RICH BUCKLER on Deathlok, MIKE GRELL on Warlord, JOHN BYRNE on ROG 2000, Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman, Machine Man, the World’s Greatest Super-Heroes comic strip, DC’s Steel, art by KIRBY, HECK, WINDSOR-SMITH, TUSKA, LAYTON cover, and bonus “Men of Steel” art gallery!

Includes a FREE DRAW! #15 PREVIEW!

“Spies and Tough Guys!’ PAUL GULACY and DOUG MOENCH in an art-packed “Pro2Pro” on Master of Kung Fu and their unrealized Shang-Chi/Nick Fury crossover, Suicide Squad spotlight, Ms. Tree, CHUCK DIXON and TIM TRUMAN’s Airboy, James Bond and Mr. T in comic books, Sgt. Rock’s oddball super-hero team-ups, Nathaniel Dusk, JOE KUBERT’s unpublished The Redeemer, and a new GULACY cover!

“Comic Book Royalty!” The ’70s/’80s careers of Aquaman and the Sub-Mariner explored, BARR and BOLLAND discuss CAMELOT 3000, comics pros tell “Why JACK KIRBY Was King,” “Dr. Doom: Monarch or Menace?” DON McGREGOR’s Black Panther; an exclusive ALAN WEISS art gallery; spotlights on ARION, LORD OF ATLANTIS; NIGHT FORCE; and more! New cover by NICK CARDY!

“Heroes Behaving Badly!” Hulk vs. Thing tirades with RON WILSON, HERB TRIMPE, and JIM SHOOTER; CARY BATES and CARMINE INFANTINO on “Trial of the Flash”; JOHN BYRNE’s heroes who cross the line; Teen Titan Terra, Kid Miracleman, Mark Shaw Manhunter, and others who went bad, featuring LAYTON, MICHELINIE, WOLFMAN, and PÉREZ, and more! New cover by DARWYN COOKE!

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“HOW-TO” MAGAZINES Spinning off from the pages of BACK ISSUE! magazine comes ROUGH STUFF, celebrating the ART of creating comics! Edited by famed inker BOB McLEOD, each issue spotlights NEVER-BEFORE PUBLISHED penciled pages, preliminary sketches, detailed layouts, and even unused inked versions from artists throughout comics history. Included is commentary on the art, discussing what went right and wrong with it, and background information to put it all into historical perspective. Plus, before-and-after comparisons let you see firsthand how an image changes from initial concept to published version. So don’t miss this amazing magazine, featuring galleries of NEVER-BEFORE SEEN art, from some of your favorite series of all time, and the top pros in the industry!

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ROUGH STUFF #1 Our debut issue features galleries of UNSEEN ART by a who’s who of Modern Masters including: ALAN DAVIS, GEORGE PÉREZ, BRUCE TIMM, KEVIN NOWLAN, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, ARTHUR ADAMS, JOHN BYRNE, and WALTER SIMONSON, plus a KEVIN NOWLAN interview, art critiques, and a new BRUCE TIMM COVER!

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The follow-up to our smash first issue features more galleries of UNSEEN ART by top industry professionals, including: BRIAN APTHORP, FRANK BRUNNER, PAUL GULACY, JERRY ORDWAY, ALEX TOTH, and MATT WAGNER, plus a PAUL GULACY interview, a look at art of the pros BEFORE they were pros, and a new GULACY “HEX” COVER!

Still more galleries of UNPUBLISHED ART

by MIKE ALLRED, JOHN BUSCEMA, YANICK PAQUETTE, JOHN ROMITA JR., P. CRAIG RUSSELL, and LEE WEEKS, plus a JOHN ROMITA JR. interview, looks at the process of creating a cover (with BILL SIENKIEWICZ and JOHN ROMITA JR.), and a new ROMITA JR. COVER, plus a FREE DRAW #13 PREVIEW!

