By S.L. Osborne (slo@sequentialtart.com)
Originally published in the first issue of Sequential Tart, September 1998.
Since Steve Gerber began his career at Marvel in the early seventies, he has written some of the strangest and most cerebral comics to be released by mainstream publishers. The most recent in a long line of bizarre and thought-provoking titles such as Howard the Duck, Void Indigo, and Foolkiller is NEVADA, a tale about a Las Vegas showgirl, her pet ostrich Bolero, and the fate of the universe.
By now, fans of this six-issue Vertigo miniseries are familiar with the history of the character. A vignette featuring a showgirl, an ostrich, and a killer lampshade appeared in Howard the Duck #16. Twenty years later, the story has changed and expanded to become one of the most interesting and innovative new titles of 1998.
In the first ST Feature Interview, Gerber talks about his inspiration, his career, and the state of the industry.
Sequential Tart: Nevada is one of the few realistically strong female characters in comics right now. What was the inspiration for her personality?
Steve Gerber: There are a couple of ways to answer that question. First, Nevada is based on a number of real women I've known over the years. She has certain character traits in common with each of those people, but her personality is a composite that doesn't exactly resemble any one of them.
The inspiration for putting those traits together in the first place was to create what I hoped would be one of the few real women characters in comics. I didn't want to write about a good or bad "girl." I didn't want to write about an inflatable assassin doll or a walking compendium of feminist dogma. I wanted a female character who was at least as complex as any male character in comics -- which isn't saying much, but it was a place to start.
ST: One of the themes in Nevada seems to be the definition of femininity. Is this something intentional, or is it just part of Nevada's makeup not to fit within the stereotypical norms?
SG: It started as the latter and became more of the former as my work on the series progressed. It wasn't a theme I had intended to deal with in any major way, but it became unavoidable as the character interactions started to unfold. As with most of the women who contributed to her personality, Nevada's femininity is unconventional and strong, but it is a feminine personality, rather than a guy in drag or a woman emulating a man.
On the other hand, Nevada is also the type to defy a norm just because it's there.
ST: A lot of your work has tended to be critical of modern society and human nature. So far, NEVADA doesn't contain these elements. Comments?
SG: Human nature takes a terrible drubbing in the fourth and fifth issues of the book. By and large, though, I've given up trying to critique modern society, because I think it's beyond critique at this point. It would be like hurling imprecations at an oncoming asteroid. It was Thoreau, wasn't it, who said that "most men lead lives of quiet desperation"? Well, that's not the case anymore. Today, most people lead lives of really loud desperation. The noise level in their heads is impenetrable by critique. So why bother?
ST: Another theme in your writing is the fantastic and/or supernatural. Do your spiritual beliefs come into play when you write?
SG: Yes, but I'm one of those people whose spiritual beliefs are constantly evolving and changing. It's difficult for me to pick one explanation for the cosmos and stick with it. I know that as I've gotten older, I've become progressively less inclined to believe in a god of any kind, let alone one that listens to prayers and has personal relationships with his (or her) worshipers.
At the same time, though, I'm convinced that humanity isn't the be-all and end-all of evolution or consciousness. I'm sure there must be larger forces "out there" that humanity, its science, its philosophies, and its religions have barely begun to comprehend. It would be a fucking pity if it turned out that we were the best the universe could produce. What a waste of matter and energy.
ST: Phil Winslade is doing a wonderful job on the art. Nevada is sexy without being salacious, and she's built like a normal woman. Do you feel that the artwork fits with the way you wanted Nevada portrayed?
SG: Very much so. As I said earlier, I wanted Nevada to be as real a presence as possible. I knew Phil would achieve that the minute I saw his first drawings of the character. We've done one nude scene in the book so far, and the reader reaction to it has pleased me no end. One person wrote that Nevada's movement and body language in that scene seemed so natural that he, the reader, felt like an inadvertent peeping tom -- in other words, as if he'd accidentally caught a glimpse of a very attractive woman in a moment she thought was private.
Phil did that scene in a way that caught readers completely off-guard. He drew a very beautiful woman posed in a completely unselfconscious way and without exaggerating -- or deliberately minimizing -- any of her physical attributes. You saw a creature of flesh and blood on those pages, and one who was completely at ease in her own body, as a dancer would be.
The funny thing is, though, Nevada's body is actually one of the less realistic elements of the series, considering where she's employed. She's built like a dancer, yes, but more the type of dancer you'd expect to see in an interpretive jazz troupe in SoHo than on a Las Vegas stage. In Vegas, softer body contours and boobs the size of the Iberian Peninsula are much more the rule.
For a number of reasons, we made a conscious choice that Nevada wouldn't look like that. First of all, we wanted her to look different from most of the women characters in comics, the vast majority of whom are built more like Playboy bunnies than the athletic heroines they're supposed to be. Secondly, we wanted a character who would stand out against the backdrop of Vegas; Nevada cuts a very stark and angular figure, which immediately pops her out of the lush, gaudy backgrounds. And we needed a woman who'd make a believable Rift Warrior. (Just in case this interview appears before NEVADA #6 hits the stores, I'll refrain from elaborating on what that means.)
