Before the world heard of Star Wars, and before the Disney Company would claim ownership of all pants-less water fowls, there was an ill-tempered, cigar-smoking duck and his red-headed, hairless ape girlfriend.Comics were never the same.
Steve Gerber was a ground-breaking writer of the rarest variety: unlike most pioneers who are seldom appreciated in their own time, my 11-year-old mind knew it was witnessing something unique and deep when I first picked up Howard the Duck #1.
I was too young to pick up on the nuances of Gerber's cutting-edge satire as filtered through the eyes of a duck "trapped in a world he never made," but I knew I was reading something unlike anything being published by a mainstream comics company. For the first time I was regularly buying a comic book not featuring men in tights.
Gerber's distinctive voice was also the first to make me seek out comic books written by a specific person rather than drawn.
While I didn't read his Omega The Unknown series, I followed his career when he ventured into television and created Thundarr the Barbarian, and I still have the controversial Void Indigo graphic novel.
Steve Gerber died yesterday.
Read what his friends and other comics professionals thought about him here.
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