More NEVER-PUBLISHED galleries (with detailed artist commentaries) by MICHAEL KALUTA, ANDREW “Starman” ROBINSON, GENE COLAN, HOWARD CHAYKIN, and STEVE BISSETTE, plus interview and art by JOHN TOTLEBEN, a look at the Wonder Woman Day charity auction (with rare art), art critiques, before-&-after art comparisons, and a FREE WRITE NOW #15 PREVIEW!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG063714

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ROUGH STUFF #5

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ROUGH STUFF #6

NEVER-BEFORE-PUBLISHED galleries (complete with extensive commentaries by the artists) by PAUL SMITH, GIL KANE, CULLY HAMNER, DALE KEOWN, and ASHLEY WOOD, plus a feature interview and art by STEVE RUDE, an examination of JOHN ALBANO and TONY DeZUNIGA’s work on Jonah Hex, new STEVE RUDE COVER, plus a FREE BACK ISSUE #23 PREVIEW!

Features a new interview and cover by BRIAN STELFREEZE, interview with BUTCH GUICE, extensive art galleries/commentary by IAN CHURCHILL, DAVE COCKRUM, and COLLEEN DORAN, MIKE GAGNON looks at independent comics, with art and comments by ANDREW BARR, BRANDON GRAHAM, and ASAF HANUKA! Includes a FREE ALTER EGO #73 PREVIEW!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY073902

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: AUG074137

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ROUGH STUFF #7

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Features an in-depth interview and cover by TIM TOWNSEND, CRAIG HAMILTON, DAN JURGENS, and HOWARD PORTER offer preliminary art and commentaries, MARIE SEVERIN career retrospective, graphic novels feature with art and comments by DAWN BROWN, TOMER HANUKA, BEN TEMPLESMITH, and LANCE TOOKS, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: NOV073966

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ROUGH STUFF #9

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ROUGH STUFF #8 Features an in-depth interview and cover painting by the extraordinary MIKE MAYHEW, preliminary and unpublished art

by ALEX HORLEY, TONY DeZUNIGA, NICK CARDY, and RAFAEL KAYANAN (including commentary by each artist), a look at the great Belgian comic book artists, a “Rough Critique” of MIKE MURDOCK’s work, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: FEB084188

Editor and pro inker BOB McLEOD features four interviews this issue: ROB HAYNES (interviewed by fellow professional TIM TOWNSEND), JOE JUSKO, MEL RUBI, and SCOTT WILLIAMS, with a new painted cover by JUSKO, and an article by McLEOD examining "Inkers: Who needs ’em?" along with other features, including a Rough Critique of RUDY VASQUEZ! (100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY084263

4-ISSUE SUBSCRIPTIONS: $26 US Postpaid by Media Mail ($36 First Class, $44 Canada, $60 Surface, $72 Airmail).

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TwoMorrows Publishing 2008 Catalog Update JUNE-DECEMBER 2008 • ORDER AT: www.twomorrows.com TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com

NEW BOOKS BY GEORGE KHOURY FOR FALL 2008!

All characters TM & ©2008 their respective owners.

From KIMOTA: THE MIRACLEMAN COMPANION to G-FORCE: ANIMATED and TRUE BRIT, readers know GEORGE KHOURY is the author that delivers the most in-depth books on the comics and TV shows they love.

Look what he’s up to now!

AGE OF TV HEROES

THE EXTRAORDINARY WORKS OF ALAN MOORE: Indispensable Edition

Examines the history of the live-action television adventures of everyone’s favorite comic book heroes! This handsome FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER features the in-depth stories of the actors and behind-the-scene players that made the classic super-hero television programs we all grew up with.

From legendary shows like THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN and BATMAN, to the modern era of THE TICK and SMALLVILLE, it’s colorfully presented in vivid detail, lavishly designed with a bevy of color photographs. Included are new and exclusive interviews and commentary from ADAM WEST (Batman), LYNDA CARTER (Wonder Woman), PATRICK WARBURTON (The Tick), NICHOLAS HAMMOND (Spider-Man), WILLIAM KATT (The Greatest American Hero), JACK LARSON (The Adventures of Superman), JOHN WESLEY SHIPP (The Flash), JACKSON BOSTWICK (Shazam!), and many more, including comments from REB BROWN, STEPHEN J. CANNELL, CHIP KIDD, STAN LEE, NOEL NEILL, JOHN ROMITA, ALEX ROSS, ILYA SALKIND, LOU SCHEIMER, LORENZO SEMPLE, LYLE WAGGONER, and other actors, producers, and crew. Re-experience the pop culture birth of the super-hero phenomenon, and relive the first time that these heroes came to life on TV! Written by G-FORCE: ANIMATED collaborators JASON HOFIUS and GEORGE KHOURY, with a new cover by superstar painter ALEX ROSS!

