Steve Englehart

Doctor Strange #4 (October, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

As we previously noted in our post about Doctor Strange #2 back in May, in June, 1974, Marvel Comics provided fans of the Master of the Mystic Arts’ normally bimonthly series with the release of an extra issue.  But Doctor Strange #3 didn’t feature the third chapter of the continuing story begun by scripter/co-plotter Steve Englehart and penciller/co-plotter Frank Brunner back in the premiere issue of their hero’s newly revived solo title; rather, behind a new cover by Brunner (and also wrapped within a new 1 1/2-page framing sequence by Englehart, Brunner, and inker Alan Weiss), the comic offered an edited presentation of an old story that had originally run in Strange Tales #126 (Nov., 1964) and #127 (Dec., 1964).  That tale by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko was indisputably a stone classic, and as a latecomer who’d only arrived at the Doc Strange party in 1969, my younger self was happy to have it; still, even I was impatient to see the continuation of the Sorcerer Supreme’s current quest to escape the Orb of Agamotto, and rescue his beloved Clea from the sinister but self-righteous Silver Dagger, by the time Doctor Strange #4 finally showed up in the spinner rack.  Read More

Fantastic Four #150 (September, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

A week ago, we took a look at Avengers #127 (Sep., 1974), the first half of a two-part crossover story set to conclude in the comic book that’s the main subject of the present post.  But while Fantastic Four #150 does in fact pick up immediately from the cliffhanger ending that closed out its predecessor, we’re going to be taking a somewhat circuitous route today to get to the splash page of “Ultron-7:He’ll Rule the World!”.  Why?  Well, as regular readers of this blog will surely recall, our Avengers #127 post promised that this follow-up would provide an explanation for that issue’s depiction of a happily reunited Reed and Sue Richards, who’d been very much on the outs the last time we’d encountered them in this space.  So that’s where we’ll begin.  Read More

Avengers #127 (September, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Following their close-shave victory over the mad Titan Thanos in Avengers #125 and Captain Marvel #33, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes barely got a breather before they were beset by the newly teamed super-villains Klaw and Solarr in Avengers #126.  This was a one-off story, and frankly not one of the Assemblers’ most memorable adventures — although it did mark a couple of significant changes in the team’s active roster worth noting before we proceed to the main topic of today’s post.

The most obvious and expected one of these was the departure of Captain America, who, after all, had just renounced his costumed identity over in issue #176 of his own series — a series which, like Avengers, was written by Steve Englehart.  But the leave-taking of the Black Panther was arguably just as necessary, and probably overdue.  Ever since the second installment of T’Challa’s new solo feature, published in Jungle Action #6 almost a year earlier, writer Don McGregor and his artistic collaborators (primarily Rich Buckler, Gil Kane, and Billy Graham) had been chronicling a dense, ambitious, multi-part epic, “Panther’s Rage”, which took place entirely within the hero’s African kingdom of Wakanda.  After a time, it simply stretched reader credulity to the breaking point to have the Panther continue to appear every month with the New York-based Avengers — especially since it seemed unlikely that McGregor’s storyline was going to be wrapping up any time soon.  (For the record, the final full chapter of the epic would see print just over a year later, in Jungle Action #17, with an “Epilogue” following two months later in #18; alas, your humble blogger didn’t have the good sense to pick up this run of comics back in the day, so you won’t be reading too much more about “Panther’s Rage” on this blog, regretfully.)  Read More

Captain Marvel #34 (September, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

So, how do you follow up a grand, multi-issue crossover superhero epic in which your protagonist and his allies have just barely managed to eke out a win against an insane god in time to save the universe?

