Superman Through the Ages! Forum

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http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=6024

Wonderful to see an old comics great like Steve Englehart still working and still in business. Along with Stan Lee and Gardner Fox, possibly the greatest comics writer ever.



What a true shame. Englehart's STRANGERS was the only comic worth reading of the entire Malibu line. It proved Stainless Steve's still got it, just like back in the day. Cities in the clouds? Cancer infections coming to life? It was all brilliant, shining with imagination and heroes he treated as real people instead of as icons or marketing symbols.

It really bothers me to no end when individuals like Warren Ellis steal entire character concepts and make no effort to innovate or create original superheroes. I find his obvious theivery of the JLA in THE AUTHORITY particularly offensive and morally bankrupt. Worst of all, it does a real injustice to people like Steve Englehart, who took the time with STRANGERS to create original characters and original powers that we have never seen before. Someone once said that the hardest thing to do is to create a superhero with an original origin or superpower. Maybe, but that doesn't mean the attempt is not futile. Also, it only LOOKS that way, because it feels like Steve's the only one that's doing it.



HA HA HA HA HA HA! YOU GOT SLAMMED, BENDIS!

If possibly the definitive Avengers writer besides Stan Lee says you're doing a lousy, clueless job, THAT matters much more than a thousand bobbleheaded Modern Age fanboys.



This is one thing I absolutely despise about the cowards over at Marvel circa 1980-whenever it was: here was Jim Shooter, a man they'd never dare criticise when he was head honcho, and the MOMENT he leaves they get to work dismantling and destroying everything he ever built, from the Beyonder to the New Universe. Notice there hasn't been a SECRET WARS III, for instance.

The most hilarious example of this is putting JOHN-FRIGGIN'-BYRNE on STAR BRAND. Johnny Redbeard's lousiness is a weapon that they pointed in Jimmy Shooter's direction. Well, if they wanted someone that can tear down worlds others create, and completely sterilize any future story potential with unworkable concepts, they sure got the right guy.  :D



The urge to make comics like movies is one of the truly annoying trends that have struck comics recently because it uses none of the strengths of the comics medium. Comics are the only audiovisual medium where a character's inner world can be on display. Alan Davis's THE NAIL was the worst offenders in this regard; while it was a decent, Silver Age story, I wanted to strangle Alan Davis's afterword where it talked about how it was an "introduction" level story that anybody can read because it has no caption boxes or thought bubbles. Because apparently "newcomers" to comics can't figure out thought bubbles? Aren't thought bubbles used in advertising for condos? The jaw-dropping cluelessness of this rationale appalled me; sure, there is a history of comics creators underrating their audience, but this ascribes a lack of intelligence to comics readers that borders on infantile. Did THE NAIL also make sure to have a sticker that said that the comic is not edible and should not be put in the mouth?

And like Englehart pointed out, Batman is a sullen, silent dick unless we can see what is going on in his head. "Medium is the message" indeed. It's no coincidence Batman became unlikeable the instant thought bubbles no longer were hip. Of COURSE he would solve every problem with his fists instead of detective work - with no thought bubbles, it's harder to showcase Batman's purely mental action.



It's a credit to how well read Englehart is that he was able to tie in his wonderful GREEN LANTERN/GREEN LANTERN CORPS back to the LENSMAN-style concept. The title improved all the more because Englehart made it about the aliens; the neatest thing about the GLC is that somewhere there’s a Green Lantern the size of a planet and one that’s a whale-sized space-squid and one that’s a cute little cartoon animal. Hal Jordan is a good character, but he is an interchangeable Silver Age authority figure; the Corps is where the real interest lies. Notice his introduction of the character named “Arisia” (hint, hint). Millenium was obviously intended to introduce the New Guardians who emerge in the human race – an homage to the inspiration of the Corps, CHILDREN OF THE LENS. It’s unfortunate that NEW GUARDIANS was so cheesy and unintentionally funny.

Oh, and speaking of unintentionally funny...