The definitive autobiographical book on ALAN MOORE finally returns to print in a NEW EXPANDED AND UPDATED VERSION! In it, Moore reflects on his life and work in an insightful and candid fashion through an extensive series of interviews about his entire legendary career, including new interviews covering his work since the original edition of this book was published in 2003. From SWAMP THING, V FOR VENDETTA, and WATCHMEN to the future of THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN and beyond – all of his most important works and major themes are discussed. Within this tome, readers will find RARE STRIPS, SCRIPTS, ARTWORK, and PHOTOGRAPHS of the author, most never published elsewhere. Also, best-selling author NEIL GAIMAN headlines a series of tribute comic strips featuring many of Moore’s closest collaborators elaborating on their relationship with the great writer! Included as well is a COLOR SECTION, featuring the RARE MOORE STORY “The Riddle of the Recalcitrant Refuse” (newly remastered, and starring MR. MONSTER), plus his unseen work on JUDGE DREDD, and other tales by the creator of WATCHMEN (soon to be a blockbuster 2009 film).

Edited by GEORGE KHOURY, with a cover by DAVE McKEAN!

(192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490106 Diamond Order Code: JAN088703 • Ships November 2008

(240-page trade paperback) $29.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490090 Diamond Order Code: JAN088702 • Ships December 2008

NEW ITEMS: Vol. 19: MIKE PLOOG

MODERN MASTERS SERIES

(120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $14.95 US ISBN: 9781605490076 • Ships October 2008

Edited by ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON, these trade paperbacks are devoted to the BEST OF TODAY’S COMICS ARTISTS! Each book contains RARE AND UNSEEN ARTWORK direct from the artist’s files, plus a COMPREHENSIVE INTERVIEW (including influences and their views on graphic storytelling), DELUXE SKETCHBOOK SECTIONS, and more!

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Vol. 20: KYLE BAKER (120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $14.95 US ISBN: 9781605490083 • Ships December 2008

MORE MODERN MASTERS ARE COMING IN 2009, INCLUDING CHRIS SPROUSE!

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KIRBY FIVE-OH! LIMITED HARDCOVER EDITION! Limited to 500 copies, KIRBY FIVE-OH! LIMITED HARDCOVER EDITION covers the best of everything from Jack Kirby’s 50-year career in comics! The regular columnists from THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine have formed a distinguished panel of experts to choose and examine: The BEST KIRBY STORY published each year from 19381987! The BEST COVERS from each decade!

The 50 BEST EXAMPLES OF UNUSED KIRBY ART! His 50 BEST CHARACTER DESIGNS! And profiles of, and commentary by, 50 PEOPLE INFLUENCED BY KIRBY’S WORK! Plus there’s a 50-PAGE GALLERY of Kirby’s powerful RAW PENCIL ART, and a DELUXE COLOR SECTION of photos and finished art from throughout his entire half-century oeuvre, a previously unseen Kirby Superman cover inked by “DC: The New Frontier” artist DARWYN COOKE, and an introduction by MARK EVANIER! This LIMITED HARDCOVER EDITION includes a full-color wrapped hardcover, and an individually-numbered extra Kirby art plate not included in the softcover edition! It’s ONLY AVAILABLE FROM TWOMORROWS, and is not sold in stores!

Edited by JOHN MORROW. (168-page Limited Edition Hardcover) $34.95 US • Now shipping!

Only available from TwoMorrows!

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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #52

COLLECTED JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR VOLUME 7

Spotlights KIRBY OBSCURA, uncovering some of Jack’s most obscure work! Learn about such littleknown projects as an UNUSED THOR STORY, his BRUCE LEE comic, animation work, stage play, and see original unaltered versions of pages from KAMANDI, DEMON, DESTROYER DUCK, and more, including a feature examining the last page of his final issue of various series BEFORE EDITORIAL TAMPERING (with lots of surprises)! Color Kirby front cover inked by DON HECK, and back cover inked by PAUL SMITH!

