Steve Englehart – Wis[s]e Words

That time Englehart was Byrned

Published on June 27, 2016Leave a comment

Byrned -- from WCA 51

Andrew Weiss is asked is there “A hated story or story line you like?” and answers with John Byrne’s run on West Coast Avengers

Without trying to defend that nonsense (because, honestly, I can’t), I will say it regrettably overshadows an fairly entertaining and mildly innovative run of comics. For starters, it was John Byrne’s return to Marvel after a three year stint at the Distinguished Competition. The significance of that might be lost on kids born after 1980 or so, but for my demographic peers it was a Big Deal. Our memories of his X-Men and Fantastic Four and Captain America work was recent enough to give Ol’ Crankypants another chance.

Byrne’s run happened just as I was branching out from reading Dutch translations of Marvel series to the originals, as the local comic shop had finally started to carry them. First priority lay of course with all the series that had not been translated and WCA was one of them. For a noob like me, Byrne’s dynamism and willingness to shake up the status quo was great, even if I didn’t like what he was doing to the Scarlet Witch, who already was a favourite of mine. It was only later, when I’d more context to place his stories in that it became clear all his change was for the negative.

Byrned -- from WCA 56

And it was only when I read an angry open letter Steve Englehart had send to Amazing Heroes that I realised that was probably deliberate. Byrne has always had a reputation for trashing everything he didn’t like in series he took over, prefering to strip continuity back to his own view of what Lee and Kirby did, rather than build on the work of other, lesser writers. As far back as 1982, when Byrne had only just started his Fantastic Four run, you had Len Wein and Marv Wolfman complaining about the changes Byrne made. In an interview for The Fantastic Four Chronicles special put out by Fantaco, Len Wein wrote: “I muchly resent what John is doing, I resent his implication that everything in the past 20 years hasn’t happened, that it’s still 1964.” Now on The Fantastic Four, Byrne created as much as he broke down, but on West Coast Avengers it was different. True, he brought back the original Human Torch and remade Hank Pym, Failed Superhero into Jump Suit Battle Scientist Hanky Pym, which was rather cool, but apart from that:

Byrned -- from WCA 44

Tigra reverted to a cat like state
Master Pandemonium, from independent villain to lackey of Mephisto
The Vision went from a crying android into an emotionless, “logical” Data clone
Vison got a new, fugly piss yellow costume
Scarlet Witch went insane and joined Magneto for a bit
Scarlet Witch went insane and molested Wonderman
Wonderman meanwhile hat the hots for the Witch
The Vision and Scarlet Witch’s babies? Never existed, just shards of the soul of Mephisto

Byrne started his run with issue 42 and left with 57 and from begin to end he set out to systematically demolish everything that Englehart had done with the Vision & Scarlet Witch. Personalities destroyed, marriage demolished, their kids retconned out of existence, etc. It’s hard not to see that as a deliberate vendetta against Englehart, especially in the light of the troubles he’d later ran into on his other two titles under DeFalco as editor-in-chief. Rereading it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth, seeing the creations of a writer who surely deserved better be torn down so brutally.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 50: Essential Captain America Vol. 04

Published on October 30, 2010

cover of Captain America Vol. 04

Essential Captain America Vol. 04
Steve Englehart, Sal Buscema, Frank Robbins and friends
Reprints: Captain Amercia #157-186 (January 1973 – June 1975)
Get this for: Englehart gives Cap a wakeup call — four stars

And so I come to the end of my little experiment of reading fifty Essentials in fifty days. It’s not always been a pleasure to read these collections and review them, but I thought to end the series on a high note. Essential Captain America Vol. 04 continues Steve Englehart’s run on the series and includes his most famous Captain America story as well. This is a run that has been often refered to since, especially the Secret Empire saga, both inside Captain America itself and in other Marvel titles, but not one I had read before.

