I'm sure you've heard by now the passing of Steve Gerber. I'm sure you've read several "news" accounts versions, and seen any number of blog postings talking about Steve and his work. Do you need to read mine, too? Probably not, but I'm writing it anyway...

Steve Gerber snuck his way into my comics. When I first began really getting into comics, I was a Fantastic Four guy. I bought that one book, and that was pretty much it -- all I could afford. As I got older, I was able to find additional sources of income and I soon saw that John Byrne, the guy who made me fall in love with the FF, was working on this new She-Hulk comic; I was so there.

Of course, less than a year later John departed She-Hulk rather suddenly. There was a fill-in issue or two, and then things got wacky.

John's premise behind She-Hulk initially was that she was going to go through the normal superhero absurdities, but in full knowledge of the fact that she was just a character in a comic book. She repeatedly broke the fourth wall, and I still think that her escaping from a prison cell by ripping open the bottom part of the page and running across the subsequent advertisement was brilliantly done. ("I think I scraped my shin on a staple.") The book was unique.

But after John left, it took a decidedly different turn. The fourth wall was rebuilt, A-list guest stars like Spider-Man were replaced by oddball creations like Pseudoman, and the plots went from defeating Mysterio and the Head-Men to escaping from a universe made entirely out of baloney. Weird, wacky stuff. And, for as much as I enjoyed John Byrne's take on She-Hulk, this new version was more nuanced in its clever approach to things. (I reviewed all those issues here.)

That was my introduction to Steve Gerber.

At the time, my knowledge of comic books and creators was limited. I knew a handful of characters -- mostly because of guest appearances in Fantastic Four -- and I knew of a handful of creators -- mostly because of their work on Fantastic Four. And all of what I knew was decidedly standard superhero fare. (Well, it's standard now; I think some of the ideas at the time were then still pretty unusual in comics.)

As I got older and more interested in comics, I wound up dragging my folks (Dad particularly) to comic shops and flea markets and such hunting for back issues. And while I was looking for superheroes, Dad stumbled across other stuff to keep him interested. Books like Howard the Duck. Man-Thing. Destroyer Duck. Void Indigo.

And that's where I really got to know Steve. Because, after reading the latest issue of Fantastic Four for the tenth time, I'd go downstairs and pull out Dad's comics, introducing me to a wonderfully diverse set of ideas and opinions that weren't -- couldn't be -- expressed in a superhero story.

To be perfectly honest, it wasn't just Steve. There was Alan Moore, Scott McCloud, Howard Chaykin, Rick Veitch, Mike Saenz... to name just a few. But each creator brought something new and different to the table, and was able to express themselves in a way that no one else really seemed capable of. They were able to throw out unique ideas, and open my mind up to new ways of thinking. They were the first people's work I was able to read as socio-political commentary. The first works that I could read on multiple levels. What I didn't realize at the time, though, was that the things being presented here were new not only to me, but to the entire industry! I lived and grew up through a revolution in comics that, at the time, just struck me as increasing my own knowledge about how the business worked.

Later I learned something of the fight that Steve had with marvel about the ownership of Howard the Duck. When I first learned of the issue, I could only grasp the basics of it and certainly wasn't able to see the extended implications. But you know what? It still brought the issue to my attention years, and made me at least conscious of the situation at a relatively young age. That I became aware of creators' rights in any capacity was in large part because of Steve Gerber.

The death of any human being is a sad one. That a person's life can be snuffed out so easily and so quickly is chilling. But the death of someone who had a positive impact on your life is more painful. It means that the positive influence they had is no longer available. The last Dr. Fate stories Steve was working on will be published over the next few months, and then the world will have no more new work coming from him. That's a tremendous loss to our culture because Steve had a decidedly positive impact on many people through his work.

But you know? His work remains. It'll take me no more than a few minutes to rifle through my long boxes and pull out Omega the Unknown. I can read and re-read his run on The Defenders as often as I wish. Steve's work had a lot of depth to it and I'd be willing to bet that you'll be able to get something new out of most of it if you run through it again. I can't tell you how exciting it was to really sit down and analyze his work on She-Hulk years after it had first began swirling around in my head. I can't begin to list what I've learned from Steve over the years. So join with me in mourning the loss of Steve Gerber, but take some time with me as well to celebrate all the wonderful things he passed along to us while he was here.

You know, I am thrilled, seriously thrilled, to see comic creators thinking consciously about their craft. I was just talking with someone last night, trying to explain why so many comics come across as created for and by emotionally immature males, and part of my explanation included the notion that a lot of creators, in trying to earn a living, crank their work out based largely on what they've done or seen done in the past; and they put little thought into actively improving on what was done before or, worse, put no thought into actively improving their own craft.

I give a lot of credit to Stuart Immonen as an artist. Sure, he's talented and can draw some really incredible stories, but if you've read his blog for any length of time, it's easy to see that the reason why he's so good is because he continuously works at improving his ability. He spends a lot of time thinking about and considering capital-a Art, and how that may or may not be applicable to the commercial art he produces in whatever comic(s) he's working on this month. He's willing to try relatively significant experiments in his comics and he's one of the few comic artists working in the business today who doesn't always fall back on a singular personal style. He's constantly adapting his linework and layouts to serve the story he's trying to tell. Stuart's not the only one doing this, to be sure, but it definitely seems to be top-of-mind for him more frequently than for a lot of other people.

