(I posted this on the blog of the late Steve Gerber, which is being maintained by friends of his.)

Steve Gerber put one word after another better than any other comic book writer I've seen in the last 40+ years.

He had the best ear for dialogue I've ever encountered between the covers of a comic book. Not clever and snappy and showy, but just the way people actually talk. He was also the best at putting a full page of straight prose into the middle of a comic book story. He did it quite often, and it always worked.

He was also great at writing about regular people (you know, with no super powers, like you and me) and making you care about them so much that sometimes the appearance of the super-powered characters was a bit of a distraction.

These qualities were not always prized by the comic book fans I knew in the 1970s, many of whom preferred the books with the snappier art, or the more cosmic storylines (or both). And then he became most famous for "Howard the Duck," which was not his best work (though it did have its moments, of course).

He was not a great plotter in the 1970s, in fact his books often didn't seem to be plotted at all. But he acquired those skills (or decided to start using them) later on. The recent series "Hard Time" was wonderfully written, the whole story of a person's life -- beginning, middle and end. Completely satisfying.

I was going to say that he will be missed, but actually he's missed already.

(Somebody else posted this, which I liked: "I'm sure that wherever you are now, you won’t be taking any cr*p from the management." Because he never did.)

Oh, and there's more of The U-town Murder Case, starting here.