Steve Gerber Tribute

BACK ISSUE the American comic book magazine, edited by Michael Eury and published by TwoMorrows, has devoted the entire contents of its current issue to notorious writer Steve Gerber, who passed away this year.

Back Issue #31 is the first time the magazine has dedicated an entire issue to one individual, but then Gerber was certainly one of a kind. From The Defenders to Howard the Duck and Man-Thing in between, he turned the house of Marvel upside down. At DC he showed us Superman wasn't always made of steel and that even New Gods like Mr Miracle had their troubled moments.

Gerber left comics for a long period to work in animation. Thundarr the Barbarian and among the series he co-created and wrote. Thundarr was an American Saturday morning cartoon favourite and also involved famous comic book artists Alex Toth contributing designs and Jack Kirby working on storyboards and presentation materials.

Gerber returned to comics via his Destroyer Duck, initially a one-shot to help fund legal representation to claim his rights against Marvel in the aforementioned Howard the Duck. As the years went by he did return to do work for both Marvel and DC and was one of the group of writers behind the Ultraverse imprint for Malibu.

Back Issue features input and insight from Gerber co-collaborators and those who knew him like Pablo Marcos (Tales of the Zombie), Rich Buckler (Man-Thing, The Living Mummy), Al Milgrom (KISS Comics), Gene Colan and Herb Trimpe (Son of Satan).

Writer Michael Aushenker (Greenblatt the Great! ), has written articles for Back Issue magazine. He commented of Gerber's work: "I always felt that Tales of the Zombie was like the high-end version of what Gerber was doing in Man-Thing. It was the same kind of lumbering man-brute, although the art was uniformly better in Tales while in Man-Thing Gerber seemed to tackle environmental/socio-political issues with gusto, as well as do loopy things like a Superman parody. In both series, you get the feeling that Gerber was having fun dog-earing the formulas."

Artist Phil Winslade, who lives in Birmingham, was also a great fan of Gerber's work as a kid, and lived out his boyhood dream by working on two series with him, Nevada for DC's Vertigo imprint and a final Howard the Duck mini-series published by Marvel.

Back Issue #31 can be purchased via your local comics shop or direct by visiting:www.TwoMorrows.com