The guys working on Atomic Robo evidently talk about the same types of things among themselves, too. They recently posted a list of five rules they constantly follow in creating each issue. Excellent rules, all, but if I might pull out a particularly memorable quote:

I mean, come on, 99 times out of a 100, there is no reason at all to frame a panel from the perspective of a girl's ass. Grow up already.

I love these guys!

"Who?"

No, the main writer for Who, Steven Moffat. Also, the writer/creator of Coupling (the original British version, not that half-assed piece of garbage they did here in the States), and a writer on The Office (again, the original British version, not that half-assed piece of garbage they're doing here in the States), Murder Most Horrid and a bunch of other really clever TV shows that no one over here has heard of because the U.S. is too ego-centric to bother really looking outside its borders for cultural entertainments.

"Why you would you want him for President, Sean?"

Well, I don't really. He's not eligible anyway. But it's an election year, and "Moffat For Writer" isn't terribly catchy.

But here's my thought: Joe Quesada and the folks at marvel have been keeping their eyes and ears out for writing talent that normally work in entertainment industries OTHER than comics, right? Well, how about scooping up Steven Moffat? His work on Dr. Who has won multiple awards and shows that he's quite adept at working within a long-running adventure franchise without A) screwing up continuity left, right and sideways and B) pandering to an emotionally immature, short-sighted fan base. Seriously, Dr. Who bears a number of similarities to quite a few marvel titles -- I think Moffat, if he would be able to work without having crossover event plotlines shoved down his throat, would do a fantastic job. I know I would start buying marvel comics again!

He writes for TV for a living, so he's already got something of a visual sense for storytelling. Plus, I've heard he's already a fan of some of their characters! How could things go wrong?

So, how about it, Joe? It's just a phone call, right? Worst he can say is, "No."

Bobby Timony shares with everyone how he letters his Zuda comic Night Owls in Adobe Illustrator. He's got a very straight-foward approach, and his accompanying screen shots make it that much easier to follow. (Thanks to David the G for pointing this one out!)

In the past year or so, I've managed to re-ignite a co-worker's interest in comics. He used to read various Batman and Spider-Man titles back in the early 90s, but left in part because of the frenzied collector, holo-foil, die-cut, 12-cover-variations garbage that marvel and DC started putting out. Seeing me bring back new comics every week coupled with some good comic-related movies and video games that he's seen, though, has piqued his interest again. He started borrowing some of the books I'd bring to read during his breaks, and actively asks whether or not the latest issue of such-and-such title has come in.

A month or three back, he started actively ordering TPBs from Amazon. He started with, I believe, Marvels and Kingdom Come primarily for Alex Ross' work. Over the next month or two, he quickly segued into Dave McKean and David Mack. Then on to Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons. He recently commented about being impressed with some of Ben Templesmith's work. Obviously, he's an art-centric guy, which is hardly surprising since he's a graphic designer by education and trade.

His last purchase from Amazon included Tales of the New Gods, a reprinting of a good chunk of 1997's Jack Kirby's New Gods and 2000's Orion. I hadn't actually read that particular series, so I could only tell him about the characters a bit. But he went ahead and purchased it primarily on the strength of Frank Miller's name being attached to it.

He brought the book in today and handed it to me, "Here. You can have this."

Turns out that he couldn't stand it. He got 15-20 pages into it and then started skipping around, looking for art that stood out for some reason. It was precisely the type of story he was NOT looking for.

"Wait a second, Sean! I thought you said he was an art guy? But he set aside the book because of the writing?"

Exactly.

Like I said, I haven't read these stories so I can't comment on their quality, but given the list of creators involved, I can't imagine that it's that bad. But I got the impression, from his comments, that it was all about continuing the adventures of the New Gods characters. He had no vested interest in the Fourth World beforehand, certainly, and these stories seemed to him to be written precisely towards somebody who was.

Think about that for a minute.

There didn't seem to be an issue with the storytelling -- he could follow along who each character was and how they related to one another. That would also suggest that the stories weren't so laden with continuity references as to be incomprehensible to a newcomer. Both of which (again, not having read these personally) are reinforced in my mind by the creators involved -- like their ideas or not, they generally all have proven themselves as solid storytellers. My co-worker didn't have a problem with the genre, certainly, as he's gone to reading a few superhero titles again.

So what was his issue?

As near as I can surmise, it was too fanboyish. It seems to have been aimed exclusively at the folks who just want to see Darkseid and Orion and Mr. Miracle and the rest of the New Gods. It's a placeholder. It was designed to get those people who must have all things Fourth World to part with their money. It's a pay-to-play option for kids who are already in the club.

