As you all know, it’s not often I agree with Mark Millar, but he’s bang on here:

It’s always a shock when one of the comics community passes away. Even when we don’t know each other, we feel like we do because we all pretty much know one another’s work and at cons or in green rooms or maybe even the more intimate set-up where a small number of us share a table at a signing I’m always struck by how well we get along… We’re all cut from the same cloth and so it’s always a bit of a shock when someone (even a guy you never knew personally) dies because you have the same natural empathies. Add the fact that the guy wrote some of your favourite books and it’s doubly horrible.

But someone’s death should always be as much a celebration of their life as mourning their loss and so I would suggest that this thread becomes a place where we all talk about Gerber’s work. He and I shared an attorney called Harris Miller and I’ll forward this to Harris to pass along to his family.

My thoughts? Well, it’s an audacious claim, but I would say Gerber pretty much invented the mainstream adult comic. In the early 70s, he and Don McGregor were doing the weird, the political and the realistic reinterpretations of these four-colour characters that Alan Moore and co refined a decade later. But it started with Gerber and his offbeat voice. His Marvel work was the best of an incredible decade where he stood out from peers who have since gone on to become some of the most revered voices in the industry. He brought an underground sensibility to these titles and, dare I say it, a cool factor.

As a mark of respect, Millarworld will shut down for an hour on Friday in Gerber’s memory.

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