Anyway, the point is that Phil's artwork has been intrinsic to the portrayal of the character, the settings -- everything about the series.
ST: Is this first book you've done with a female main character?
SG: No. I co-wrote the first issue of SHANNA THE SHE-DEVIL as one of my first assignments at Marvel and wrote most of the subsequent issues in that book's short run. I did SHE-HULK for a year or so, and a very bizarre one-shot called SUBURBAN JERSEY NINJA SHE-DEVILS, which Amanda Conner drew. I've also done a number of series in which women played major roles, even if they weren't the title characters -- Ruth and Amber in OMEGA THE UNKNOWN, Valkyrie in DEFENDERS, and I'd even include Beverly in HOWARD THE DUCK on that list. And then there was the character of Starhawk, in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, who was both male and female.
ST: Do you see any trends in your female characters?
SG: According to cat yronwode, they all wear fishnet stockings. A number of them seem to be a little more worldly or streetwise than the guys they hang out with. Other than that, not really. I see them as individuals.
ST: Has the general viewpoint on female creators and fans changed since you began working in comics?
SG: Oh, hell yes. When I started in the field back in 1972, there were barely enough women in mainstream comics to fill a "Why Aren't There More Women in Comics?" panel. And most of those were either colorists or secretaries. I believe there was only one woman editor in comics at that time, at least at Marvel or DC; that was Dorothy Woolfolk, who, as you'd expect, handled DC's romance line. The only prominent women artists in the field were Marie Severin and Ramona Fraden, and there were literally no women writing comics on a regular basis. The conventional wisdom back then was that women couldn't write or draw adventure stories, and especially not superheroes.
The comic book industry and its fans are still disproportionately male, as you know, but the situation for women in the field has changed drastically for the better in the last 26 years. What hasn't changed nearly as much, unfortunately, is the product of the industry, which is still skewed to adolescent boys or 40-year-old guys who don't want to let go of their childhood. The Vertigo titles are among the very few published by DC, Marvel, or Image that even make an attempt to reach beyond that narrow market segment.
ST: Which creators do you admire, and why?
SG: You know, I could give you a list of several dozen names, ranging all the way from Jerry Siegel and Jack Kirby to Erik Larsen and Neil Gaiman, but I'm not sure that would mean anything.
Instead, let me say this: I admire the people in comics who've had the courage and originality to forge their own paths. Some of these people are self-publishers turning out black-and-white books every month for a very small audience. Others are writers and artists who work for the major publishers but who've evolved their own styles and created their own characters and series. Some of them have been critical successes. A handful have had major financial success. Others have been well-intended failures. But they all have one thing in common, an unwillingness to settle into a comfortable rut. All of these people, in one way or another, have forced the medium of comics forward, and to accomplish it, they've typically had to battle both the tunnel vision of the publishers and the numbing inertia of the fans and retailers.
ST: When you started in comics, the artwork had to look good in four-color newsprint. Since then, the changes in printing technology have allowed comics art to become more detailed and less blurred. Do you find that the ability to render clearer visuals affects the way you write?
SG: Not really. The "rules" of storytelling in comics don't change that profoundly just because of advances in the production technology. With rare exceptions, each panel still has to concern itself with one action, one moment, like a snapshot. The better printing -- along with advances in computer lettering and coloring -- allows the writer and artist to play around with smaller panels, bleeds, more creative layouts and special effects, but the underlying craft is still the same.
ST: You've been involved in online communities since public computer networks began - CompuServe, newsgroups, and now the web. You're active in discussions about the comics you write, and you seem to be very open to conversations with your readers. Has such close contact with your fans had any effect on the way you view comics and your own writing?
SG: I don't go back quite to the very beginning of computer networks. I first got involved with online communications in the early '80s. CompuServe and a number of BBS networks like Fido had been around for several years by then. The Internet dates back even further, of course, but it wasn't accessible to the general public in those days.
Has online communication affected the way I view comics and my own writing? Yes, I guess it has. I used to think of comics as a medium in which it was possible to do cutting-edge stuff, because readers seemed hungry for anything new and different and were willing to embrace some very outlandish ideas. For the most part, my online interactions have disabused me of that notion. I now tend to view comics as a medium suffocating in nostalgia and the vast majority of fans as rigidly conservative in their tastes.
I also tend to view my own writing as much stranger, at least in comparison to the rest of the field, than I used to think it was. That hasn't changed the way I write comics -- as a writer, I am who I am, and I do the kind of stuff I do -- but it has caused me to think of myself as someone working at the outer edges of the medium, rather than someone's who's splashing around in a little eddy just off the mainstream.
I certainly don't mean to suggest that all comics and all fans are this way. Over the years, I've met some very interesting people and been involved in some very interesting discussions online. But, on the whole, I've come to the conclusion that the majority of readers just want more of what they've seen before. Whether they admit it, or even realize it, they're really just looking forward to the next time Professor X dies, or the next time Superman changes clothes, or the next company-wide crossover they can complain about, even as they buy every installment.