It seems to me that it's not dissimilar to the industry's problem catering to women. The content of the material is designed in such as way that it not only keeps the existing customer base coming back (and make no mistake, in the publishers' minds, you are customers, not fans) and dissuade new customers from other market segments from trying their product. Now, granted, not every product is going to be suitable for everyone but when the vast majority of your product actively turns away customers -- my co-worker paid for the book, disliked it after only a few pages, and then gave it away -- it seems to me that you're shooting yourself in the foot. Yes, it's easier and cheaper to keep an existing customer than generate new ones, but if you don't generate new ones at all, then you're not going to be in business very long.

I'm going to start off by saying that this is going to be a pointless review. Why? Because if you're a fan of Warren Ellis, you're already buying this book. And, while I don't have anything resembling even anecdotal evidence to support this claim, I suspect that no one besides Warren Ellis fans are remotely interested in this title for whatever reasons. That being said, though, I'm going to try to convince you -- the non-Ellis fan -- why it's worth picking this up.

Ellis seems to be writing this series with something of a dichotomic approach. On the one hand, he has the superficial story of Doktor Sleepless waging his own style of war against the status quo, not unlike Spider Jerusalem did in Transmetropolitan. In this particular issue, Sleepless discovers that an old friend has been murdered and, despite a lack of hard evidence, confronts the man he believes ordered that killing. Like many of Ellis' protagonists, Sleepless is more clever than anyone else in the story by half and is able to cover his tracks from whatever technically illegal activities he might be pursuing in the name of a greater good.

The other element in Sleepless is several pages of Ellis espousing his thoughts on the subject du jour through Sleepless' broadcasts. In this particular issue, it's about what it really means to follow your dreams in a technologically advanced society. This is the dangerous part of the book.

I'm talking from a storytelling perspective, mind you. It's dangerous because, frankly, it's unabashedly, unashamedly preachy. No ifs, ands, or buts. The story effectively stops while Ellis gets a chance to bare his thoughts on the page. "Here's the capital-t Truth as I see it" he's essentially saying. And that's dangerous in storytelling because you have to stop the flow of the story, change gears to stand on your metaphoric soapbox, and then change gears again to get back into the story.

It's actually not a dissimilar approach to musicals, and the primary reason why I don't like them. The story is stopped cold while the characters take time out to sing what generally amounts to a character study. Me? I'm a story kind of guy. Characterization is great, but it shouldn't get in the way of the story as far as I'm concerned.

But Ellis manages to pull it off here. Not because it's a particularly graceful or sly transition from one portion to another, but because his message is itself extremely powerful. You don't mind being pulled out of the story because you're pulled out by something that makes you say, "Damn! He has a great handle on... (insert topic du jour)!" It makes the comic something of an excuse to read Ellis' thoughts more directly.

Which is why I think it's only Ellis fans who are reading it.

In one the earliest arguments my Ex and I had when we were first dating, the crux of the disagreement boiled down to a simple misunderstanding. At the time, I pointed out that "Perception is reality." Meaning that, whatever it was that she intended, I was reacting to how I perceived what she meant. The argument was really moot because we actually shared the same opinion, and it was only a perception of disagreement that caused the row.

Ellis talks to that idea here, using a few more examples, and couching it more in terms of "authenticity" and "branding." Which -- given where the world stands now, over a decade since I declared "perception is reality" -- is more timely and speaks more directly to the often blatantly capitalistic consumerism on display.

What I find particularly interesting here is that Ellis has now assumed the role of Spider Jerusalem himself. When Ellis was still writing Transmetropolitan, he was writing Spider writing about and reacting to a not-too-distant future. Today, though, Ellis is writing directly about and reacting to the present. Sure, there's some sci-fi elements thrown into Doktor Sleepless but it's barely discernible from March 6, 2008. And the reason Ellis' assumption of the role of Spider is particularly interesting here is because we're actively watching Ellis cultivate that reality in front of us. The Ellis "brand" is every bit as cultivated as Pepsi's or Disney's or Oprah's.

OK, so why should you -- the guy sitting back complaining about Amazing Spider-Man -- buy Doktor Sleepless? Well, in the first place, it's got an intriguing story with good art (including a gratuitously voluptuous female in a slinky nurse's uniform). But more significantly, it's the contemporary, technologically-oriented equivalent of Walden. Except that it's not a pretentious pile of dreck.

No, I'm not giving up any of my loot, but Tozo creator David O'Connell is! He's been working hard on his online Tozo strip for a full year now and he's celebrating his first anniversary with a contest to win some original Tozo art.

I love comic book contests because A) they tend to have really cool prizes, and B) not too many people actually enter them. To be honest, I usually don't mention them here because I'm a selfish bastard and it gives me a greater chance of winning the fewer people I tell! But in this case, the odds of my winning aren't as dramatically hindered since David's not leaving the entries entirely up to random chance. I tend to think I'm inordinately clever, so my entry, I think, is pretty close to the mark. We'll see when David announces the winner on March 2.

But, hey, even if you -- or I, for that matter -- don't win the contest, we still get the added anniversary bonus of getting new Tozo strips twice a week now for the rest of the month!

Happy anniversary, David! I'm eager to see what's in store for Year Two!