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September 28, 2005


Joe Casey Talks Steve Englehart

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In unpacking the influences on his current Godland series, Joe Casey writes about Steve Englehart's 1970s work on Marvel's Avengers. This is the run where Pat Harrington lookalike Swordsman shows up at headquarters with his hooker girlfriend, some dead people are fought, some pyramids are visited, some time-traveling is done, and eventually someone ends up marrying a sentient plant so that a new Jesus can be born.

Englehart was one of the more interesting mainstream writers of that period, mostly because he was so straightforward -- I can't imagine anyone mining his comics for their oddball potential (like you could do with Gerber or Wein). What you saw was pretty much what you got. Any weirdness to Englehart's comics seemed to come from the general strangeness of the time, and, well, the times were pretty damn strange. My guess is you could extend Casey's point about the superhero=everyman aspect to Marvel's silly cosmic epics to the fact that a lot of the material was written by decidedly non-out there figures.
 
posted 7:55 am PST | Permalink
 

 
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