Alrighty. We’re all on the same, 4-color, shitty newsprint page. I can dig it. You can dig it. We’re here because we either love naked women and madballs or we love comic books AND naked women and madballs. I know you know what I’m talking about.

Get in touch with your inner comic dork and see if you can way feel me from here. A colleague of mine—my friend Shannon Riley—recently poured some blood sweat and tears into a motherfucking MONSTER of a debut article in this month’s BACK ISSUE magazine (issue #45). He got in touch with one Steve Englehart—a monster in his own right—to chat about his seminal run on the Justice League of America in the seventies, the Marvel of the bronze age vs. the DC of the bronze age, and just the straight-up love of this game called comics.

It’s a really focused, really detailed, really interesting read, and there is no denying the pure unadulterated love for comics oozing from these dudes as they talk about how cool it is that Englehart was able to ‘steal’ a Marvel character and put her in a different dress and drop her into a DC book. Gangsters DO make the world go ’round.

Out of respect for Shannon, and respect for the publishers of Back Issue, I’ll refrain from posting the entire writeup here outright (it is a paid download from the Two-Morrows site…3 bucks for the entire issue), but you all know how the comments section works, right? If you’re into this sort of thing, I’ll get at you, as this shit needs to make the rounds. I myself have never been a DC dude (maybe some Vertigo stuff 10 years ago) and I have really no idea how the JLA works, but even from an industry-study point of view, this is a fascinating read.

In this, the modern age of comics, things are very much like sports where the writer/artist ‘team’ typically leads off on any book and then fans are free to sort of assume/judge what the book will be like. (I know there was a time when I would read anything stamped with the names ‘Grant Morrison’ or ‘Warren Ellis’). In a lot of ways, Englehart’s story is a prototype of that, as the 70s saw most comic writers as totally anonymous resources. Not so with our man Steve.

Also, in only a slightly-related sidebar: check out dude’s film page. He’s got some pretty interesting things to say about the first Batman movie, as well as The Dark Knight. I don’t know if this is, like, common knowledge or what.

- Hateball