If you’re Captain Marvel plotter, penciller, and colorist (maybe we should just go with auteur?) Jim Starlin, you opt for moving straight into a new multi-issue storyline.  Though surely no one will begrudge you taking a few pages at the top of the new narrative’s premiere installment to wrap up a few loose ends, and otherwise provide a nice coda for the tale you’ve been telling for the past nineteen months or so…  Read More

Master of Kung Fu #19 (August, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Back in January, we took a look at Master of Kung Fu #17, a comic which presented the third installment of Marvel Comics’ first ongoing martial arts feature (albeit only the first one under that title, as the two previous episodes had seen print as Special Marvel Edition #15 and #16).  That third installment was also the last to involve artist Jim Starlin, who had been instrumental in conceiving and developing the feature with writer Steve Englehart (although the idea of making the strip’s hero, Shang-Chi, the son of the famous fictional villain Fu Manchu came from Marvel’s editor-in-chief, Roy Thomas).  Read More

Doctor Strange #2 (August, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Behind a very nice (if somewhat misleading — we’ll get to why a bit later) cover pencilled, inked, and colored by Frank Brunner, the second issue of the newly revived Doctor Strange title picks up where the first one left off.  In other words, Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme is still dead.

Oh, all right.  Nearly dead.  Having been stabbed in the back with a silver dagger wielded by a brand-new villain named, um, Silver Dagger, our mortally wounded hero has postponed his otherwise inevitable demise by entering the Orb of Agamotto.  Unable to return the way he came, he’s presently on a journey to the center of the Orb, in hopes of finding an exit from its mystical confines before his body and soul succumb to its native unreality; of course, even if he succeeds, he’s still got the whole “mortally wounded” thing to deal with.  Yes, it’s quite the sticky wicket.  Read More

Captain America #176 (August, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In his 2016 introduction to Marvel Masterworks — Captain America, Vol. 9, Steve Englehart refers to the cover John Romita produced for the subject of today’s post as “iconic”.  That’s become a rather overused word in today’s culture, I grant you; all the same, I find it hard to disagree with him.  For this grizzled old fan, it’s virtually impossible to think about this particular era of Captain America comics without the image shown above leaping immediately to mind — and that’s close enough to iconic for the word to fit, at least in my book.  Read More

Captain Marvel #33 (July, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Behind a cover both pencilled and inked by Jim Starlin (his first such since coming on board the Captain Marvel title with issue #25), this issue featured the conclusion of the epic “Thanos War” storyline that the creator had inaugurated a year and a half earlier with the 55th issue of Iron Man, and which had since woven through the previous eight issues of Captain Marvel itself, while also spilling over briefly into Marvel Feature, Daredevil, and Avengers.  Read More

Avengers #125 (July, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

I suppose that Ron Wilson and John Romita’s cover for this issue of Avengers might be taken as misleading by some readers, since, as we’ll soon see, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes never directly confront Thanos himself anywhere within its pages (indeed, the Mad Titan only puts in a personal appearance on a couple of them).  I’m pretty sure, however, that that fact didn’t bother my sixteen-year-old self very much (if at all) when I first read this comic back in April, 1974; after all, the story is unquestionably a part of the “Thanos War” saga that had been being told by artist-writer Jim Starlin and others for the last year and a half, mostly (though not entirely) in the pages of Captain Marvel.  If you took Avengers #125’s cover as “symbolic” of our heroes’ struggle against that epic’s Big Bad, as I was happy to do, you’d have to admit it was pretty much on the money.  Read More

Defenders #14 (July, 1974)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

When we last left the Defenders, back in September, the Defenders themselves were, well, leaving.  Most of them, anyway.  As was the writer who’d been chronicling their adventures since they’d graduated from Marvel Feature into their own title some sixteen months earlier: Steve Englehart.

Just in case you missed it, Englehart had concluded his double-title, multi-issue crossover epic, the Avengers/Defenders War (or, if you prefer, the Quest for the Black Knight’s Soul) in Defenders #11 with a scene that saw four of the six heroes who’d carried the banner of the junior team in that classic match-up — the Hulk, the Sub-Mariner, the Silver Surfer, and even raw recruit Hawkeye — departing to pursue other interests.  That left only de facto team leader Doctor Strange, as well as the Valkyrie (who had nowhere else to go, really) on hand to say farewell from the window of the Sorcerer Supreme’s Sanctum Sanctorum — and also left incoming new regular writer Len Wein with the challenge either of contriving a way to bring some or all of the wayward members back, or of quickly  introducing new members to the mix.  (Or of having Doc and Val face down the menace of Xemnu the Titan all on their own, which I don’t think anyone expected — or especially wanted, for that matter — to see happen.)  As we’ll soon discover, he ended up employing a combination of those first two strategies… although it would take several issues for that process to be complete.  Read More