Reading such highly regarded but possibly dated stories is always a bit of a crapshoot — will their reputation be validated or turn out to be overblown. For the stories collected here the verdict is mixed, as there are a couple of duds mixed in with the obvious classics. The worst being the four part Deadly Nightshade/Yellow Claw series in #164-167. The Yellow Claw — Marvel’s version of Fu Manchu before they got the real thing — is an embarassing yellow peril cliche here, while Nightshade is a blaxploitation cliche equally cringe worthy. That’s the low point of the collection, more than balanced out by the good stuff.

Now until Steve Englehart started writing him, Captain America was always a straight law ‘n order guy, on the side of the establishment, comfortable being a freelance agent for SHIELD. Previous writers, including Stan Lee had allowed some doubt to seep in, but it was only under Englehart that Cap being less and less comfortable with being a government man and it’s in this collection that things come to a boil. Considering when these issues were written, during the height of the Watergate scandals and the mistrust in government in America in general, it’s not surprising that some of this echoes in Captain America, but Englehart does much more than that.

In his most famous story, the Secret Empire saga, Englehart makes Cap the victim of an old adversary’s unusual revenge, as the ad writer turned supervillain the Viper uses his connections on Madison Avenue to start a campaign against Captain America, through the Committee to Regain America’s Principles. That turns out to only be the start of the conspiracy against him, as he’s framed for murdering another old villain, the Tumbler, then taken into arrest by Moonstone, the Committee’s new superhero and replacement for Cap. Things only get worse when he is forced to escape prison, then helped by his partner the Falcon goes looking for evidence to clear his name, as they run into the X-Men, who themselves are looking for why mutants are disappearing.

Their problems turn out to be related of course, as the Secret Empire turns out to be behind both, with the disappeared mutants being used to power their machinery. (All this happened when the X-Men no longer had their own title by the way, which is why they kept on wandering through titles like Captain America and The Avengers.) Cap and the Falcon manage to infiltrate the Empire’s headquarters just as they launch their assault on the White House, the plan being to “defeat” Moonstone as the defender of America and then use their agents in place all over the country to launch a coup. When Captain America and the Falcon foils these plans, the Secret Empire’s number one flees into the White House and commits suicide, after Cap pulls off his mask and looked in shock at the not seen by us person in “high political office”. So shocked he is, he gives up being Captain America the next issue, but the identity of the Secret Empire’s leader is never revealed.

It’s Nixon of course.

It’s never been officially confirmed, but who else could it have been to have this effect, Henry Kissinger? But Marvel could of course never say this outright; imagine the outrage by the seventies’ teaparty equivalents. A pivotal moment in Captain America’s development, something subsequent writers would come back to again and again. It’s not just Cap’s crisis of faith and rejection of his identity that e.g. Mark Gruenwald and Mark Waid would come back to, but also the resolution of it, Cap’s realisation that he’s not a symbol of the US government, but of the American Dream. Corny perhaps, but Englehart did hit on something real, something that was always true about Captain America. He never was a jingoistic symbol of my country right or wrong, but somebody who punched out Hitler on the cover of his first issue a year before America joined World War II. He’s everything that’s right about America, while never closing his eyes to what’s wrong with the country either.

In the aftermath, Englehart keeps Captain America out of uniform for no less than seven issues, with only the Falcon there to provide superhero action against old X-Men villain Lucifer for the first two issues, before Cap returns as the Nomad to take on the renewed Serpent Squad. This is another classic story I’d so far only encountered in synopsis, as the Serpent Squad kidnaps the president of Roxxon Oil, subject him to the ancient evil magic of the socalled Serpent Crown, then use him to get to an experimental oil platform which they want to use to raise Lemuria from the ocean floor. I’ve always been a sucker for Serpent Crown stories, ever since I first came across it in a Marvel Team-up story.

When Captain America finally returns as himself, it’s to take on his worst enemy, the Red Skull. It’s a decent enough story, but ends on an absolute downer, as it’s revealed that the Falcon, Sam Wilson, is in fact a career criminal from L.A. called Snap Wilson, brainwashed by the Red Skull when the Skull still possesed the Cosmic Cube to use as a hidden weapon against Captain America. It’s a wretched bit of writing that’s luckily been retconned since.

