Gerber often included lengthy text pages in the midst of comic book stories, such as in his graphic novel, Stewart the Rat.

[4] During this time he wrote short stories, some of which, such as "And the Birds Hummed Dirges," later appeared in Crazy Magazine during his stint as editor.

At the time, he wasn't a staff kind of person, at least in terms of what Marvel needed, but he was a real good writer and did some interesting things...[6]Gerber's comics writing career at Marvel began with three comic books cover-dated December 1972: Adventure into Fear #11, The Incredible Hulk #158, and a collaboration with writer Carole Seuling on Shanna the She-Devil.

[11] In the final issue, Gerber appeared as a character in the story, claiming he had not been inventing the Man-Thing's adventures but simply reporting on them and that he had decided to move on.

[13] Gerber wrote 27 issues of the series, penciled initially by Frank Brunner and shortly afterward by Gene Colan.

[14] The series gradually developed a substantial cult following, which Marvel helped to promote by Howard's satiric entry into the 1976 U.S. presidential campaign under the auspices of the All-Night Party.

[15] Marvel attempted a spin-off with a short-lived Howard the Duck syndicated comic strip from 1977 to 1978, initially scripted by Gerber and drawn by Colan then Mayerik and finally Alan Kupperberg.

[17] Shooter added that while the syndicate threatened to drop the strip if a new writer were not brought in, "Steve can tell you a good number of horror stories – and they're all true – about the trouble we had getting artists.

[22][23] Toward the end of his work at Marvel, he wrote Hanna-Barbera stories for Mark Evanier under the anagrammatic pseudonym Reg Everbest.

One of Gerber's first major works away from Marvel was the original graphic novel Stewart the Rat for Eclipse Comics, with art by Gene Colan and Tom Palmer.

Gerber acknowledged that his work on the character had been done as work-for-hire and that Marvel parent Cadence Industries owned "all right, title and interest" to Howard the Duck and related material.

[24][25] In the early 1980s, Gerber and Frank Miller made a joint proposal to revamp DC's three biggest characters, namely Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman;.

During this time he did a serial in Marvel Comics Presents featuring Poison, a character he had created in "The Evolutionary War" crossover.

He scripted a A Nightmare on Elm Street black and white magazine format comic book which detailed the backstory of the character of Freddy Krueger.

[8] In collaboration with Beth Woods (later Slick), Gerber wrote the "Contagion" episode of the syndicated television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

For Image Comics, he co-created The Cybernary with Nick Manabat and disbanded Codename: Strykeforce, in addition to guest-writing Pitt.

[38] For DC, he created Nevada for the Vertigo imprint in 1998 with artist Phil Winslade and Hard Time with long-time collaborator Mary Skrenes, which outlasted the short-lived imprint DC Focus, but slow sales led Hard Time: Season Two to be cancelled after only seven issues.

Gerber used the anagrammatic Reg Everbest pseudonym for Marvel-published Hanna-Barbera stories after he was banned from Marvel by Jim Shooter.

The Marvel Universe villain Thundersword (by Jim Shooter,[46] Al Milgrom and Steve Leialoha) is considered a parody of Gerber and his creation Thundarr the Barbarian.