Reid About It

(Not so much on the funny today, sorry. Hopefully, the humor will return tomorrow.)

As I've mentioned before, I grew up on comic books. You know that old "Everything I Needed To Know, I Learned In Kindergarden" saying? Well, everything I needed to know came from comic books. My lifelong fascination with episodic storytelling started there.

One of the great underrated (and underpaid, and underroyaltied) writers of my youth was Steve Gerber, who was as anarchic a creator as you'd find in a medium that was rapidly growing stale.

He created Howard The Duck, which was a fantastic parody of 70's pop culture long before it was an awful, awful 80's movie. His writing was a subtle scalpel, poking away at what was going on in society around him in ways I wouldn't even realize until I got older and went back for a reread.

Most importantly, Gerber was a fan of writers. Through his characters, he once said that "Plants are like people. Writers are like plants. Therefore, and this may come as a surprise, writers are like people. Given them light, water, nourishment, a comfortable pot and an encouraging world and they'll grow."

Steve Gerber died Sunday night in Las Vegas. Thanks for all the memories.