Let’s end this with a few words about the art. Most of it is provided by Sal Buscema, doing his usual dependable job, nothing spectacular but good enough. At the end though Frank Robbins replaces him and, well, it’s not good at all. The weird musculature he gives his characters and strange positions he draws them in, impossible for any real person, the overall “offbrand” effect of his art, it’s awful. Robbins was always more a newspaper strip cartoonist than somebody comfortable doing superhero comics and he certainly should not be judged by his work here, but boy is he a disappointment whenever he’s used on a Marvel title…

Conclusion? A great volume to end this series with. Tune in tomorrow for an epilogue/dissection of this whole mad project.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 46: Essential Silver Surfer Vol. 02

Published on October 26, 2010

cover of Essential Silver Surfer Vol. 02

Essential Silver Surfer Vol. 02
Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers, Joe Staton, Ron Lim and friends
Reprints: Silver Surfer Vol. 2 #1, Silver Surfer v3 #1-18, Annual 1
Get this for: the Silver Surfer is back in space — three stars

From one classic Steve Englehart series to another, not quite as classic one. The Silver Surver’s second series would be quite different from the original Stan Lee & John Buscema one, if only because Englehart freed him from his imprisonment at Earth in the very first issue. But the main difference was best summed up in an Amazing Heroes observation, that whenever in his original series the Surfer would wax philosophically about man’s inhumanity to man, in his new series he waxes hornily about Shalla Ball, Nova or Mantis…. Englehart made the Surfer more lighthearted, more cosmic than he had been in his old series, while, as the mention of Mantis suggests, also revisiting his own personal obsessions. Joined by his old Batman partner Marshall Rogers on the art, the 1987 Silver Surfer series is quite different from its 1968 predecessor and to me much more interesting.

But Essential Silver Surfer Vol. 02 does not quite start there. While sensibly not including the myriad guest appearances of the Surfer over the years, this volume does start with two stories featuring the old Surfer: a short story from Epic Illustrated and the Stan Lee scripted, John Byrne plotted and pencilled 1982 Silver Surfer one shot. The latter saw Reed Richards freeing the Surfer from his cosmic imprisonement on Earth, return to Zenn-La and his old love Shalla Ball, only to discover his planet almost destroyed and Shalla Ball a prisoner of Mephisto. He manages to free Shalla Ball and revitalise Zenn-La, but at the cost of his freedom, yet again. It’s a good story, but typical of everything that made the original series a failure in the end: the Surfer doesn’t work on Earth.

Englehart understood that and also understood the potential of having a proper space based series, something not really seen at Marvel before. In issue one he got the Surfer off Earth and free of Galactus, in issue two he cut his ties to Zenn-La and Shalla Ball and by issue three he had reintroduced Mantis, seen for the first time since she became the Celestial Madonna, as well as set up the storylines that would drive the series for its first year and beyond. Building on the loss of the Skrulls’ shape-shifting power established in the 1985 Avengers and Fantastic Four annuals, Englehart has the Skrull empire descend in chaos, with one of the pretenders of the throne launching the second Kree-Skrull War. Meanwhile the Elders of the Universe are gunning for the Surfer, wanting to keep him from helping Galactus, who they wanted to kill.

Why they wanted to kill him does not become clear until a few more issues along, as Englehart also draws in the Supreme Intelligence of the Kree and the Infinity Gems, here still called the Soul Gems, into the Elders’ plot. This seems to have run out of steam with #109, as Galactus eats five of the Elders while the other three are drawn into a black hole, but this turns out to be premature. In issue fifteen Ron Lim replaces Marshall Rogers and Joe Staton on the art, while Sue and Reed Richards are recruited by the Surfer to help Galactus recover from his “cosmic indigestion” caused by the Elders of the Universe he ate…

Ron Lim is well suited to the Silver Surfer, which was his breakthrough series as well. He has a good style for cosmic battles and I’ve always liked his art, buff as it is. Not that Marshall Rogers was bad, with his more gracious, elegant style. Inbetween them is Joe Staton, who cut his cosmic teeth on Green Lantern, including a long run with Englehart. I like his art, but not here.