I giggled when I read this. Oh, Steve, how can somebody so talented be so nuts? :-)



What, Mantis’s guest-shot in COYOTE wasn’t enough? :)



Kudos to Steve for being one of the first writers, in his amazing JLA run, to work to give the JLAers personality. Everyone has waffled since then – Mark Waid having Green Lantern say to Carol “hey, I’m all the man he IS!” – making Green Lantern into Hawkeye, in other words – shows how, at the onset of characterization-centered stories, Steve hit it right on the button.



To quote the LORD OF THE RINGS movies: “Marvel HAS no Batman. Marvel NEEDS no Batman.”

While Steve generally is great, he doesn’t bat a thousand. Shroud, for instance, was unredeemable. He was a dark detective clone of Batman who fights crime because his parents were killed for godsakes. And worse yet, his one feature that sets him apart from Batman – his blindness – was a gimmick swiped from ANOTHER superhero, Daredevil!

Actually, that very story Steve is talking about was called "Secret Wars 3."



To be fair, Arisia was created by bigtime Lensmen fan Mike W. Barr.

kdb

Yeah...but you know what I mean.



Interesting! I did not know that.

One associates Arisia so much with Englehart that it's hard to imagine her having been created by a different writer. Sort of like how for those of us born after a certain date, it's hard to imagine that before Johnny Carson there was someone else hosting the Tonight Show.

It should be noted that most of the women that Englehart wrote that suffered a terrible fate (as chronicled in the "Women in Refrigerators" site) met their fates AFTER Englehart stopped writing them. I can only think of one woman Englehart killed, and even he admits now it was a mistake for him to do that.

I think she debuted in the TALES OF THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS mini, which is terrific.



Saying that "one" associates her with Steve suggests that it's the general thing; I'm not sure I'd agree with you there.  Particularly since Steve brought her in and then revamped her, introducing her race's hot-babe-in-a-hurry power, which I tend to think comes off as someone else making up the character and then Steve revising her into what he wanted for his stories.

I also think it was a mistake -- I liked Arisia a whole lot before the change, and thought she was less distinctive afterward.

kdb

I find this subject eternally fascinating: the possible variations on origins and superpowers.  I started a thread here on working class heroes and am still interested in class origins of superheroes.  As well, I've heard various formulae proposed for powers/variations (there are only 4 basic types, etc).  What are Englehart's contributions/original character concepts/ideas? (Not including that Green Lantern woman :D )

I have to admit, I am totally unfamiliar with everything he has done from 1980 onwards.

I think that was when I started to realize that I didn't like John Byrne.

I don't know about the rest of them, but I'm pretty sure the Planet GL was created by Alan Moore.  His GLC stories were fantastic.

Two words:  MOON KNIGHT

:s:

I am looking foward to reading them in that new TPB in 2006.



But, but... he wears a white costume  :P

 :wink:

Moon Knight is similar to Batman only in the sense that the two wrap themselves in a sort of night world with a big moon in the background and standing on gargoyles in the rain and whatnot, and in recent times, there's an "urban legend" mystique about both Batman and Moon Knight. In the words of Dan Slott, "Urban Legend for nocturnal crimefighters only works for the first year of continuity, tops."  :D

The Egyptian connection, the multiple personalities...these ideas established Moon Knight as unique, despite being someone that inhabited a stylized night world, whereas the Shroud, whose parents were murdered by a criminal prompting an oath to fight all crime, and who uses gadget boomerangs, is clearly more modeled on Batman in a way that is really to the detriment of the character. It shows Steve was itching to write Batman by creating what can charitably called a Batman clone, an itch that Steve would years later down the line, scratch with his DETECTIVE COMICS.

On a related note, there has, at Marvel, been a recent trend to have their comics become more like the DC Universe. Bendis's AVENGERS run has the Avengers become much more like the JLA, something that means the death and exclusion of arguably the most interesting characters, but less well known among the general public, and the ignorance of the central concept of Avengers, who are centered more on group dynamic. Kurt Busiek once compared the JLA to the Olympics and the JLAers to champion Olympic athletes, and the Avengers to the baseball club that wins the world series.