Reprints JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #27-30, with looks at Jack’s 1970s and ‘80s work, plus a two-part focus on how widespread Kirby’s influence is! Features rare interviews with KIRBY himself, plus Watchmen’s ALAN MOORE and DAVE GIBBONS, NEIL GAIMAN, Bone’s JEFF SMITH, MARK HAMILL, and others! See page after page of rare Kirby art, including a NEW SPECIAL SECTION with over 30 PIECES OF KIRBY ART NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED, and more!

(288-page trade paperback) $29.95 US ISBN: 9781605490120 Ships January 2009

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 US Ships January 2009 BRICKJOURNAL magazine is the ultimate resource for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages.

It spotlights all aspects of the LEGO Community, showcasing events, people, and models in every issue, with contributions and how-to articles by top builders worldwide, new product intros, and more. Edited by JOE MENO.

BRICKJOURNAL COMPENDIUM 3 VOLUME 3 compiles the digital-only issues #6-7 of the acclaimed online magazine for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages — for the first time in printed form! This FULLCOLOR book spotlights all aspects of the LEGO COMMUNITY through interviews with builders KNUD THOMSEN (builder of a LEGO city), ANTHONY SAVA (castle and dragon builder), JØRGEN VIG KNUDSTORP (CEO to the LEGO Group) and the duo ARVO (builders of many incredible models), plus features on LEGO FAN CONVENTIONS, such as BRICKFEST, LEGO WORLD (the Netherlands), and 1000STEINE-LAND (Germany), reviews and behind the scenes reports on two LEGO sets (the CAFE CORNER and HOBBY TRAIN), how to create custom minifigures, instructions and techniques, and more! Edited by JOE MENO. (224-page trade paperback) $34.95 US ISBN: 9781605490069 Ships January 2009

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BRICKJOURNAL #4

FULL-COLOR issue #3 has LEGO Event Reports from BRICKWORLD (Chicago), FIRST LEGO LEAGUE WORLD FESTIVAL (Atlanta) and PIECE OF PEACE (Japan), a spotlight on the creation of our amazing cover model built by BRYCE McGLONE, plus interviews with ARTHUR GUGICK and STEVEN CANVIN of LEGO MINDSTORMS, to see where LEGO ROBOTICS is going! There’s also STEP-BY-STEP BUILDING INSTRUCTIONS, TECHNIQUES, & more!

FULL-COLOR issue #4 features interviews with top LEGO BUILDERS including BREANN SLEDGE (BIONICLE BUILDER), Event Reports from LEGO gatherings such as BRICKFAIR (Washington, DC) and BRICKCON (Seattle, Washington), plus reports on new MINDSTORMS PROJECTS, STEP-BY-STEP BUILDING INSTRUCTIONS and TECHNIQUES for all skill levels, NEW SET REVIEWS, and editor JOE MENO shows how to build a robotic LEGO Wall-E!TM

(80-page magazine) $8.95 US (Digital Edition) $3.95 (or FREE to subscribers) Diamond Order Code: JUN084415

(80-page magazine) $8.95 US (Digital Edition) $3.95 (or FREE to subscribers)

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ALTER EGO focuses on Golden and Silver Age comics and creators with articles, interviews and unseen art, plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), Mr. Monster & more. Edited by ROY THOMAS.

DRAW! is the professional “How-To” magazine on cartooning and animation, featuring in-depth interviews and step-by-step demonstrations from top comics professionals. Edited by MIKE MANLEY.

ALTER EGO #81

ALTER EGO #82

ALTER EGO #83

ALTER EGO #84

New FRANK BRUNNER Man-Thing cover, a look at the late-’60s horror comic WEB OF HORROR with early work by BRUNNER, WRIGHTSON, WINDSOR-SMITH, SIMONSON, & CHAYKIN, interview with comics & fine artist EVERETT RAYMOND KINTSLER, ROY THOMAS’ 1971 origin synopsis for the FIRST MAN-THING STORY, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

MLJ ISSUE! Golden Age MLJ index illustrated with vintage images of The Shield, Hangman, Mr. Justice, Black Hood,

by IRV NOVICK, JACK COLE, CHARLES BIRO, MORT MESKIN, GIL KANE, & others—behind a marvelous MLJ-heroes cover

by BOB McLEOD! Plus interviews with IRV NOVICK and JOE EDWARDS, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

