Friday Night Fights: Stop or I'll Dance!

It's been way too long since I've participated in Friday Night Fights, but I'm back in action. Tonight's Ladies' Night bout, from the twisted brilliance of Steve Gerber and Jack Kirby's Destroyer Duck #2: Medea Souvlakis vs. Woblina Strangelegs!

(If Medea is Mommie, then who's your daddy? Bahlactus is, natch.)

Woohoo!

Kalinara pointed me towards Newsarama's preview of the upcoming Rucka/Williams Batwoman mini. As promising as it looks, and as much as I'm looking forward to it, what's got me really excited is the mention of another of Todd Klein's projects:

"He also says he’s working on a Man-Thing story that was written by the late Steve Gerber back in the ’90s."

YES! YES! A visit to Klein's page confirms it: The long-awaited Steve Gerber/Kevin Nowlan Man-Thing graphic novel! (Well, "long-awaited" by the relatively few who were aware that one was planned...) Klein states that he isn't sure what the published title will be, but I remember it originally being announced as "Screenplay of the Living Dead Man"--a follow-up to the classic Man-Thing #12 story "Song-Cry of the Living Dead Man." Words fail me!

Waauugh.

I had just finished writing my last post when I decided to take a look around some of the other comics blogs (as I hadn't had much time to read them over the past couple of days). So, it was only just now that I read the news that Steve Gerber had passed away. I am stunned and deeply saddened.

Steve Gerber has long been one of my favorite comics writers, from Man-Thing and Howard the Duck all the way up to his Doctor Fate stories in Countdown to Mystery...and everything in between. Defenders, Daredevil, Omega the Unknown, Destroyer Duck, Foolkiller, Hard Time, his early-'90s She-Hulk run, even the obscure "Poison" storyline (featuring Mop Man) from Marvel Comics Presents...the list goes on and on.

As noted in Mark Evanier's obituary for Gerber (in the above link), once, at a time when Gerber was persona non grata with Marvel's higher-ups, he had a story published under the anagrammatical pseudonym Reg Everbest.

Everbest.

I've never seen a more fitting alias.