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From Mark Evanier:
  Steve Gerber died last night in Las Vegas after a long, painful illness. For the last year or so, he was in and out of hospitals there and had just become a "candidate" for a lung transplant. He had pulmonary fibrosis, a condition that literally turns the lungs to scar tissue and steadily reduces their ability to function.
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Stephen Ross Gerber was born in St. Louis on September 20, 1947. A longtime fan of comic books, he was involved in the ditto/mimeo days of fanzine publishing in the sixties, publishing one called Headline at age 14. He had a by-mail friendship with Roy Thomas, who was responsible for the most noteworthy fanzine of that era, Alter Ego. Years later when Roy was the editor at Marvel Comics, he rescued Steve from a crippling career writing advertising copy, bringing him into Marvel as a writer and assistant editor. Steve soon distinguished himself as one of the firm's best writers, handling many of their major titles at one time or another but especially shining on The Defenders, Man-Thing, Omega the Unknown, Morbius the Living Vampire, a special publication about the rock group Kiss...and of course, Howard the Duck.
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What I feel the need to tell you is just what a great guy he was. In the seventies, when New York comic professionals were banding together to find ways to elevate the stature of the field and the living standards of its practitioners, Steve was at the nexus of so many of those efforts. When Steve was involved in his lawsuit with Marvel, many fellow professionals rallied around him with loans and gifts of cash and some of us put together a benefit comic book, Destroyer Duck, to raise money. People did that because they knew, first of all, that Steve was fighting not just for his own financial reasons but for matters of principle relating to how the comic book industry treated its creators. That some of the more pernicious business practices soon went away had a lot to do with Steve taking the stand he did. Also, those who knew Steve knew that when you were in need, he would do anything to help. He was, in every sense of the word, a friend.
From Tom Spurgeon @ The Comics Reporter:
Gerber left Marvel in either 1978 or 1979, and immediately entered into dispute with the publisher over the Howard the Duck character he created six years earlier. In a letter that appeared in The Comics Journal #41, Gerber explained his situation to that magazine's editor, Gary Groth: "I was dismissed from the Howard the Duck newspaper strip in a manner which violated the terms of my written agreement with Marvel. Marvel was advised that I was contemplating legal action which would likely result in my ownership of the Howard the Duck character and all rights therein. As a consequence of the notice given Marvel by my lawyers, the company chose to terminate my contract on the comic books as well. Marvel's action was not unanticipated, and my only regret is that, for a while at least, the Duck and I will be traveling separate paths." In an interview that followed the publication of that letter, Gerber painted what was at the time a startling picture of the mainstream comics industries, its rivalries and petty jealousies, what he described as a plantation system in terms of how the talent was treated by the corporations.
"What disgusts me even more, though, is that I think the writers and artists have largely brought this on themselves," he told Groth in 1978. "They don't want to know about the business end of comics. They prefer to remain ignorant. They've allowed the publishers to convince them that they're a bunch of no-talent bums surviving on the goodwill of the companies. Very few people in this industry really believe that their work has any artistic merit, or that it's sale-able elsewhere. Or that they deserve more than they're getting. You will actually hear them defend the publishers' ownership of their creations, the low page rates, the cowardice of the companies to explore new market. That's why it's startling when someone like Gil Kane or Neal Adams or Don McGregor or Barry Smith -- or Steve Gerber -- shoots his mouth off. People in the industry find it disturbing that one of their number might actually take his work seriously, take pride not only in being fast and dependable, but in the work itself."
More about Steve Gerber.
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