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Steve Gerber graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in communications and took a job in advertising. To keep himself sane, he wrote bizarre short stories such as "Elves Against Hitler," "Conversion in a Terminal Subway," and "...And the Birds Hummed Dirges!" He noticed acquaintance
Roy Thomas
working at Marvel, and Thomas sent him Marvel's standard writing test, dialoguing Daredevil art. He was soon made a regular on
Daredevil
and
Sub-Mariner
, and the newly created
Man-Thing
, the latter of which pegged him as having a strong personal style--intellectual, introspective, and literary. In one issue, he introduced an anthropomorphic duck into a horror fantasy, because he wanted something weird and incongruous, and Thomas made the character, named for Gerber's childhood friend Howard, fall to his apparent death in the following issue. Fans were outraged, and the character was revived in a new and deeply personal series. Gerber said in interview that the joke of
Howard the Duck
is that "there is no joke." The series was existential and dealt with the necessities of life, such as finding employment to pay the rent. Such unusual fare for comicbooks also informed his writing on
The Defenders
. Other works included
Morbius, the Lving Vampire
,
The Son of Satan
,
Tales of the Zombie
,
The Living Mummy
,
Marvel Two-in-One
,
Guardians of the Galaxy
,
Shanna the She-Devil
, and
Crazy Magazine
for Marvel, and
Mister Miracle
,
Metal Men
,
The Phantom Zone
, and
The Immortal Doctor Fate
for DC. Gerber eventually lost a lawsuit for control of Howard the Duck when he was defending artist
Gene Colan
's claim of delayed paychecks for the series, which was less important to him personally because he had a staff job and Colan did not.
He left comics for animation in the early 1980s, working mainly with Ruby-Spears, creating Thundarr the Barbarian with
Alex Toth
and
Jack Kirby
and episodes of The Puppy's Further Adventures, and Marvel Productions, where he was story editor on multiple Marvel series including
Dungeons & Dragons
,
G.I. Joe
, and
The Transformers
. He continued to dabble in comics, mainly for Eclipse, including the graphic novel Stewart the Rat, the two-part horror story "Role Model: Caring, Sharing, and Helping Others," and the seven-issue Destroyer Duck with Jack Kirby, which began as a fundraiser for Gerber's lawsuit.
In the early 1990s, he returned to Marvel with
Foolkiller
, a ten-issue limited series featuring a new version of a villain he had used in
The Man-Thing
and
Omega the Unknown
, who communicated with a previous version of the character through internet bulletin boards. An early internet adopter himself, he wrote two chapters of
BBSs for Dummies
with Beth Woods Slick, with whom he also wrote the
Star Trek: The Next Generation
episode, "Contagion." During this period, he also wrote
The Sensational She-Hulk
and
Cloak and Dagger
for Marvel,
Cybernary
and
WildC.A.T.s
for Image, and
Sludge
and
Exiles
for the writer-driven Malibu Ultraverse, and
Nevada
for DC's mature readers Vertigo line.
In 2002, he returned to the Howard the Duck character for Marvel's mature readers MAX line, and for DC created
Hard Time
with
Mary Skrenes
, with whom he had co-created the cult hit
Omega the Unknown
for Marvel. Their ending for
Omega the Unknown
remains a secret that Skrenes plans to take to the grave if Marvel refuses to publish it. Suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis ("idiopathic" meaning of unknown origin despite having been a heavy smoker much of his life), he was on a waiting list for a double lung transplant. His final work was the Doctor Fate story arc, "More Pain Comics," for DC Comics'
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