This post is about a month late and for that I apologize. The truth of it is that this anniversary really snuck up on me—the anniversary being February 10, the date that marked ten years since the passing of Steve Gerber.

Ten years. I need to let that sink in. The world in which we’ve lived for these last ten years has not had Steve Gerber in it.

Now I’m depressed.  Again.

Just a couple months after his death, Mark Evanier hosted a panel honoring Gerber at the 2008 New York Comic Con. I was there that Saturday morning, April 19, sitting right behind Marty Pasko and Marv Wolfman. Comic Book Resources has a detailed write-up on the event here. Afterward, I got a chance to talk to Mary Skrenes and I thanked her for her work on Omega the Unknown, telling her how much I connected with the James-Michael Starling character. I also tried to get some insight as to the original plans for Omega and got nothing, of course. She did, however, tell me that she planned to spread at least some of Gerber’s ashes somewhere in the city. I’d like to think the secret spot was someplace in Hell’s Kitchen.

For any newbies here, I’ve blogged on Gerber’s work quite often. Some of the man’s more notable works include the Man-Thing, Howard the Duck, the Defenders, Omega the Unknown, and Crazy magazine. Thanks to that Crazy stint, we’ve got images like these to remember him by:

As I’ve observed many times before, his was the most unique voice of the Bronze Age; one of the most unique voices in all of comics history.

I’m inclined to allow those former blogposts to speak largely for themselves, but for those seeking more, I’ll direct you to the man himself. Here’s a radio interview with Gerber conducted in late 1976, and an interview conducted by Scott Edelman in early ’75. For those who don’t feel guilty about not giving Edelman’s site some hits, I’ve embedded the Youtube link for his interview directly below:

You’ll likely need to turn your speaker volume to max if you want to catch all that’s said in that Edelman interview. Note that the first half of it was (mostly) published in Foom #9, which was then reproduced by yours truly (piecemeal) in my reviews of “A Book Burns in Citrusville,” “The Scavenger of Atlanta,” and “The Nightmare Box.”

The former interview concerns itself primarily with Howard the Duck’s presidential campaign, although it also touches on a few other things, including a discussion of the possibility of Gerber returning to the Defenders book. Alas, this never came to be.

For still more, you can read the contemporaneous New York Times obit here. There’s also the legendary interview with The Comics Journal, given after he parted ways with Marvel in ’78, here.

R.I.P., Steve “Baby” Gerber, ten years later. This Earth sorely misses you.