Steve Englehart
Steve Englehart is an American writer of comic books and novels. He is best known for his work at Marvel Comics and DC Comics in the 1970s and 1980s. His pseudonyms have included John Harkness and Cliff Garnett.
Early life
Steve Englehart majored in psychology at Wesleyan University, where he was a member of The Kappa Alpha Society, earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1969. After graduation he was drafted and served in the United States Army as a journalist at Aberdeen Proving Ground. While there he went to the Manhattan offices of Marvel Comics to ask if he could be an assistant to Neal Adams when his Army tour was over. "Why not now?" Adams asked, and Englehart started spending weekends in New York and weekdays at Aberdeen. The Vietnam War was in full swing, though, and Englehart realized he felt unable to support it. He was honorably discharged as a conscientious objector that fall.Career
Marvel Comics
Englehart's first work in comics was on a 10-page story by writer Denny O'Neil in Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror comics magazine Vampirella #10. After briefly serving as a member of the Crusty Bunkers art team, Englehart started working as a full-time writer. He began with a co-writing credit, with Gardner Fox, on the six-page, Englehart-drawn "Retribution" in Warren's Eerie #35. Then, as Marvel editor Roy Thomas said in a 2007 interview, Englehart becameEnglehart said he had first done uncredited co-scripting on a number of stories:
This uncredited work included Friedrich's Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #97, Iron Man #45, and The Incredible Hulk vol. 2, #152, plus two romance comics stories and a Western tale. Englehart then wrote two romance stories under the pseudonym Anne Spencer, in Our Love #18 and My Love #19, and, under his own name, a standalone supernatural story in the anthology Journey into Mystery vol. 2, #1
During his first credited superhero work, on a series starring erstwhile X-Men member the Beast in Amazing Adventures vol. 2, #12–17, Englehart integrated the Patsy Walker character, the star of a teen romantic-comedy series, into the Marvel Universe alongside the company's superheroes. He and artist Sal Buscema launched The Defenders as an ongoing series in August 1972 and introduced the Valkyrie to the team in issue #4. Englehart has stated that he added the Valkyrie to the Defenders "to provide some texture to the group."
He wrote The Avengers from issue #105 to #152. During his time on that title, he wrote several major storylines including "The Avengers Defenders War" in issues #115–118, crossing over into The Defenders #8–11 ; "The Celestial Madonna" in #129–135 and Giant-Size Avengers #2–4 ; and "The Serpent Crown" in #141–144 and #147–149.
In the fall of 1972, Englehart and writers Gerry Conway and Len Wein crafted a metafictional unofficial crossover spanning titles from both major comics companies. Each comic featured Englehart, Conway, and Wein, as well as Wein's first wife Glynis, interacting with Marvel or DC characters at the Rutland Halloween Parade in Rutland, Vermont. The story began in Amazing Adventures #16, continued in Justice League of America #103, and concluded in Thor #207. As Englehart explained in 2010, "It certainly seemed like a radical concept and we knew that we had to be subtle and each story had to stand on its own, but we really worked it out. It's really worthwhile to read those stories back to back to back — it didn't matter to us that one was at DC and two were at Marvel — I think it was us being creative, thinking what would be really cool to do."
Englehart had a run on Doctor Strange, in which Strange's mentor, the Ancient One, died and Strange became the new Sorcerer Supreme. Englehart and Brunner, audaciously, also created a multi-issue storyline in which a sorcerer named Sise-Neg goes back through history, collecting all magical energies, until he reaches the beginning of the universe, becomes all-powerful and creates it anew, leaving Strange to wonder whether this was, paradoxically, the original creation. Editor-in-chief Stan Lee, seeing the issue after publication, ordered Englehart and Brunner to print a retraction saying this was not God but a god, so as to avoid offending religious readers. The writer and artist concocted a fake letter from a fictitious minister praising the story, and mailed it to Marvel from Texas; Marvel unwittingly printed the letter, and dropped the retraction order. Englehart's Doctor Strange #14 featured a crossover story with The Tomb of Dracula #44, another series which was being drawn by Gene Colan at the time. In Englehart's final story for the series, he sent Dr. Strange back in time to meet Benjamin Franklin.
Describing that time, Englehart said in 1998,
Englehart and artist Starlin co-created the character Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu, though they only worked on the early issues of the series. Englehart reconciled the existence of Captain America and sidekick Bucky in Marvel's 1950s precursor, Atlas Comics, an anomaly that had been ignored since Captain America's 1964 reintroduction to Marvel presented him as having been in suspended animation since 1945. Englehart's newly retconned history stated that the 1950s Captain America and Bucky had been different characters from the ones who had debuted in the 1940s. This was followed by an extended storyline of Steve Rogers becoming so profoundly disillusioned with the United States that he temporarily abandoned his Captain America identity to become Nomad until he decided to refocus his purpose as the defender of America's ideals, not necessarily its government. The Englehart/Sal Buscema run on the Captain America title saw the series become one of Marvel's top-sellers. In 2010, Comics Bulletin ranked Englehart's work on Captain America, The Avengers, and Doctor Strange fourth, eighth, and ninth, respectively, on its list of the "Top 10 1970s Marvels".
In March 1976, Englehart had a falling-out with Marvel and left the company.
DC Comics
Englehart, in fact, planned to quit comics altogether and pursue novels, but DC Comics publisher Jenette Kahn persuaded him to come to DC. His only previous credited work for the company had been scripting the Batman story "Night of the Stalker!" in Detective Comics #439. "I said, 'Okay I'll fix Justice League of America|Justice LeagueHis run on Justice League of America included another unofficial crossover between DC and Marvel in issue #142 by reworking his character Mantis into the DC Universe as a character named "Willow". Other contributions to the series were crafting a new origin for the team and the induction of the character Hawkwoman into the team's membership.
Englehart temporarily left comics at this juncture, moving to Europe before his first issue of Detective was published. During this time he wrote a fantasy/occult novel, The Point Man, which was republished in 2010.
A 25-page Englehart-Rogers story featuring Madame Xanadu, originally commissioned for Doorway to Nightmare, sat in inventory for years before being published as the one-shot Madame Xanadu in 1981, in DC's first attempt at marketing comics specifically to the "direct market" of fans and collectors.
Return to Marvel
In 1983, Marvel's creator-owned imprint Epic Comics published Coyote, a series he had earlier created at Eclipse Comics with Rogers, in collaboration with artist Steve Leialoha. Among those he collaborated with on the title was a young Todd McFarlane, whom Englehart hired on the basis of McFarlane's Coyote art samples, which was McFarlane's first comic book work.Englehart returned to mainstream Marvel comics later that decade with stints on West Coast Avengers, the second Vision and the Scarlet Witch limited series, Silver Surfer, and Fantastic Four. Englehart was going to be the regular writer of Daredevil in 1986 but left after only one issue due to an editorial conflict.
Simultaneously, Englehart wrote DC Comics' Green Lantern, overseeing the title's name change to Green Lantern Corps. During that time he also wrote both the DC weekly crossover series Millennium and the first two issues of the spin-off The New Guardians. Issue #2 was notable for featuring the villain SnowFlame, a superpowered human who derived his powers from cocaine.