I have a confession to make to you sir, and it is not an easy one. There are others here who may judge me poorly and even ridicule me, but I cannot hide this any longer… Steve wouldn’t want me to.
Despite being heavily into your work since the late nineties and reading almost every thing you put out into the world, I had never, until a few days ago, read one single issue of Transmetropolitan. I just missed the boat, plain and simple. I had my head elsewhere and by the time I was aware of the book, it was far into the run and I didn’t want to jump in at some random point. So it sat around on the ever-expansive “to read” list until a few days ago when I sat down to take it all in from first to last. I literally just read the last issue before typing this. Hell, if I’m to be honest, I started typing this and then realized I only had a handful of issues left to finish and paused to go read them if only to come at this thing fully formed. Over a decade after it began, I have finally caught up on Transmet.
And you know what?
I’m glad I missed it back then.
(Pause for dramatic effect)
Yes, I would have liked it back then and all, but I don’t think it would have had the impact on me that it does now. I wouldn’t have been able to see the forest for the trees because of the topical nature of the material. But reading through it now, in these past few days, I am able to immediately see it for the accomplishment it really is: This book is your Howard the Duck.
(Pause for any chortling that needs to happen before we can get on with this)
The reason I can see and appreciate this now is because when I was ten years younger, I wasn’t yet knowledgeable enough to see influence in the works of others. I had not amassed enough information to draw the lines back. You can see bits of Steve Gerber in many of the prominent writers today, but Howard the Duck was a dead-on template for Transmetropolitan. A short, acerbic character running around, yelling at the world about it’s absurdity (oft times directly at the reader) with a back-up cast of loyalists who are able to look past the main character’s seemingly bitter attitude to see that they are actually the hopeful protagonist of the story. This is not a negative thing on your part because you made that structure your own and did something fun and wonderful with it, unlike many others who just rehash the old over and over ad infinitum… Besides, my generation needed a Howard of it’s own and few were as blessed as I was growing up to be so exposed to Steve. Shit, most people in my age bracket only remember Howard as a terrible movie with a suspected sexual deviant in it… Sigh… If only they knew about the real Howard and Nevada and Void Indigo and Hard Time and Defenders and Giant Size Man-Thing (snicker) and a host of other yarns.
And that’s why I can no longer deny missing the book it’s first time out through omission. We need to expose more people to Steve and his writing partner, Mary Skrenes. Especially now that he has died. His work cannot be allowed to do likewise. Help me do this, sir. You have arse-eels enough to get the job done.
This is what has been written on my mirror since Steve died, reminding me that while I want to be known as the American Alan Moore , I want to be Steve Gerber when I grow up.
I have to wipe it off the mirror soon because of a changing of rooms in the house, but you can be sure that the mantra will find it’s way onto my new mirror.
Every one of you reading this, go to Steve’s blog and get to know the man.