SWORD & SORCERY PART 2! Cover by ARTHUR SUYDAM, in-depth art-filled look at Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian, DC’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Dagar the Invincible, Ironjaw & Wulf, and Arak, Son of Thunder, plus the never-seen Valda the Iron Maiden by TODD McFARLANE! Plus JOE EDWARDS (Part 2), FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

Unseen JIM APARO cover, STEVE SKEATES discusses his early comics work, art & artifacts by ADKINS, APARO, ARAGONÉS, BOYETTE, DITKO, GIORDANO, KANE, KELLER, MORISI, ORLANDO, SEKOWSKY, STONE, THOMAS, WOOD, and the great WARREN SAVIN! Plus writer CHARLES SINCLAIR on his partnership with Batman co-creator BILL FINGER, FCA, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships October 2008

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships December 2008

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships January 2009

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships March 2009

ROUGH STUFF features never-seen pencil pages, sketches, layouts, roughs, and unused inked pages from throughout comics history, plus columns, critiques, and more! Edited by BOB MCLEOD.

WRITE NOW! features writing tips from pros on both sides of the desk, interviews, sample scripts, reviews, exclusive Nuts & Bolts tutorials, and more! Edited by DANNY FINGEROTH. THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

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BACK ISSUE celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through a variety of recurring (and rotating) departments, plus rare and unpublished art. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

DRAW! #17

ROUGH STUFF #10

ROUGH STUFF #11

WRITE NOW! #20

Go behind the pages of the hit series of graphic novels starring Scott Pilgrim with his creator and artist, BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY, to see how he creates the acclaimed series! Then, learn how B.P.R.D.’s GUY DAVIS works on the series, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp: Learning from The Great Cartoonists by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, reviews, and more!

Interview with RON GARNEY, with copious examples of sketchwork and comments.

Also features on ANDY SMITH, MICHAEL JASON PAZ, and MATT HALEY, showing how their work evolves, excerpts from a new book on ALEX RAYMOND, secrets of teaching comic art by pro inker BOB McLEOD, new cover by GARNEY and McLEOD, newcomer critique, and more!

New cover by GREG HORN, plus interviews with HORN and TOM YEATES on how they produce their stellar work. Also features on GENE HA, JIMMY CHEUNG, and MIKE PERKINS, showing their sketchwork, and commentary, tips on collecting sketches and commissions from artists, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work, and more!

Focus on THE SPIRIT movie, showing how FRANK MILLER transformed WILL EISNER’s comics into the smash-hit film, with interviews with key players behind the making of the movie, a look at what made Eisner’s comics so special, and more. Plus: an interview with COLLEEN DORAN, writer ALEX GRECIAN on how to get a pitch green lighted, script and art examples, and more!

(80-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 US • Ships Fall 2008

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships October 2008

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships January 2009

(80-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships Winter 2009

BACK ISSUE #29

BACK ISSUE #30

BACK ISSUE #31

BACK ISSUE #32

BACK ISSUE #33

“Mutants” issue! CLAREMONT, BYRNE, SMITH, and ROMITA, JR.’s X-Men work, NOCENTI and ARTHUR ADAMS’ Longshot, McLEOD and SIENKIEWICZ’s New Mutants, the UK’s CAPTAIN BRITAIN series, lost Angel stories, Beast’s tenure with the Avengers, the return of the original X-Men in X-Factor, the revelation of Nightcrawler’s “original” father, a history of DC’s mutant, Captain Comet, and more! Cover by DAVE COCKRUM!

“Saturday Morning Heroes!” Interviews with TV Captain Marvels JACKSON BOSTWICK and JOHN DAVEY, MAGGIN and SAVIUK’s lost Superman/”Captain Thunder” sequel, Space Ghost interviews with GARY OWENS and STEVE RUDE, MARV WOLFMAN guest editorial, Super Friends, unproduced fourth wave Super Powers action figures, Astro Boy, ADAM HUGHES tribute to DAVE STEVENS, and a new cover by ALEX ROSS!

“STEVE GERBER Salute!” In-depth look at his Howard the Duck, Man-Thing, Omega the Unknown, Defenders, Metal Men, Mister Miracle, Thundarr the Barbarian, and more!

