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Some of you know that my favorite comics are early to mid-70s Marvel. I picked up a couple of cool collections within the last month, but time has been in short supply, so I’ve just been picking at them. With Thanksgiving out of the way, I plan to dig deeply into both.

The Man-Thing book is the first volume of a series collecting Steve Gerber’s work on the swamp monster. Gerber was wildly original, and even early in the book you can watch him crank up the crazy. During this period, Marvel published out a lot of books with the only the lightest editorial interference, leading to an anything-can-happen vibe. This is most apparent in Gerber’s work.

The other book is the massive Werewolf by Night Omnibus, an oversized thick tome (over 1100 pages) collecting the horror/superhero series. A variety of writers worked on this, Doug Moench being one of the best and the one who stuck around the longest. The early issues have terrific Mike Ploog art (he’s also in the Man-Thing collection, and worked on early Ghost Rider and The Monster of Frankenstein for Marvel). I also have a real fondness for the art of Don Perlin. He stuck around Marvel for a long time and did solid work on Ghost Rider.

So excuse me while I plug in the lava lamp and travel back to the early 70s, when gas was cheap and so were the comics.

My Favorite Comics

In the early 1970s America–and much of the world–had kung fu fever. On October 1, 1972 the TV show Kung Fu premiered and I was there for every slow David Carradine kick to some ignorant cowpoke’s head. Suddenly, the comics racks were filled with martial arts titles, and the best of them began right here. Master of Kung Fu (which would soon graduate to its own title) was the story of Shang-Chi, son of the infamous Devil Doctor, Fu Manchu. I was drawn in because of the kung fu connection, but the quality of the writing and the art, not to mention the pulpish undertones from the Sax Rohmer characters. Unfortunately, Marvel no longer has the Fu Manchu license, so the stories have not been reprinted yet. The original series lasted for well over a hundred issues, much longer than the fad that inspired it.

My Favorite Comics

This stands out in my memory as the moment when my love for comics and love for horror (stoked by Saturday night viewings of Chiller Theater) came together. Marvel’s line of black and white horror magazines was not regulated by the Comics Code Authority, so, in theory, they could be R-rated. In truth, there was never much of anything shocking, but the very idea that something naughty could happen gave these magazines even more appeal to a kid.

The very next issue began the origin of Dracula, illustrated by the incomparable Neal Adams. That was 1973 and it remains one of my favorite comics stories.

I have a lot of love for these magazines. Some of the other titles included Monsters Unleashed, Tales of the Zombie, Haunt of Horror and Vampire Tales.

My Favorite Comics

 

This is why I loved Marvel Comics in the early-to-mid 70s. There was a try-anything feel to the books. Oddball ideas were guaranteed at least a few issues. Bother Voodoo was another reluctant Marvel hero who takes over the role when his brother, the first Brother Voodoo, is murdered. The series boasted good writing and fantastic art by Gene Colan, who also drew every issue of Tomb of Dracula, another of my favorites. Brother Voodoo’s series ended after five issues, but his story continued in the pages of one of Marvel’s black and white monster magazines.

My Favorite Comics

When this came out, I was 10 years old. I had never heard of Robert E, Howard, nor had I been exposed to sword and sorcery fiction. But something about the writing and art transported me in a way that nothing had before. And that first issue wasn’t even that great. Future installments deserved to be called masterpieces. This influenced my reading for years to come. All in all, the first hundred issues or so of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian remains my favorite interpretation of the character.

My Favorite Comics

When this came out in 1972, my brother and I thought it was one of the coolest things we’d ever seen. Like most kids, we were big fans of Evel Knievel, watching all of his jumps on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. So the idea of a guy with a flaming skull on a chopper was mind-blowing. I think I read this issue a dozen times before the next one showed up at the drug store in two months.

Happy Independence Day

Goodbye, Steve Gerber

This is a lousy day.

I had to drive in to work in the middle of the night through several inches of snow and ice, only to find the heat in the office was out. Again. Further work problems ensued, then I had to go to a funeral.

But that’s not what made today such a chunk of suck.

When I got up this morning, I found out via The Comics Reporter that Steve Gerber was dead.

His pal Mark Evanier memorializes Gerber here.

I didn’t know Gerber. I’d never met him or corresponded with him. I was just a fan.

He was the best writer at my favorite comics company during my favorite era in comics.

I was a Marvel boy, and the 70s were a good time to be a Marvel fan. Distribution limits had been lifted, and Marvel was expanding their line faster than George W. Bush can violate the constitution. As a result, there were too many books for The House of Idea’s small staff to oversee. By default, Marvel did something which would be unheard of in today’s comics world: they found writers they trusted, then turned the writers loose.

Nearly total freedom resulted in some of the most creative work in the history of the medium, stuff like Don MacGregor’s Black Panther and War of the Worlds, Doug Moench’s Master of Kung Fu, Moon Knight and Planet of the Apes, Marv Wolfman’s Dracula stuff (and, yes, even as a dumb kid I thought it was cool that Dracula was being written by a Wolfman) and Jim Starlin’s cosmic Warlord and Captain Marvel.

But nothing compared to the writing Gerber was doing. He didn’t create Daredevil, Sub-Mariner, Man-Thing or The Defenders, but he made them his own, especially the last two. Gerber imbued them with absurdist hijinks and a rare-for-the-times sense of political relevance.

He did create Howard the Duck. The anthropomorphic fowl remains Gerber’s best known creation. He also brought forth the tragically brief Void Indigo, a series that was decades ahead of its time. Too bad Vertigo didn’t exist in the 1970s.

Gerber eventually left Marvel on unfriendly terms, moving to other companies and animation.

Though many of his colleagues are MIA (Moench, Engelhart), Gerber continued to turn out mainstream comics work. He was writing a Dr. Fate script for DC in the hospital in the days before his passing. He remained creatively and hilariously subversive right up to the end.

Kudos to Marvel for getting a lot of Gerber’s 70s stuff back in print. Tonight I’ll sit down with volumes of Essential Defenders and Essential Howard the Duck, and I’ll remember one of the best.

Five O'Clock Whistle

It's quitting time.

The day was relatively free of suckage, at least for a Monday. I've been busy since 2:00 a.m., but things went smoothly. Wrote some good comedy. Made solid progress on the new story I mentioned yesterday. Took a walk with Ed the Female Dog. Norma cooked a great dinner and we watched Family Guy.

I'm reading Kill Whitey by Brian Keene to review for Horror World, but it looks like I'm sitting that aside for a few minutes because my brother just got back in town with a pile of old Marvel and DC comics he picked up for me at a flea market. The pile includes Iron Man, Justice League, The Brave and the Bold (Batman teams up with the Flash), The Hulk, Avengers, and one of my top five comics from the 70s, a wacky little chunk of funky we call...Master of Kung Fu.

So night-night, y'all.

The Silver Surfer's Nuts

This is allegedly a video capture from the Hi-Def trailer for the new Fantastic Four movie:



Who does that Surfer think he is -- Britney Spears?