DEAD MAN'S SHOE posted:Let's be honest it always looked like Marvel's half-assed attempt at cashing in on the alt-comix thing with relatively harmless milquetoast satire. Naturally it has absolutely no credentials in the history of alt-comix. Man, get outta here with that poo poo. Steve Gerber's work was honest and true, it wasn't an attempt to cash in on anything, and it sure wasn't half-assed.
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Sep 2, 2014 01:39
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Kull the Conqueror posted:Steve Gerber is an incredible Bronze Age voice. Howard, Omega the Unknown, and Man-Thing were all chock-full of rage, strife, struggle, and frustration with the way it all is, but were always accompanied with this hilarious tone that felt like the only thing preserving the guy's sanity. Howard was my first exposure after, interestingly enough, his final work, the Doctor Fate story from Countdown which is quite good, and early on it became very clear that he had a view of the world that was living in a different time but thought of the world similar to the way I did. It was in the first or second issue that this little nugget shows up: Yeah, I really feel like Gerber's work and characters deliberately rode a line between the absurd and the sublime, because he didn't feel comfortable writing about straightforward heroes doing entirely glamorous things. He had to put in the indignities and injustices of life into all his stories, even if they were often represented with the most bizarre imagery possible. But even that felt like the universe being unjustly absurd to people who deserved a more straightforward narrative, in the same way the universe could be cruel and uncaring to us regular people. I'm not sure I'm making sense. A lot of his work is quintessentially bronze age, and it really does feel as if he never moved past that 70s worldview of his in many ways, but I just love him all the more for it. His work was always so much more honest for it. His post-mortem Man-Thing book just felt like someone had redone the art for an issue of his original run, but at no point did I feel like the writing was inappropriate or dated. It just felt like how such a book should read, kind of like how a Tolkien movie should have characters speak a certain way. You couldn't write like Steve Gerber while writing like Bendis. Howard was a flawed and ridiculous character who talked down to others, but he wasn't better than them, just different. It's a fine line that some later writers who helmed the book(and people who wrote similar anti-heroic characters) had trouble with, as it's very easy to overstep and have your supposedly flawed hero appear completely sanctimonious and constantly above the "goody two shoes" instead of a simple outsider perspective. (I don't need to name any aardvarks here, do I?) Anyway, I hope this weakass post is enough of an excuse to not let this thread die, because I love Steve Gerber and I love Howard the Duck and gently caress you page 3!!
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Jan 7, 2015 00:31
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A Tin Of Beans posted:I would be fine with either, honestly. Howard is so good. It's absurd. I hadn't read any Howard the Duck stuff before, just saw the movie. I'm loving this. Is the old stuff worth tracking down? Steve Gerber, the character's creator, was the best. Track down every issue he ever wrote. Then go read his Man-Thing.
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May 15, 2015 21:40
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Gaz-L posted:Good lord, it was RIGHT THERE. Giant-Sized Man-Thing is too glorious to joke about.
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May 15, 2015 21:43
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