Plus: Creators pay tribute to Steve Gerber, featuring art by and commentary from BRUNNER, BUCKLER, COLAN, GOLDEN, STAN LEE, LEVITZ, MAYERIK, MOONEY, PLOOG, SIMONSON, and others. Cover painting by FRANK BRUNNER!

“Tech, Data, and Hardware!” The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, WEIN, WOLFMAN, and GREENBERGER on DC’s Who’s Who, SAVIUK, STATON, and VAN SCIVER on Drawing Green Lantern, ED HANNIGAN Art Gallery, history of Rom: Spaceknight, story of BILL MANTLO, Dial H for Hero, Richie Rich’s Inventions, and a Spider-Mobile schematic cover by ELIOT BROWN and DUSTY ABELL!

“Teen Heroes!” Teen Titans in the 1970s & 1980s, with CARDY, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, PÉREZ, TUSKA, and WOLFMAN, BARON and GUICE on the Flash, interviews with TV Billy Batson MICHAEL GRAY and writer STEVE SKEATES, NICIEZA and BAGLEY’s New Warriors; Legion of Super-Heroes 1970s art gallery; James Bond, Jr.; and… the Archies! New Teen Titans cover by GEORGE PÉREZ and colored by GENE HA!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships July 2008

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships September 2008

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships November 2008

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships January 2009

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Ships March 2009

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NEW STUFF FROM TWOMORROWS!

ALTER EGO #81

WRITE NOW! #19

ROUGH STUFF #10

DRAW! #17

BRICKJOURNAL #4

New FRANK BRUNNER Man-Thing cover, a look at the late-’60s horror comic WEB OF HORROR with early work by BRUNNER, WRIGHTSON, WINDSORSMITH, SIMONSON, & CHAYKIN, interview with comics & fine artist EVERETT RAYMOND KINTSLER, ROY THOMAS’ 1971 origin synopsis for the FIRST MANTHING STORY, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

DARK KNIGHT and SPIRIT executive producer MICHAEL USLAN on the writing process for films, Dennis O’Neil on adapting THE DARK KNIGHT movie to novel form, BRIAN BENDIS script and LEINIL YU pencils from Marvel’s SECRET INVASION #1, MAX ALAN COLLINS, MILLAR script and HITCH pencils from their run on FF, SLOTT script and McNIVEN pencils from BRAND NEW DAY, and more!

Interview with RON GARNEY, with copious examples of sketchwork and comments.

Also features on ANDY SMITH, MICHAEL JASON PAZ, and MATT HALEY, showing how their work evolves, excerpts from a new book on ALEX RAYMOND, secrets of teaching comic art by pro inker BOB McLEOD, new cover by GARNEY and McLEOD, newcomer critique, and more!

Go behind the pages of the hit series of graphic novels starring Scott Pilgrim with his creator and artist, BRYAN LEE O’MALLEY, to see how he creates the acclaimed series! Then, learn how B.P.R.D.’s GUY DAVIS works on the series, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp: Learning from The Great Cartoonists by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY, reviews, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US Now shipping

(80-page magazine) $6.95 Now shipping

(100-page magazine) $6.95 US (Digital Edition) $2.95 Now shipping

(80-page magazine with COLOR) $6.95 US • (Digital Edition) $2.95 Ships Winter 2008

FULL-COLOR issue features top LEGO BUILDERS including BREANN SLEDGE (BIONICLE), Event Reports from gatherings such as BRICKFAIR (Washington, DC) and BRICKCON (Seattle, Washington), plus reports on new MINDSTORMS PROJECTS, STEP-BY-STEP BUILDING INSTRUCTIONS and TECHNIQUES for all skill levels, NEW SET REVIEWS, and editor JOE MENO shows how to build a robotic LEGO Wall-E!TM

KIRBY COLLECTOR #51

EXTRAORDINARY WORKS OF ALAN MOORE:

HAWKMAN COMPANION

BRICKJOURNAL COMPENDIUM, VOLUME 1

Bombastic EVERYTHING GOES issue, with a wealth of great submissions that couldn’t be pigeonholed into a “theme” issue!

Includes a rare KIRBY interview, new interviews with JIM LEE and ADAM HUGHES, MARK EVANIER’s column, huge pencil art galleries, a complete Golden Age Kirby story, two COLOR UNPUBLISHED KIRBY COVERS, and more!

