Steve Englehart

Defenders #11 (December, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

The primary subject of today’s post, Defenders #11, is the official conclusion of Marvel’s Avengers/Defenders War crossover event of summer, 1973 — though you’d be hard-pressed to find any evidence of that fact on the book’s otherwise very fine Sal Buscema cover.

Still, as the opening splash page clearly tells us, this is indeed “The 12th and final chapter of the greatest super-epic ever told!”  And surely writer Steve Englehart must know whereof he speaks.  Mustn’t he?  Read More

Avengers #118 (December, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

It’s September, and we’ve finally arrived at the climax of Marvel Comics’ pioneering crossover event of the summer of 1973, the Avengers/Defenders War.  Having realized at last that they share a common enemy, the superheroes of the two feuding teams have united to save the world.

So it’s fitting that, for the first time since the storyline began, the cover of this chapter gives us a group shot of multiple members from both teams — although artists Ron Wilson and John Romita have probably chosen wisely in not trying to cram all fourteen heroes, plus supervillains Dormammu and Loki, into a single shot.  Rather, they’ve opted to go with just nine, and it’s interesting to take note of who’s been included.  Unsurprisingly, every character starring in their own series — that’s Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Panther (in Jungle Action) from the Avengers, plus Sub-Mariner, Hulk, and Doctor Strange (in Marvel Premiere) from the Defenders — makes the cut.  But that still leaves two slots, and they’ve both gone to female characters — the Avengers’ Scarlet Witch and the Defenders’ Valkyrie — which serves to make the cover at least slightly less of a sausage fest.  Better luck next time, Silver Surfer, Vision, Hawkeye, Swordsman, and Mantis (the only shero who didn’t make the cover).

Still, if you’re hankering for a big group shot featuring all the heroes from both teams, no exceptions, then have no worries; Marvel’s got you covered on the book’s opening splash page:  Read More

Marvel Premiere #12 (November, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

In the summer of 1973, Marvel Comics decided to bring out an extra issue or two of a couple of their titles that normally came out only every two months.  I’m sure the thinking was that by doing so, they could capitalize on the fact of their mostly youthful audience having more time (and maybe more money) to spend on comic books while out of school, and you can’t really blame them.  But while the increase in frequency made all the sense in the world for a book like Defenders — which was then in the middle of a multi-issue, back-and-forth crossover with the always-monthly Avengers — it made somewhat less sense for the “Doctor Strange” solo vehicle, Marvel Premiere… if only because the publisher evidently got the idea for the “extra” issue too late to prepare a new story for it.

That would seem to be the simplest explanation for how, in the month of July, we got Marvel Premiere #11 — which, beneath a new cover by Frank Brunner, reprinted a couple of eight-page classics by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko that had originally appeared way back in Strange Tales #115 (Dec., 1963) and #117 (Feb., 1964), with the only new interior content being a three-page framing sequence by Brunner and writer Steve Englehart.  Hey, d’you think maybe Marvel was just trying to pry every dime they could out of faithful fans like your humble blogger?  Read More

Defenders #10 (November, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Today we continue our coverage of Marvel Comics’ groundbreaking crossover event of summer, 1973, the Avengers/Defenders War.  As you’ll recall from our post about Avengers #117 two weeks ago, the latest battle in the ongoing conflict between the super-teams ended without a clear winner or loser, as Captain America and the Sub-Mariner called a time-out to investigate their suspicions that the heroes were being played against each other by a malevolent third party (which was indeed absolutely the case).

But, as had been promised in no uncertain terms by Avengers #117’s end-of-issue “coming next” blurb — and which was proclaimed even more forcefully by Defenders #10’s John Romita cover — whatever “Breakthrough!” might be imminent wouldn’t arrive in time the stop the Mighty Thor and the Incredible Hulk from throwing down.  And that was a good thing, since if that match-up hadn’t come to fruition, sixteen-year-old me would have asked for my money back.  (Well, not really, since I was well aware the guy working the counter at the Tote-Sum would simply have looked at me like I was crazy if I pulled something like that.  But you know what I mean.)  As it was, however, I could just kick back and wait for writer Steve Englenart and artists Sal Buscema and Frank Bolle to bring on the brawlers…  Read More

Kull the Destroyer #11 (November, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

By August, 1973, Marvel Comics had been publishing comics about Robert E. Howard’s sword-and-sorcery hero King Kull for over two and a half years — or, to be more precise, for thirty-two months — but only had ten issues of Kull the Conqueror to show for it.  That record was in marked contrast to that of Howard’s better known barbarian protagonist, Conan, who’d made his American comic-book debut just five months before Kull’s, but who’d so far racked up thirty-one regular issues of his own title, plus a “King-Size” reprint special and two appearances in the black-and-white magazine Savage Tales, to boot.  But while from our contemporary perspective it may seem obvious that Kull of Atlantis — despite his having actually preceded Howard’s Conan of Cimmeria in terms of the chronology of their respective creations by Howard — was destined to always come in a distant second to his younger compatriot in terms of audience appeal, fifty years ago, the powers-that-were at Marvel — especially editor-in-chief (and Howard fan) Roy Thomas — had yet to receive that memo.  Read More