The point here is, that the Avengers were remade in the JLA's image - a direction the Avengers were not meant to go.

When I first heard Bendis wanted to bring the Sentry - a Superman clone into the Avengers, I honestly thought he was messing around. Sort of like saying, "Oh, and the next members of the JLA will be Bea Arthur and Don Johnson." You expect there to be a cute little smiley to say it's all a gag. Nonetheless, the fact is, they're bringing a Superman into the Avengers; a character who has the ultra-ignominiousness of being created as a practical joke by Wizard magazine, with none of the imaginative power and iconic status that Superman possesses, interweaved into Marvel history like a terrible self-insertion fanfic.

In addition to trying to give Marvel their own Superman xerox, what other possible rationale can there be for YOUNG AVENGERS except as a Marvel TEEN TITANS? Like the JLA-ified Avengers, this too, is a bad match, as Marvel has no kid sidekick tradition. The whole Marvel universe split Rick Jones between them!  :D And I recently heard a few rumors they wanted to introduce Moon Knight, give him a new series. While this excites me, I am suspicious of their motives in light of this greater pattern. Are they trying to give Marvel a Batman, too?



Too many to list here. But here are a few from STRANGERS alone:

SPECTRAL. A man that could burn various colors - yellow is flight, red is berserk strength, blue is water-gushing, green is healing, and so on. I believe he was also a homosexual as well.

LADY KILLER. A fashoin designer, she was an assertive, buisiness-savvy hispanic woman that could instantly hit anything she sees and was also team leader. Steve played around with this power quite a bit; for instance, she landed a plane in total darkness.

There was also a princess of a weird race of fliers that lived in secret in clouds above mankind, and referred to ground as "the bottom of the ocean of air." Yrial was wonderfully contrary, haughty and disdainful - many similarities to Englehart's original Avenger, Mantis, although Mantis had a degree of passion that the distant Yrial lacks.

The premise of STRANGERS was that 50 people on a cable car were given powers by a mysterious accident, and six of them teamed up together to find the strange alien woman they saw flying above the air. One of the more interesting was one man who gained no powers, but whose terminal cancer DID: it came to life and started attacking a city block.

Not all of Steve's characters on STRANGERS were perfect. Zip-Zap is proof positive that balding white men in their fifties should not write hip black people talking street. Now, I've never seen Steve Englehart dance, but thanks to Zip-Zap I'd bet money that his moves are jerky, spastic and robotic, a cross between a mime and an epileptic seizure. And to make matters worse, Steve made Zip-Zap a smart-alecky kid. Now, I ask you: isn't there something of a precedent - nay, a TRADITION - for the smart alecky kid to be the one character that we hate more than anyone else on that given comic or television show? And to make matters worse, Zip-Zap's power was also a total bore - superspeed? Yawn. Stainless Steve was clearly on autopilot here.

As for Steve's Green Lantern Corps members, I had no idea if he created them or not, but his Kilowog (particularly in the Russian story), Salakk, and Ch'ip (the single most touching story I think I've ever read was centered on Ch'p and his archenemy, a furry thing that is a cross between a mole and a badger - I'm not joking) were given appropriately interesting alien personalities in his GREEN LANTERN CORPS run.

I always liked Steve's work.  Unfortunately he didn't get the chance to produce more of it at both DC and Marvel.

So he has more personalities and a touch of Hawkman.  Still a grim millionaire with no superpowers who fights crime at night and wears a cape. :D   And didn't he have little moon shaped batarangs?

I'm curious, what was the intended age group for Strangers, do you think?  It certainly sounds inventive, and the idea of a mysterious change overtaking a group of total strangers is compelling (kind of like Challengers of the Unknown or Fantastic Four), but was it more generally straight modern age high-concept superheroics, in the vein of X-men?

Although I love superhero comics, I'm always sceptical of superhero origins --the hardest part of the creative process it seems to me.  At least the hardest part to justify in a storytelling/novelistic sense.  Sometimes it pays to just forget about the origin, maybe.