Steve Englehart wrote Batman in the seventies, with illustrations by Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin, and they are considered to be a very definitive run on the character. He (and his team) are generally ranked very high on the Batman-Guru rung, just one notch below the Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams/Dick Giordano team that revitalized the character in the early seventies.
But honestly speaking, I have NOT read too many of his Batman stories. What I have read are his Green Lantern Corps stories – the run that began sometime in 1984 in Green Lantern, which later morphed to the GL Corps. I was absolutely blown, I tell you, by the premise of not one, but TEN Green Lanterns who come to Earth ( I mean, one GL is supposed to monitor a galaxy – what are ten of them doing on a Mostly Harmless planet as ours?) There was this cartoon-animal story of Ch’pp, a chipmunky Green Lantern who’s the last survivor of his planet along with his arch-enemy, an old villain whose name I forget, but I remember getting extremely emotional about the story. Things start getting interesting when Kilowog, the biggest and toughest of the alien GLs begins to take an interest in Communism and permanently emigrates to the USSR. Which gave us this iconic cover by Joe Staton, who also did the rest of the artwork on the series.
By the way, I never did find issue 209.
Well, a couple of days ago, thanks to newsarama.com, I got to know that Steve Englehart is coming back to work with DC on a new Batman series called Dark Detective II. The site also linked to his website, www.steveenglehart.com, where Mr Englehart had a sterling offer to make –
“ If you’d like a postcard-sized, uh, card, commemorating Dark Detective II and signed by Marshall Rogers, Terry Austin, and me, send a self-addressed, stamped, letter-sized envelope to Inky Fingers Press, PO Box 894, Woodstock NY 12498.”
To cut a long story short, I mailed him, and explained that I was in India and whether the offer is open to us comic-starved Indians. And he agreed. Not just that, he said he would send me the postcard without me having to send in the S.A.S.E.
So my mother got the postcard today in the mailbox, and I am mighty pleased. And grateful. I hope Gotham Comics reprints Dark Detective II in India.
Such an offer was also made by Dave Sim. He promised to send a signed issue of Cerebus on getting a letter. But that was about the time I discovered his essays on women and their role according to him *ugh* and so never was motivated enough to write for one.
Well, I have my Cerebus TPBs signed (and sketched) by Sim and Gerhard. Yippee!:-D
Have you read his essays on women, perchance ?
*kapow!!!* *whack!!* And all those funny batman sounds……
You are trying to piss me off, aren’t you?
Yes, yes:D
Current music: Bunty Aur Babli – Kajra Re
what the fuck is that?
This the fuck is that.