Steve Englehart, dammit

His website seems to overestimate his contribution to the medium (cf. his talk re: Nightmask), but SE is spot-on re: his ever-so-brief run on Detective Comics w/ Marshall Rogers. Conveniently enough, Engelhart & Rogers are reuniting for a Batastic 6-issue bi-weekly mini series that's due to start (I think) in April. Yes, I'm on the list.

I also have a soft spot for his West Coast Avengers run - Master Pandemonium, Hank Pym becoming ... HANK PYM, the Hawkeye / Mockingbird hoohah, and that fantastically ridiculous 7-part time travel story. I don't know how he made folks like Tigra & Wonder Man interesting, but he did it. Special bonus - the first 20-or-so issues feature JOE SINNOTT on inks! (His collaborations w/ Al Milgrom always get me all nostalgically misty-eyed.) Of course, it did start to get shaky - dunno if it was editorial interference or what; similar stuff happened during his concurrent FF stint - & I don't think it's a coincidence that the art became equally ropey once the wheels started loosening. I forget if he switched to his "Harkness" pseudonym on WCA near the end, but wow that whole Phantom Rider / Mockingbird plot went pffffffft like a fart-filled whoopie cushion.

Tom to thread to talk more about Millenium!!!!

Yeah, I was just looking at his website, and um, does he actually say his Batman became the Tim Burton Batman? That's what it looked like to me. He was an influence on the sorts of Batmen who were influences on the movie, sure, but it's not like anyone sat down and said, "Well, it's about time we get around to that Englehart Batman movie." Or probably even knew his name. (Sam Hamm might've.)

The end of the WCA run was marred by fill-in stories, too, if I remember right, before the Byrne takeover (didn't Roy Thomas do a little pre-Byrne? I reviewed this last year! Let me look -- no, the Thomases were post-Byrne. My thingie:

A four issue miniseries by Roger Stern assembles this team -- as the name suggests, the West coast branch of the Avengers, led by ex-criminal turned Captain America protege Hawkeye, with the addition of his wife Mockingbird, catwoman Tigra, Iron Man, ion-powered stuntman-actor-superhero-hyphenate Wonder Man, and Hank Pym (formerly Ant-Man and Giant-Man) -- but it's the Steve Englehart run on the ongoing title that really made the mark. Englehart has previously written memorable arcs on the Avengers, the Defenders, and Captain America, and his thirtysomething issues here are a standard against which I hold other team books.

What made it work wasn't just the plots, which made the most of existing Marvel ephemera -- Graviton, the Cat People who gave Tigra her powers, Moon Knight's multiple personality disorder, Scorpio and the life model decoys -- it was Englehart's ability to portray a team struggling with its collective identity, something he excels at. The West Coast Avengers weren't the big guns like Captain America and Thor -- and although Iron Man's no iron pansy, he's a recovering alcoholic who had previously quit the job and always seemed to be undergoing personal problems; while Wonder Man, the tank, is vain and self-obsessed, has a brother who's a racist supervillain, and used to be dead. The Whackos, under Englehart's reign, were always needing to prove that they were worthy of the Avengers name -- and later had to deal with an internal schism when Mockingbird let a supervillain die, breaking the team rules of conduct.

Towards the end of Englehart's run, and for the next thirty issues or so after that, though, the title faltered -- going through a crapload of fill-in writers, and way too many Everything You Know Is Wrong stories (1: Hank Pym's first wife is still alive! 2: The Vision isn't really the old android Human Torch, as 200 issues of the Avengers have claimed! 3: The Scarlet Witch's children are imaginary!) John Byrne's run hinted at the direction his career would take from then on, as he ignored everything that had come before him and focused only on patching holes he believed to exist in stories from decades earlier; Byrne is one of the few comics writers who can manage to make his arrogant tone come through in his work. But then it too ended abruptly, and more fill-in writers came by for one or two issues at a time, and eventually Roy and Dann Thomas took over.

Under the Thomases, the title is okay, but it never found its identity again. The shifting membership makes it hard to latch onto a core of characters, and it just reads like any other generic team book.

)

The Phantom Rider/Mockingbird/Today an Avenger KILLS! storyline had enormous potential -- even as it played out, it's up there with Tony Stark Has A Drinking Problem (the initial stories, that is) in terms of Marvel Characters Talk Ethics And Serious Stuff Without Being A Very Special Issue A La Heroes For Hope -- but it could have been much better, and yeah, it just sort of slid into the vanishing point.

The time travel story, hoo-ee. I love that shit. And incorporating old Dr Strange and FF stories, even. (Was the Dr Strange story an Englehart story? Now that I think about it, that wouldn't surprise me.)

Yes, Tom to thread for Millennium, and Huck for Englehart's Green Lantern -- I don't remember my DC Englehart as well (I don't think I read Millennium, although I absorbed some of it through osmosis, and I don't remember which era of GL was Englehart -- GLC?)