I've probably just gotten myself in a lot of trouble for saying that, by the way.
ST: What are your plans for NEVADA once the first miniseries is finished?
SG: A short story for WINTER'S EDGE 2 and a second miniseries for early 1999.
ST: What else are you currently working on?
SG: I'm writing a miniseries called A. BIZARRO for Joey Cavalieri's Superman office at DC. Mark Bright is pencilling the book. I've been talking with Andy Helfer about a couple of possible Elseworlds stories. And I've been tossing around a few ideas for new Vertigo titles with Karen Berger and Axel Alonso. There's also an original science-fiction series I'd like to get off the ground, but I haven't had much time recently to work on the proposal. Oh, and I've been helping a friend of mine locally develop some ideas for TV animation.
ST: While you've done a lot of work in the superhero genre, it seems that most of your personal creations (HTD, Void Indigo, Nevada) have not been of the spandex-and-tights variety. What are your feelings on superheroes, and what weirdness are you bringing to Metropolis with the Bizarro miniseries?
SG: You have to remember that I come at this question from a somewhat unusual perspective because of my age. (I'm 50.) When I was a kid, the superheroes were on their way out of comics. Because I had an aunt and uncle who read comics when my age was still in single digits, I happened to see a few issues at the tail-end of the original PLASTIC MAN and CAPTAIN MARVEL series, but apart from those, the term "superhero" basically meant Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman for most of my childhood.
When the superhero resurgence began in the late '50s and early '60s, I was ecstatic to see more of these characters. At the time, though, it never occurred to me that they would come to completely dominate the industry and drive everything else off the stands. I had grown up reading lots of different comics. I saw at least a few of the early EC horror and science fiction titles. I read the Archie books and some of the Disney and Looney Tunes stuff, LITTLE LULU and LITTLE IODINE, some of the Harvey titles. Hell, I could still read and enjoy UNCLE $CROOGE well into my teens. And then there were the ACG "mystery" books -- that was the euphemism for "horror" in those days -- like FORBIDDEN WORLDS and ADVENTURES INTO THE UNKNOWN, and the post-Atlas/pre-Marvel monster comics like STRANGE TALES, TALES TO ASTONISH, and the like. I never saw any reason to confine my comics reading to a single type of book, much less a single publisher, as some fans apparently do today.
The problem with superheroes today really began in the early '80s with the rise of the direct market -- the comic book shops -- and a conservative shift in the country's politics that channeled all these characters into a very militaristic mode.
The comic book shops were (and are) run mostly by fans, and most hardcore comics fans tend to be superhero fans. So that's what the shops ordered, and that's what sold. As the direct market became a progressively larger share of the publishers' total sales, they abandoned whatever didn't sell to those shops, meaning, ultimately, that they abandoned almost everything except superheroes.
At the same time this was going on, the country was in the grip of the Reagan era with its jingoism and bullshit macho posturing, its emphasis on mindless acquisition as a way of life, its might-makes-right ethic, and its reduction of every human value to monetary terms. Not surprisingly, the comics, and the superheroes themselves, changed to reflect the society.
Well, the culture hasn't quite gotten over that phase yet, and neither have the comics. And the venues for selling comics outside the direct market have continued to shrink over the years. So now we're left with whole universes full of posturing, militaristic assholes in lookalike costumes, characters who call themselves heroes but are really just bullies, and a retailer base that doesn't see the need to order anything else.
The superheroes aren't special anymore. Even in their own universes, they're common as houseflies. I'm sick to death of them, and I'm astonished that more readers aren't. I don't want to see them go away entirely. In fact, I'd like to be able to enjoy them again. But I think the genre needs a good long rest first, so that someone new can come along in a few years and reinvent it as completely as Julie Schwartz, Stan Lee, and Jack Kirby did in the early '60s.
That's probably a lot more than you really wanted to know about superheroes, isn't it?
ST: Several people involved with the Vertigo imprint have commented that Vertigo wouldn't exist without the work you did on HTD and other titles. How do you feel about that, and are you enjoying writing for Vertigo's more mature audience?
SG: I'm immensely flattered to think that I had any influence at all on writers like Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis, Steven Seagle, and others associated with Vertigo. But I think it's going several steps too far to claim that Vertigo wouldn't exist if not for my earlier work. All of those writers would have found their own voices one way or another, and Vertigo or something like it would inevitably have sprung up to publish their works.
Writing for the Vertigo audience has been a very liberating experience. Finally I'm able to handle some of the themes and certain types of characters I couldn't even sneak in through the back door of a Code-approved book. And it's a source of great personal joy to be able to type the word "fuck" instead of "#&%@" in a comic book script and see it appear on the printed page. I know, I know -- it's superficial and silly, but I've never really thought of myself as a children's writer, and I feel as if I'm finally being allowed to communicate with adults in some language other than baby talk.
ST: And finally - any last words?
SG: All things considered, I'd rather be in Philadelphia.
NEVADA and artwork copyright © 1998 Steve Gerber & DC Comics, Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Sequential Tart, 1998
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