(84-page tabloid magazine) $9.95 Now shipping

COLLECTED KIRBY COLLECTOR VOL. 6 Reprints KIRBY COLLECTOR #23-26 plus over 30 pieces of Kirby art never published!

(288-page trade paperback) $29.95 ISBN: 9781605490038 Now shipping

Indispensable Edition The definitive autobiographical book on ALAN MOORE in a NEW EXPANDED AND UPDATED VERSION! Includes new interviews covering his work since the original 2003 edition of the book. From SWAMP THING, V FOR VENDETTA, WATCHMEN, and LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN and beyond – all are discussed by Alan. Plus, there’s RARE STRIPS, SCRIPTS, ARTWORK, and PHOTOGRAPHS, tribute comic strips by NEIL GAIMAN and other of Moore’s closest collaborators, a COLOR SECTION featuring the RARE MOORE STORY “The Riddle of the Recalcitrant Refuse” (newly remastered, and starring MR. MONSTER), and more! Edited by GEORGE KHOURY, with a cover by DAVE McKEAN! (240-page trade paperback) $29.95 US ISBN: 9781605490090 Diamond Order Code: JAN088702 Ships December 2008

Go to www.twomorrows.com for FULL-COLOR downloadable PDF versions of our magazines for only $2.95! Subscribers to the print edition get the digital edition FREE, weeks before it hits stores!

Behind a fabulous CLIFF CHIANG cover, this collection documents the character’s history, and contains interviews and commentary from many who have helped Hawkman soar through the ages, including JOE KUBERT, GEOFF JOHNS, SHELLY MOLDOFF, TIMOTHY TRUMAN, JUSTIN GRAY, JIMMY PALMIOTTI, RAGS MORALES, STEPHEN SADOWSKI, DON KRAMER, BEN RAAB, TONY ISABELLA, DAN JURGENS, ROY THOMAS, STEVE LIEBER, MURPHY ANDERSON and many other top comics creators. Also included is a copious image parade, profiles on the Hawks through the ages, as well as their allies and adversaries, and a timeline of Hawkman's storied existence throughout the DC Comics Universe. With insight into the character and the creators who made him what he is, the HAWKMAN COMPANION is certain to please any Hawkfan.

Written by DOUG ZAWISZA.

FULL-COLOR! Compiles the first three digital-only issues of BRICKJOURNAL, the ultimate magazine for LEGO enthusiasts of all ages! Features interviews with LEGO car builder ZACHARY SWEIGART, JØRGEN VIG KNUDSTORP (CEO of LEGO Systems, Inc.), Mecha builders BRYCE McLONE and JEFF RANJO, paraplegic LEGO builder SCOTT WARFIELD, BOB CARNEY (LEGO castle builder extraordinaire) and RALPH SAVELSBURG (LEGO plane builder), REVEREND BRENDAN POWELL SMITH (author of the LEGO version of the Bible), NASA Astronaut Trainer KIETH JOHNSON, JAKE McKEE (Global Community Director for The LEGO Group), features on the BIONICLE universe, how to make your own custom bricks, instructions & techniques, and more!

(256-page trade paperback) $39.95 ISBN: 9781893905979 Diamond Order Code: FEB084083 Now shipping

(208-page trade paperback) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905931 Now shipping

SUBSCRIPTIONS:

Media Mail

(80-page magazine) $8.95 US (Digital Edition) $3.95

MODERN MASTERS VOLUME 19: MIKE PLOOG

(120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $14.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490076 Ships November 2008

VOLUME 20: KYLE BAKER

(120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $14.95 US • ISBN: 9781605490083 Ships December 2008 Each features an extensive, career-spanning interview lavishly illustrated with rare art from the artist’s files, plus huge sketchbook section, including unseen and unused art!

1st Class Canada 1st Class Priority US Intl.

Intl.

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)

$44

$64

$64

$91

$152

BACK ISSUE! (6 issues)

$40

$55

$63

$91

$112

DRAW!, WRITE NOW!, ROUGH STUFF (4 issues)

$26

$36

$41

$60

$74

ALTER EGO (12 issues) Six-issue subs are half-price!

$78

$108

$123

$180

$222

BRICKJOURNAL (4 issues)

$32

$42

$47

$66

$80

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TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics.

TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com