STEVE GERBER: This is Why You Don't Wait

RIP Steve Gerber (photo and link from The Beat)
Mark Evanier remembers Gerber

I was thinking on Saturday I should write Gerber soon. I think this every time I clean the bathroom because we had an email exchange about eight months ago about depression and choosing to be public about it. I mean, because in the course of that exchange, he admitted that he too found stray hairs no matter how many times he wiped down bathroom surfaces.
Pretty prosaic, really. But it did make me smile that he joked with me about such a wee thing.

Besides that depression and cleaning overlap, I admired Gerber because was one of the first comics creator I was aware of that took a stand for creator's rights. I thought asking Marvel to play nice over Howard the Duck was like asking a toddler to share, but at least he did. Long after I first watched the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon in college, I found out Gerber wrote for it. This explained so much! Say what you will about a D&D kiddie show, the writing often carried it. Pathos and romance and funny in a Saturday cartoon? Gedouttatown! Gerber brought it.

I got busy putting together a trampoline for the kids and doing layouts. I was going to write Gerber tonight or tomorrow, maybe tell him I had dealt with my cleaning issues by letting someone else handle it and not looking under the toilet. That I was doing better by redefining my family and changing my middle name to "Acorn." That my drugs weren't colorful enough. Maybe on the other end of that email he'd smile.

Gerber described himself as not the happiest guy normally. Through the depression, though, he kept on truckin'. A lot of us clowns do. I  wish Steve had gotten better, had the lung transplant, had a miracle, lived to Will Eisner's age, even if he was not the happiest guy normally. When someone dies is when my childhood faith in the afterlife falters, but I want to believe that somewhere Gerber is finally some kind of happy and  free of pain and someone else cleans the stupid bathroom. 

RIP, Gerber.