Essential Silver Surfer Vol. 02 ends with a curiosity, an issue of Marvel Fanfare that published what was going to be the first issue of a twelve issue, double sized Silver Surfer limited series, before that metamorphed into a ongoing series. That limited series was also going to be written by Englehart, but with art by John Buscema and with the Surfer left stranded on Earth, but still meeting with Mantis and getting drawn in cosmic developments. It’s an interesting view of what could have been, but fortunately never came to pass.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 45: Essential Avengers Vol. 06

Published on October 25, 2010

cover of Essential Avengers Vol. 06

Essential Avengers Vol. 06
Steve Englehart, Sal Buscema, David Cockrum and friends
Reprints: AVengers #120-140, Giant-Size #1-4, Fantastic Four #150 Captain Marvel #33 (February 1974- October 1975)
Get this for: the Celestial Madonna — four stars

It’s probably a bit dim of me to only notice it now, but The Avengers after Lee had left was really a writer’s comic, wasn’t it? Sure, we remember Neal Adams doing the Kree-Skrull wars, or those couple of issues Barry Smith did, or John Buscema’s work, but if you look at it honestly The Avengers for long stretches at a time made do with good enough artists, all its pizzaz in its stories. In this volume, you got people like Rick Buckler, Bob Brown and Sal Buscema on the art, all doing a reasonable job, but never doing anything that stops you in your tracks. The writing on the other hand, which is all Steve Englehart (with some influence from Roy Thomas as editor), is doing its utmost to amaze and dazzle you. If it doesn’t quite succeed, this is not entirely its own fault, but as much due to the years that have passed since these stories were originally published. The style in which they were written has dated, not badly, but enough that they lose some of their impact. It feels overwritten, which was always Englehart’s weakness anyway, as it was of that whole generation of Stan Lee and Roy Thomas influenced Marvel writers.

Steve Englehart already got started on the epic stories in the previous collection, but here he goes all-out. Issue 129 to 135 and including Giant-Size Avengers #3-4 are one continuing story, the seeds of which were already sown half a dozen issues before. It is of course the saga of the Celestial Madonna, starring the Englehart created Mantis and featuring the Avengers, Kang, Rama Tut, Immortus, a host of long dead heroes and villains as the Legion of the Unliving, the Kree and their origin, the origin of the Vision and how he was related to the original Human Torch, why the Kree-Skrull war got started, the death of the Swordsman and the return of Hawkeye, who build the Blue Area on the Moon, the menace of Dormammu and the weddings of Mantis and the Swordsman, reanimated by an alien plantlike intelligence as well as the wedding of the Vision and the Scarlet Witch.

It’s a mess of a story, with a great many disparate elements dragged into it, but Englehart ties it all together beautifully. I had never read it before, knew about it, but never realised how much of what Englehart did here would influence The Avengers for decades to come. Englehart created the definitive Kang, clarified his relationship with Rama Tut and tied in old Avengers villain Immortus as well. He also provided a proper origin for the Vision, which must have been influenced by Roy Thomas considering its use of the original Human Torch, tying up a lot of old plot threads from The Fantastic Four and The Avengers and creating a new mess for others to “improve on”, or not. He also tied in the Avengers with wider Marvel mythology, with his use of the Kree and Skrulls as well as that mysterious blue area on the Moon that the Fantastic Four had found years ago.

On the whole The Avengers had never been so much at the heart of the Marvel Universe as under Englehart, participating in the Thanos War in a crossover with Captain Marvel, then crossing over with The Fantastic Four for the wedding of Crystal and Quicksilver. There’s also, in the last few issues collected here, the coming of the Beast to the Avengers, fresh from his own solo adventures and with plotlines continued from there. It’s the sort of continuity I grew up with from Marvel and the sort I like best, where there is always evidence of a wider universe beyond The Avengers, but out and out crossovers are rare and don’t last more than one or two issues.

