Steve Englehart: Conscience’s Storyteller By Chris Lombardi

When I first learned that CCW’s upcoming event would include Steve Englehart, I was astonished. The Marvel icon? The creator of Doctor Strange, the guy who brought us Captain America, the Falcon and Starlord? That guy?  But in many ways, I wasn’t surprised that Englehart, the guy who created the modern concept of Captain America, is  also a CO.

Steve Rogers, first created in 1944, is a soldier who honors his oath to defend the Constitution, who lives by the Army Values: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor, Integrity, and Personal Courage. Many callers to the G.I. Rights Hotline have recited those values, saying those same principles felt violated by their commands. In 2011, the movie Captain America: The First Avenger, the character is literally a soldier frozen for 70 years, from a time that felt simpler but wasn’t. In 1973, when Englehart revived Captain America for Marvel Comics, he was writing about an entire country that felt that way about our government.  “He’s fighting for American values,” Englehart told me last week over Zoom. “That’s how I was able to make him relevant to readers in 1973.”

Englehart grew up in Indiana, to a family that was proud of his father’s service in World War II. As the U.S. war against Vietnam escalated, he knew his college deferment would end when he graduated from Wesleyan University, where he majored in psychology but applied to law school. “I called my draft board and told them ‘I was just admitted to University of Michigan law school—what should I do?’ I asked. “They said it didn’t  matter, you have about six weeks.”

Rather than wait for his induction letter, Englehart decided to enlist so he could choose his specialty, and became an Army journalist at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. In basic training “my feet didn’t cooperate,” he said; marching was painful. But he’d enlisted, “so no way to get out because of that.” So he started at the APG News, “writing local news, officer of the week, that sort of thing.”

Meanwhile, on the weekends Englehart had another job entirely, in New York City. “I was an artist and I loved comic books,” he said. So he went to the offices of D.C. Comics, and asked to meet Neal Adams, who was “to me, was the epitome of comic art,” he told Back Issue for its 2023 Neal Adams tribute issue.

I was there to ask my idol, the greatest comic artist alive, if I might someday work with him, since I was an aspiring artist…Neal asked, ‘Why not now?’

“‘Because I’m in the Army, in Maryland, and I’ll be there a while.’

“‘Well, can you come up every Friday and work with me here, then spend Saturday at my house, then go back Sunday?’

“‘Uh, yes.’

And so, for the next six months, that’s what I did. Work with Neal at DC till maybe 1 a.m., then off to a deli for food. I slept on a couch at Columbia, hen went to Neal’s all day Saturday.

New York’s streets in 1970, he said, were full of protests: Black Power, women’s rights, and anti-war vigils. Then he would go back to Maryland, where Aberdeen’s journalism division at “was full of guys who’d been to Vietnam.” His supervisor had an ashtray with an American flag on the bottom, not for patriotism but “ ‘so  I can put out my cigarettes on the flag’ .”

Englehart was already having doubts about the war; a friend from Indiana, who’d been with him in basic training, had been shipped immediately to Saigon and stepped on a land mine. “When he died – that was my first direct experience with the reality of war.” After a few months, he said, “I finally realized, this isn’t something I should be a part of.”

He turned to American Friends Service Committee, which then had offices in Baltimore. Five years after U.S. v. Seeger, he was pleased to learn a CO discharge was possible on ethical grounds, since he wasn’t very religious. The rest of the process was similar to what military COs endure; “Psychiatrist said I was sane, chaplain said most COs are religious but you can do it  on ethical grounds, but then it was up to my commander, a major. She “turned out to be a WAC major. To be a WAC, she would have had to have enlisted. To be a major, she would have had to reenlist. So, on paper,  she was not going to be sympathetic to my cause.” But in person, the major approved his CO—and ended up resigning her commission a few years later. “Maybe I converted her,” he told me.

Englehart moved to New York to work for DC full-time, and ended up a writer instead of an artist. And when the company asked him to revive Captain America, he was game. “It was a failing title,” he said. The hero of World War II was irrelevant to the generation burned by Vietnam and Watergate. “I thought: what if Captain America stands for American ideals?” Ideals like equal opportunity for all, to which Marvel had ignored  so far: “Its only response  was the creation of Falcon,” the only Black superhero.

Englehart put his new Captain America into a series of stories that recreated the character as the one now familiar to audiences. Without the layer of corporate oversight – “these days you need approval from 17 layers”—he even managed to work in anti-war messages. Issue 163 features a  character who tells the Captain  “I’ve become a conscientious objector. I want nothing more to do with violence!”

Then came the Watergate hearings, a national obsession.  “It was on all three channels!” he said. “It’s hard to  express what that means, but in those days there were only three. It was on all day, and at night you got highlights on the evening news.” Which meant that the American public saw the details of President Nixon’s crimes.  “Captain America took place right now, not in the past or some future. I had to respond to it somehow!”

Thus the series known as Captain America: Secret Empire, in which the Captain and Falcon fight against a smear campaign from “The Committee to Regain America’s Principles,” a right-wing organization modeled on Nixon’s re-election campaign, and a front for the neo-Nazi terrorist group Hydra. The rot, they discover, goes as high as the White House, its head the President of the United States. “I did the sequence where he’s disillusioned, the Nomad sequence” that comes after Empire, when Captain America renounces the title and won’t carry the flag-shield in battle.

I told Englehart that the series feels prescient now, with all the oppressive forces its heroes were fighting still intact. He agreed:  “I thought having gone through that at age 20-something, I  wouldn’t have to go through that again. But it’s worse now,” he said. “Everything Nixon did is legal now, and people are lying in Congress’ face.”

As for the Nixon analogue, he said, even that’s worse. “Trump is setting us up for a time when people think that our country belongs to white men, and that our history reflects that vision.”

I asked over email how his CO experience affects his current work, and he replied with references to the current superhero blockbuster: “I think becoming a CO cemented a sense of doing the right thing in myself. But I can write characters who don’t feel that way (see Guy Gardner in the Superman movie),” referring to Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern. “Who I write any characters for comes back to who I feel okay about working for,” he added. “I have turned down jobs over ethical concerns.”

The opposite was true when he got the call to appear on CCW’s August 20 panel. He told me was glad when CCW director Richard Morgan contacted him: “I’m happy to have had advice from AFSC, and glad that support is still out there. I hope my remarks will help.” He wants servicemembers to know that they’re not alone, that “If no one else is standing with you, there are resources.”