Steve Englehart

Captain America #182 (February, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The cover of Captain America #182 — drawn by Ron Wilson and Frank Giacoia (with probable touch-ups by John Romita) — offered few, if any, hints of major surprises to be found within its pages.  Here’s Steve Rogers in his new heroic identity of Nomad, continuing his ongoing battle against the Serpent Squad, with a symbolic (and huge) representation of his former (and, of course, much better-known) costumed alter ego looming in the background.  Pretty much what anyone who’d been following this title for the past several months would expect.

But upon turning to the issue’s opening splash page, we readers of November, 1974, learned that changes had indeed come to Captain America…  Read More

Marvel Two-in-One #7 (January, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As of October, 1974, Steve Gerber had been the writer on Marvel Two-in-One for a year — ever since the series teaming the Fantastic Four’s Thing with a rotating cast of co-stars had jumped from its previous home in Marvel Feature to its own brand-new title, in fact.  Intriguingly (though perhaps also understandably), with the whole Marvel Universe to play with, Gerber had initially opted to choose Benjamin J. Grimm’s partners in adventuring from environs he already knew well — that is, from other series he was already writing.  So it was that in MTiO #1, the Thing had come face-to-face with his half-namesake, the Man-Thing; next, in issue #2 he’d first fought and then joined forces with the Sub-Mariner; and then, in #3, he’d teamed up with Daredevil — a trio of co-stars who were all also headliners in other Gerber titles.  Read More

Captain America #181 (January, 1975)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last month, in our post about Captain America #180, we covered the debut of the former Captain America, Steve Rogers, in his brand-new superheroic identity of the Nomad.  As regular readers will hopefully recall, the Nomad’s initial outing was somewhat less than completely auspicious, as he tripped over his own cape and failed to prevent the kidnapping of the president of Roxxon Oil by the new and improved Serpent Squad.  Of course, that misstep ultimately did nothing to discourage or deter our hero, who immediately ditched the offending costume piece with no regrets, vowing as he did so that the Squad would get what was coming to them the next time they met — completely unaware that the group’s roster was about to be enhanced by the addition of the evil Warlord Krang of Atlantis, who came bearing the ancient, sorcerous Serpent Crown of Lemuria, no less. Read More

Doctor Strange #5 (December, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As regular readers will hopefully recall from our Doctor Strange #4 post of two months ago, the final pages of that issue saw the Sorcerer Supreme defeat Death only after surrendering to it (yeah, it was kind of complicated), thus setting the stage for Doc to return from the Lewis Carroll-inspired realm of unreality to which he’d been exiled ever since issue #1 — and thence to bring the beatdown to his enemy Silver Dagger, who’d been holding our hero’s lover, Clea, a prisoner through that whole time.

This long-anticipated development is quite clearly heralded on the present issue’s cover by artist Frank Brunner… although when we turn past that cover to the story’s opening splash, we find that Brunner and his co-plotter, scripter Steve Englehart (along with inker Dick Giordano), are going to make us wait for Doc’s actual return for at least a couple of pages…  Read More

Captain America #180 (December, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Last month we took a look at Captain America #179, in which Steve Rogers’ former Avengers teammate Hawkeye — after spending most of the issue disguised as the presumably villainous Golden Archer — managed to convince him that just because he no longer wanted to wear the colors and bear the name of his country, that was no reason he couldn’t still live the life of a costumed hero.  Via the final page’s “next issue” blurb, we even got the name of Steve’s new secret identity-to-be: Nomad!

Now, thanks to issue #180’s cover (pencilled by Gil Kane, and inked by Mike Esposito and/or Frank Giacoia), we get our first glimpse of Nomad in costume — albeit in the form of a quasi-symbolic image that allows the artists to provide a shot of Steve in his more familiar red-white-and-blue togs as well.  Read More

Giant-Size Avengers #2 (November, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

For the most part, the comics that came out as part of Marvel’s “Giant-Size” line in 1974 and 1975 featured stories that, while generally understood to be in continuity with those in the regular-size titles, didn’t directly lead into and/or out of those books.  Such had been the case with Giant-Size Avengers #1 (Aug., 1974), a standalone that was written by Marvel’s editor-in-chief (and former Avengers scribe) Roy Thomas, rather than by the man who’d been authoring the monthly adventures of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes since August, 1972, Steve Englehart.  But with the second issue of the Avengers’ new quarterly vehicle, Englehart was given the reins — and he decided to treat the book as an extra, if plus-sized, issue of the monthly title.

Of course, that didn’t mean that the contents of the “Giant-Size” version of the series shouldn’t be special.  And with Giant-Size Avengers #2, Englehart and his artistic collaborators definitely delivered on that idea, giving readers a twenty-nine page epic that stands to this day as one of the all-time Avengers classics — perhaps even, as writer Kurt Busiek (author of more than a few great Avengers yarns of his own) said in 2014, “the uncontested, anyone-who-says-otherwise-is-sadly-mistaken best single issue of AVENGERS”.  Read More

Savage Sword of Conan #2 (October, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In 1974, star comics artist Neal Adams had largely turned away from pencilling comic book stories.  But he did keep his hand in in the field in various ways, such as by turning out painted covers for Marvel Comics’ black-and-white magazine line on a fairly regular basis.  The second issue of Marvel’s new Savage Sword of Conan title is graced by one such; like most of the covers produced for the b&w line, by whichever artist, it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with the magazine’s specific contents.  But I’m sure I didn’t complain when I first picked this book up half a century ago, and I doubt many other readers did, either.

Turning past that cover to the issue’s double-page frontispiece/table of contents, we’re greeted by the first published professional work of a young artist who was as unknown in August, 1974 as Adams was famous:

  Read More

Avengers #129 (November, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

When we last saw the Avengers, it was at the end of Fantastic Four #150 — the second half of a crossover with Avengers #127 in which both of Marvel’s premiere super-teams came together in the Great Refuge of the Inhumans to celebrate the wedding of the one-time FFer Crystal to the inactive Avenger Quicksilver.

The next issue of Avengers, #128, picked up directly from that two-parter’s events, as behind a cover by Gil Kane and John Romita, writer Steve Englehart and artists Sal Buscema and Joe Staton opened with a scene of the Avengers and Fantastic Four arriving together back in New York, via Avengers quintet.  (Just why the two groups were now traveling together, when Avengers #127 had clearly established that they’d made the journey to Attilan separately, was never explained.  Maybe the FF lent their own ship to the newlyweds for their honeymoon?) Read More

Captain America #179 (November, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Cover art by John Romita.

Cover art by Ron Wilson, Frank Giacoia, and John Romita (?).

At the conclusion of the last issue of Captain America we looked at on this blog, the classic #176, our star-spangled hero, reeling from the revelations about the United States government that had emerged in the wake of the Watergate scandal downfall of the Secret Empire, decided to renounce his costumed identity — “forever!”  As we discussed briefly in the closing paragraphs of our post about that comic, Steve Rogers’ decision held firm throughout the next two issues, as his former partner, Sam Wilson (aka the Falcon), was forced to go up alone against Lucifer — a relatively obscure antagonist of the X-Men who’d upped his game by splitting himself in two.  The Falcon ultimately triumphed over the villain(s), though not without a sudden, spur-of-the-last-moment intervention from Steve, who went into action wearing a ski-mask and slinging a garbage-can lid in lieu of a shield — an action that Sam, having been earlier rebuffed by Steve when he asked him to reconsider his decision to give up being Captain America, wasn’t thrilled about…  Read More