A BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION: The late Steve Gerber was born 74 years ago — and FVL pays tribute… — UPDATED 9/20/23: The late Steve Gerber was born 76 years ago, on Sept. 20, 1947. Perfect time to “reprint” this piece from 2021. Dig it! — Dan — By FRED VAN LENTE Happy birthday to the late Steve Gerber — born 74 years ago on Sept. 20, 1947 — the great comics scribe who was one of my biggest influences as a writer. I can’t remember why I started religiously collecting his 1970s Marvel work from back issue bins when I was a kid, but at one point I had a complete run of his Defenders, Man-Thing and a personal favorite, the first-ever regular series starring the original Guardians of the Galaxy. But it might have been because I stumbled across the script to an unpublished mid-1980s Howard the Duck revival he had posted in the comics section of CompuServe (ask your Gen-X parents, kids). As a high schooler I tweaked his format into what became my own scripting style, one I am honored has been adopted by many pros since. This was of course before I knew of Gerber’s pioneering battle with Marvel over the rights to Howard, the harbinger for many character-ownership fights to come, partly financed by a collaboration with another wronged creator, Jack Kirby. As a kid of the 1980s, I enjoyed Gerber’s ability to weave comedy, philosophical angst, ripped-from-the-headlines social commentary and good old fashioned superhero insanity into an always-readable, if sometimes extremely pretentious (Gerber did an almost-all-text issue of HtD when he was running behind his deadlines that, uh, let’s just say did not make this list) that was a forerunner of the “serious” mainstream scribes—Moore, Miller, Morrison, et al— who would soon catch fire. And you know, I’ve never actually seen the infamous movie that precipitated Gerber’s lawsuit in the first place? I tried semi-recently and only made it about 15 minutes in. Between you and me, I think the comics are better. Here’s my TOP 13 STEVE GERBER HOWARD THE DUCK COMICS, presented chronologically: — 1. Giant-Size Man-Thing #4: “Frog Death!” Howard’s first solo story gets off on the right (webbed) foot when, upon arrival in our (616) world, he meets up with some human kids and he has to defend them against...