Englehart did GL from just after Hal Jordan quit (so he started around #182) to the end of the GLC (#224). It was probably the craziest time ever for the GLs, what with Hal Jordan quitting! A black guy taking his place (you thought HEAT was pissy, you should read some of the old letter cols from John Stewart's run on the title!)! The Crisis! The Guardians retire! Hal Jordan gets his ring back! Tomar Re dead! Seven GLs on one planet! Dr. Ub'x! Kilowog defects to the Soviet Union! Guy Gardner gets the GLs drunk and they fight pink elephants! Under Summer Skies! Millennium! The execution of Sinestro! The return and subsequent redeparture of the Guardians! THE END OF THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS!

If you want to read the greatest GL stories, start with the Len Wein/Dave Gibbons stuff and just follow from there to GLC #224.
If I remember correctly, despite fanboy bitching, sales actually shot up when Green Lantern was black, which was one of the reasons they opted for the multi-GL concept when Hal Jordan made his first comeback.

Millenium itself was not as good as some of the crossovers (like the JLI issue where Hal Jordan and Superman get drawn by Kevin Maguire, oh and fight on the Manhunter homeworld, oh and G'Nort makes his first appearance), and it really was a brilliant idea, shades of Identity Crisis and all that, but the earth had yet to cool from Crisis at that point, and the DCU just wasn't ready for another big thing like that.

Damn, Tep, you got me jonesin' for an eBay spree! (Too bad I blew way too much cash @ online poker last night, tho. Alas.)

Didn't the PR rape Mockingbird, or was it some offense she couldn't talk about? No, wait - he SEDUCED her w/ mind control drugs! Awwwww yeah / no! TS: drug-enduced sexual assault in comics v. the Identity Crisis thing. (Duh, the correct answer is TAKE NO SIDE.)

Yeah, I loved E's voyage into the Dark Age of Marvel Comics (i.e. THE 70'S) w/ WCA, & even a nod to the Westerns, too, w/ the Rawhide Kid & that posse during the Lucifer-led time-travel shenanigans. (Sheesh, the mastermind behind the time-travel arc was LUCIFER! The mort that broke Xavier's legs! Hell yeah!) Of course, Engelhart is going to reach back to the 70s for inspiration, though, since that's when he came up - I wouldn't be surprised if he had a hand in beginning a lot of the stuff (most especially the Tigra subplot that ran throughout his run) he returned to in WCA.

Ideally, this is what I'd like any new Defenders series to be like - a collection of misfits (like they were when SE was on the title) (good call on that, too, Tep) dealing w/ the crap that higher-profile heroic units won't or can't bother with, almost like a pre-damage control Damage Control. You know, the talking super-computers, the mutant whose power allows him to turn people bald, intergalactic divorce disputes, US 1, the nudist hacker commune. But not in a "har har har" way - in that arch-serious THIS MEANS EVERYTHING HOARY HOSTS way. (Which, in my mind, means Joe Quesada should call up the Venture Brothers team & have them make a pitch ASAP.)

But, of course, he had to go and bring MANTIS into the fold, which is where things started to go the way of old fish. The only place I can remember in his 80s / 90s work where he involved Mantis & the title didn't go straight to trough was Silver Surfer (coincidentally enough, featuring art by Marshall Rogers). He was the one that got SS off of Earth, y'know. He MIGHT mention that on his site.

Maybe a C/D shorthand for Engelhart's Marvel career should be:

CLASSIC: pre-Mantis (except on Silver Surfer)
DUD: post-Mantis & post-Shooter

BTW, "pre-Mantis" & "post-Mantis" means "before he drags her hippy-dippy ass into the plot" and "after blah blah blah".

Oh man, some of that I've read. Cool. DC needs to do more collections, I don't have the "I have #213 but this is in better condition, oh and I don't have #216" style memory for back issue bin-diving anymore.

Didn't the PR rape Mockingbird, or was it some offense she couldn't talk about? No, wait - he SEDUCED her w/ mind control drugs! Awwwww yeah / no! TS: drug-enduced sexual assault in comics v. the Identity Crisis thing. (Duh, the correct answer is TAKE NO SIDE.)

Exactly, it was the mind control. It wasn't explicit whether they had sex, but he made her fall in love with him, and since she kept her memory after she came out of the mind control, I'm sure that was no less traumatic in of itself.

Englehart's reaching-back is one of the thing's that's been a problem with his recent stuff, though, so I'm worried about the Batman series ... Celestial Quest was weird and spotty and despite specific use of recent developments it read like it could have been written twenty, twenty-five years ago. Granted, some of this is because I just hate Mantis and Moondragon (except in Silver Surfer and some Defenders issues, respectively). But Big Town big bit, too.

"some of that" = Englehart-era GL/GLC.

Englehart should've written a lengthy Ghost Rider run.

I figured as much.

xpost

Also, the Englehart GLC had Joe Staton at his peak. By the time Staton was on the Guy Gardner storyline in the "new" GL series, he had gone fully over to the cartoony side (though prolonged exposure to Ch'p will do that to a guy). But his stuff on GLC was just cartoony enough.

