{"id":12554,"date":"2008-02-11T22:12:30","date_gmt":"2008-02-12T03:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=12554"},"modified":"2014-01-13T17:15:58","modified_gmt":"2014-01-13T22:15:58","slug":"steve-gerber-1947-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2008\/02\/11\/steve-gerber-1947-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Gerber 1947-2008"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just learned that Steve Gerber passed away yesterday while waiting in the hospital for a lung transplant. I’m still sort of stunned right now, since he’d posted on his blog as recently as last Monday about his progress on a Dr. Fate<\/i> project. He seemed hopeful, and so I was trying to remain optimistic. <\/p>\n

\"SteveGerberCrazyDress\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I won’t attempt to go on at length here to explain to you who he was and why he mattered. You probably already know him from his work on Man-Thing<\/i>, Omega the Unknown<\/i>, and Howard the Duck<\/i>, and I’ll leave it to others<\/a> who can better keep their wits about them to recount the details of his life. You can also get more information and read remembrances from those who loved him here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But I’d just like to quickly say that I remember him as much for what I knew of him off<\/i> the page as for what the rest of the world knew of him from what was on<\/i> the page. Around the Bullpen, he was always a funny guy, part Mort Sahl, part Lewis Black.<\/p>\n

And he had no sense of shame when it came to making you laugh. Here he is, posing for a photo that appeared in the October 1975 issue of Crazy<\/i> magazine, which he edited for Marvel back when I was on staff there. He used his sense of the absurd to make Crazy<\/i> into more than just another clone of MAD<\/i>. I’d like to remember him that way, smiling, happy, and in your face.<\/p>\n

He followed a rough road in comics, because he pushed the envelope—both artistically and in fighting for creator rights—at a time when most didn’t bother. We need more like him.<\/p>\n

We need him<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just learned that Steve Gerber passed away yesterday while waiting in the hospital for a lung transplant. I’m still sort of stunned right now, since he’d posted on his blog as recently as last Monday about his progress on a Dr. Fate project. He seemed hopeful, and so I was trying to remain optimistic. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[85,62],"class_list":["post-12554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-obituaries","tag-steve-gerber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12554"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12556,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12554\/revisions\/12556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}