Avengers #117 (November, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Before we leap right into the latest installment of Marvel Comics’ crossover event of summer, 1973 , the Avengers/Defenders War, let’s pause to note how its cover represents yet a third approach to representing the event in the context of a single 20-cent comic book — a comic which Marvel would have been keen to have a prospective buyer pick up, even if they hadn’t bought the ongoing storyline’s two previous episodes.  To wit: while the cover of Avengers #116 had spotlighted only the three heroes actively engaging in battle within its pages (i.e., Vision, Scarlet Witch, and Silver Surfer), and that of Defenders #9 “symbolically” shoehorned the three original Defenders (i.e., Dr. Strange, Hulk, and Sub-Mariner) into a scene of Iron Man vs. former Avenger/current Defender Hawkeye, this John Romita-Mike Esposito number puts the focus on the two marquee combatants (i.e., Captain America and Sub-Mariner) while giving us a selection of other Avengers in the form of floating heads, as well as teasing us with a partially-seen guest star… while never using the words “Defender” or “Defenders” at all.  It certainly makes for a marked contrast with the covers of most later multi-title crossover events at both Marvel and its rival DC Comics, where the emphasis is on making sure that a prospective buyer knows that a particular issue is part of the event, and so a “must-buy” for anyone following/collecting it… versus trying to downplay the possibility of someone not buying the comic because they don’t have all the previous chapters.  Times sure have changed, amirite?  Read More

Defenders #9 (October, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

We’ve arrived at the second full-length installment in the epic Marvel Comics crossover known as “The Avengers/Defenders War”, and if you missed our post about the previous episode in Avengers #116, you might want to check that one out first, since we’re going to jump right back into the continuing narrative without worrying about a recap… pausing only long enough to make note of the fact that while the first installment’s cover by John Romita and Mike Esposito managed to convey the scope of the conflict while only depicting three heroes, this issue’s follow-up by Sal Buscema ups that number to five.  On the other hand, Hawkeye the Avenging Archer has been Hawkeye the Defending Archer for all of a minute, so it’s not hard to understand how Marvel might have thought that fans coming in even a little bit late would be confused to see an issue of Defenders that only cover-featured Hawkeye and Iron Man.

And now, with that observation made, it’s on with the show:  Read More

Avengers #116 (October, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

According to writer Steve Englehart, the multi-issue Marvel Comics crossover event most of us refer to as the Avengers/Defenders War (Englehart himself prefers to call it the Avengers/Defenders Clash, God bless ‘im) had its origins in his personal affection for the classic Marvel Annuals he’d enjoyed as a fan in the 1960s — epic, overstuffed extravaganzas like the very crashed wedding of Reed Richards and the Invisible Girl in Fantastic Four Annual #3 (1965), or the save-the-timeline battle between the “new” and the “old” Avengers in Avengers Annual #2 (Sep., 1968).  As the writer confided in his 2010 introduction to Marvel Masterworks — The Defenders, Vol. 2, “I have great memories of finding these gems and sitting down in the shade of a tree on a sunny summer’s day to read them.”  But in recent years, such summertime Annuals as Marvel had continued to produce were mere collections of reprints — nice enough if you didn’t already have those stories, many of which were already classics, but not something you could really get excited about in the same way you could the extra-length, brand-new, “event” stories featured by the Annuals in their heyday.  Read More

Marvel Premiere #10 (September, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Two months ago we covered Marvel Premiere #9, the inaugural issue of writer Steve Englehart and artist Frank Brunner’s celebrated run on Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts.  This time, we’ll be taking a look at that creative team’s second outing, one which may be considered almost as significant as the first, for at least three reasons.

The first is that this issue concluded the extended saga that had kicked off over a year earlier in Marvel Premiere #3, which had featured the first new full-length solo adventure of Dr. Strange since the cancellation of his title back in 1969.  The second is that after a couple of efforts from undeniably talented inkers whose styles nevertheless weren’t entirely harmonious with his own, Frank Brunner finally found the perfect embellisher(s) for his pencils on the series here, in the amorphous assortment of artists identified on MP #10’s opening splash page as “the Singing Sons of the Crusty Bunkers”:  Read More

Avengers #114 (August, 1973)

Posted on by Alan Stewart

Panel from Avengers #112 (Jun., 1973). Text by Steve Englehart; art by Don Heck and Frank Bolle.

As we covered in last month’s blog post about Avengers #113, writer Steve Englehart had introduced a mystery in the previous issue, #112, by briefly bringing onstage a brand-new character, Mantis, and her unnamed, only-seen-in-shadow companion.  About all we were told about the latter character, in either his first or his second blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance (in #113) was that he had a prior association with the series’ titular super-team, and that he had strong, less-than-positive opinions about a recently departed Avenger, Hawkeye.  Not a whole lot to go on, at least in the opinion of my fifteen-year-old self… though, to be honest, I probably didn’t give the matter a whole lot of thought at the time.  After all, there were plenty of other comic books to be read back in the spring of 1973, and a caption in #113 had promised us that the next issue would bring a solution to the puzzle of this mystery man’s identity.  So, I was content to wait to see what May would bring us.

As it turned out, when Avengers #114 was released, I wouldn’t even have to pull the issue all the way up out of the spinner rack to discover the answer to the two-month-old mystery, as the cover (probably by John Romita) prominently featured both Mantis and her shadowy beau — so much so, in fact, that the tops of the couple’s heads obscured some of the lower real estate of the book’s logo.  And if I had had a moment’s confusion in trying to place the purple-costumed, mustachioed gent dominating the cover’s left half (which I’m pretty sure I didn’t), the story title blurb at the bottom would have clued me in by the time I got the comic all the way out of the aforementioned spinner rack, by letting me know that Mantis’ mysterious amour was none other than… the Swordsman!  Read More