From what I recall (re: the WCA mind control thing), they'd always cut away as the PR & Mockingbird would embrace & canoodle (sic) (in costume!) (also kinda sic, unless you go for that) in the horizontal position, a la tastefully-done sexually-ign'ant studio Hollywood pictures. Nothing EXPLICIT was shown, but nothing really needed to be shown.

Yeah, I'm worried about the Bat series, too - I think he's even bringing back Silver St. Cloud! - but I think the lack of dumpster-diving in his DC work, coupled w/ the fact that I haven't read much of his DC work, makes me think it'll be a fun romp.

I am worried about Rogers' art, though - his DC stuff was fresh & fluid, but over the years, his work - the few places I've seen it since then - has become more staid & stiff. Kinda like John Byrne's, in a way - my favorite stuff of his was when he was still finding his feet, & maybe putting more detail into the work than was needed. The minute he began to seemingly master his craft (& take more control over how his art was presented, by inking himsef), some of that luster was lost.

But, yeah, now that I'm talking about Engelhart's DC work (which I only know of via his Batwork - anyone read his JLA stuff?) - the most notable aspect of his Rogers-aided run (& the reason why I'll let his "I am Tim Burton's / Sam Hamm's muse" thing slide) is that it seemed to skillfully synthesize both Denny O'Neil's grim & gritty approach to the Batdude AND the Bob Kane / Bill Finger eff-a-square-panel big-penny hyper-pulp approach. This is ESPECIALLY true of that oft-revered two-part Joker story w/ the laughing fish (called, I believe, "The Laughing Fish"). (Also, check out the lettering in those books - I can't recall if John Workman was the letterer or not, but the stuff breaks through panels and overwhelms the art in such a sneaky sly way. Not like the stiff BIFF! BANG! POW! explosions - more curvy & slippery.) (Also also, I think those Kane / Finger caption boxes - w/ the first letter of the sentence in a black circle - were used, too!)

The Engelhart / Rogers run on Detective Comics was one of the only stories I can recall getting reprinted back in the 80s when such things weren't common. & the brevity of their run can only help its fanboy canonical status (esp. in the "What If?" Dept.) - of course, making a return trip 25+ years later might kibbosh that reverential air, but so be it.

Hey, maybe I should get some work done today!

Yeah, definitely seek out the Batman: Strange Apparitions (which I believe collects the entire Englehart 'Tec run, mostly with Rogers but a few issues by Simonsen as well). It's prime Batman as Dark Knight Detective. And I lovelovelove the splash page blurbs that talk about "the dread Batman."
Batman needs to be more dreaded.

I think that Hamm actually made public statements about cribbing from Englehart. And Kim Basinger sorta looks more like SSC than VV.

Was this the impetus for this thread?

http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=4920

It was a combination of hearing Englehart had a Batman series coming, and having just read Celestial Quest (and having reread Big Town and West Coast Avengers earlier this year). I hadn't actually read that interview yet, though.

Still haven't gotten any work done today, BTW.

Well, no use starting now.

How'd you know I had a doctor's appointment this afternoon?!? Get out of my head, Huk!

Describe and classify the aforementioned.

How about a game of Tic Tac Toe?

I have like half of my work done that I wanted done by now, and it's about Superman at that. I don't know if this is funny-ha-ha-irony or just lame.

But I'm gonna get my hands on Strange Apparitions when I can. Spare money's tied up in impending road trips right now, but now I'm all jonesing for it.

Well, I've read mine a few times. Gmail me yr address and we can swap for that Flash bundle.

Probably my favorite comics writer. I'd never looked at his website until this thread prompted it yesterday, and looking back at all that mid-70s Marvel goodness really got the nostalgia and "I want" juices flowing.

OK folks so am I the only one stoked that Engelhart's doing a stint on JLA: Classified? Featuring the Justice League Detroit team? Am I?

You are.

I love you Steve!

Did you like Dark Detective?

Overall, It was OK. I liked the zaniness of the early issues (peaking w/ the Two-Face clone action), but the St. Cloud stuff irked me - need a shoehorn to get that love interest in there, Steve-o? - and the ending was a bit weak (esp. w/ St. Cloud's luvva getting the Anakin).

i haven't read that recent Englehart/Rogers return, but a friend of mine pointed out that it was nice to read a Batman comic where bats wasn't just a sulking hulking psycho, that he was actually polite to ppl!

i love Englehart's early 70s Dr. Stranges, btw, cosmic hippie psych toss of the finest hempstrain - collected in the 2nd Essentials vol

The recent JLA:Classified gets to its tenth page before ending a (clunky, overlong) sentence with a full stop. It's the worst written comic book on the shelves today(that doesn't say "Thunderbolts" on the cover).

you mean there's a ten-page sentence?

I'm guessing pre-offset stylee exclamation marks.

Yes, it's all exclamations and questions, is what I meant.