As said, the art here is servicable to good, but you need to read this for the writing. Englehart would go on to do better work on other titles since he wrote the Celestial Madonna Saga, but this is perhaps his first great work.

Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 43: Essential Doctor Strange Vol. 03

Published on October 23, 2010

cover of Doctor Strange Vol. 03

Essential Doctor Strange Vol. 03
Steve Englehart, Marv Wolfman, Jim Starlin, Frank Brunner, Gene Colan and friends
Reprints: Dr Strange #1-29, Annual 1 and Tomb of Dracula #44-45 (June 1974- June 1978)
Get this for: Englehart and co trying to recapture the Ditko magic — three stars

I think it’s fair to say that every writer on Doctor Strange has tried to get out from under the shadow of Steve Ditko. In the first volume of
Essential Doctor Strange they did not succeed, but perhaps the writers in the third volume will fare better. They’re certainly not the least writers: Steve Englehart, Marv Wolfman, Jim Starlin and Roger Stern all have a go at Doctor Strange here.

Of the writers featured here, Englehart has the best chances. He was after all responsible for getting Dr Strange his own series again, together with Frank Brunner, through their work on Marvel Premiere. He starts strong, introducing Silver Dagger, a Catholic cardinal turned magician hunter, who in the first issue kills Doctor Strange and kidnaps Clea, his lover and disciple. Strange gets better of course, but it takes him five issues to put Silver Dagger away. In the sixth issue Gene Colan returns on the art duties, as do longtime Strange villains Umar and Dormammu in a plot to not only restore the latter one’s powers, but to make him master of Earth. In the end he’s only defeated by the powers of Gaea and every living creature on Earth — including the people reading the story…

The threats only get bigger for poor old Doctor Strange, having to face off against Eternity next for the fate of the Earth, failing to stop the destruction of the world in #12, only for it to be recreated the next issue. Everybody literally died that time, but was reborn a second time, something that would later in the volume be retconned by Marv Wolfman. It’s not the last time the universe is seemingly destroyed only to be recreated again — Wolfman does it as well, as does Jim Starlin in his Creators saga. This is no coincidence, as each writer has their own cosmic epic story to tell and what is more epic than the end of everything and only Doctor Strange remaining to put things right?

Yet lesser threats can work as well, as the crossover with Tomb of Dracula shows. When Strange’s servant Wong is bit and killed by Dracula, Doctor Strange goes looking for revenge only to fall victim to the vampire himself. He manages to escape in his astral body, but still has a hard time getting both himself and Wong cured and fails in destroying Dracula. After that it’s back to the big, existential menaces however, as Doc fights Satan, timetravels through America’s colonial history in honor of the bicentennial and confronts the menace of the Quadriverse and the Creators saga.

Reading this volume in one setting, rather than having read the individual issues spread out over four years, it’s not hard to see some patterns emerging — it’s not just the periodical destruction and recreation of the universe. There’s also the frequent depowering of Doctor Strange, as each writer finds reasons why he cannot use his magic this time. It is of course always difficult to write an almost omnipotent character like Doc Strange, who could end most threats with a handy spell or two. So either the villains need a power up or Strange needs a power down. Personally I feel either is a lazy choice and that’s the difference with the Lee/Ditko Doctor Strange; they didn’t take the easy way out. It takes effort and skill to keep Strange’s powers consistent and not cheat in getting him out of plot holes.

Another common plot device here is seeing Doc Strange being killed only to discover later that he managed to flee his body first in his astral form. I’ve got fewer problems with this, it is one of his established powers after all, but when used to much it can again be a crutch. The same goes for the eye of Agamotto, which is less used here however.

Frank Brunner starts out as the artist here and he’s is well suited to the title, as are his main succesors, Gene Colan, Jim Starlin, Ruby Nebres and Tom Sutton. Each of those artists is on the atmospheric end of the scale rather than the realistic, especially Colan. Lovely work by all of them and gorgeous to look at, even if some of it is hampered by the transition to black and white, as is the case with the P. Craig Russel drawn annual.

Some good tries, but the Ditko Doctor Strange is not equalled here.