Steve Gerber TMNT quote

gdawz · 04-15-2022, 09:24 PM

Steve Gerber is, overall, my favorite comic book writer. I'm currently reading a collection of the interviews he did / online post he made that was published a few years back, called "Steve Gerber Conversations."

One interview from 1985 that appeared in a Comics Journal has the writer in pretty good spirits, post the initial Howard the Duck problems, post Void Indigo, and poised to return more fully to comics after some years in animation.

Though he'd embraced his somewhat cantankerous persona in the industry, he expresses at one point that:

"I'm afraid to endorse a comic that I like, because I'm afraid people will think ... it's violent, it's ugly, it's sick. ... If I want to see a book succeed, I should probably say something terrible about it. In that context, let me say that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of the worst comics I've ever read. Horrible. Don't buy it. Don't go near it! It's not funny at all."

My eyes drifted ahead to seeing TMNT - I've never known anything that tied Gerber to the property before - and my stomach dropped when I read the bits that followed. It doesn't matter that a deceased writer would've ragged on the original incarnation of the series, but it still bummed me out a bit. Then I got around to reading the quote in context and I felt a lot better.

04-15-2022, 09:24 PM	#1
gdawz Mouser Join Date: May 2020 Location: New York Posts: 8	Steve Gerber TMNT quote Steve Gerber is, overall, my favorite comic book writer. I'm currently reading a collection of the interviews he did / online post he made that was published a few years back, called "Steve Gerber Conversations." One interview from 1985 that appeared in a Comics Journal has the writer in pretty good spirits, post the initial Howard the Duck problems, post Void Indigo, and poised to return more fully to comics after some years in animation. Though he'd embraced his somewhat cantankerous persona in the industry, he expresses at one point that: "I'm afraid to endorse a comic that I like, because I'm afraid people will think ... it's violent, it's ugly, it's sick. ... If I want to see a book succeed, I should probably say something terrible about it. In that context, let me say that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of the worst comics I've ever read. Horrible. Don't buy it. Don't go near it! It's not funny at all." My eyes drifted ahead to seeing TMNT - I've never known anything that tied Gerber to the property before - and my stomach dropped when I read the bits that followed. It doesn't matter that a deceased writer would've ragged on the original incarnation of the series, but it still bummed me out a bit. Then I got around to reading the quote in context and I felt a lot better.