ACCIDENTAL STARS
Writer’s characters found fame decades after their creation
Comic book writer Steve Englehart had no inkling of what was in store for his characters Star-Lord and Mantis when he created them in the 1970s.
Now the characters are well-known by millions after their appearances in the blockbuster films “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.” He will conduct a panel discussion at Albuquerque Comic Con at 6 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 13.
“It felt really good,” Englehart said. “It felt very strange because I had an idea for Star-Lord and I didn’t get to follow through on it. And he did not become a major Marvel hero for 30 years after that, so he was just sort of used by somebody here and somebody there, and in my own mind, he had become basically a failure, an unexploded bomb, and then all of a sudden I got a call one day that said they’re going to make a major motion picture starring this guy.”
It was a sweet surprise to Englehart, who has seen other characters develop at a faster pace.
“I did significant stuff that is now coming out in ‘Captain America’ and the ‘Avengers’ and ‘Batman’ over on the other side of town,” he said. “Star-Lord is not looming large in my personal pantheon of great successes or whatever, but of course what (screenwriter, director) James Gunn saw in him and what (actor) Chris Pratt saw in him and so forth, I mean, they made him into what he is now, and that’s the other funny thing.”
Englehart had stepped away from developing his Star-Lord and Mantis characters years before the films were made, which is a common practice for comic book writers.
“There was no particular writer who took it over, but by publishing so many comics so often, it’s inevitable, every comic book series ever has gone through a series of creators,” he said. “Somebody creates something until they don’t and there’s going to be another issue next month. Somebody’s got to take it over, so that happened to me on the other end too. They just call you up one day and say, ‘OK, you’re in charge of this particular character.’ So the people who took over Star-Lord, I was no longer there, so they couldn’t ask me what I had in mind, but they saw what was on the paper and came up with what they thought should happen next, and that’s just how that business works.”
Star-Lord was one of Englehart’s easier characters. He was initially written to be a “jerk” and later become a better human being. Mantis took on a life of her own.
“She educated me to the idea of characters sort of taking over from the writer,” Englehart said of Mantis. “You can’t just let anything happen and still come up with a coherent story, but she definitely just kind of explained herself to me as I dealt with her. … She was actually a hooker back in the day, and she was going to be more a femme fatale, and she turned more into a cosmic goddess by the end of it. … Each story led to the next, and that’s probably the most important thing I learned while writing, was to let your characters be themselves rather than try to force them into areas that don’t feel right.”
Englehart is working on a series of graphic novels called “Secret Identities,” a soap opera with superheroes set in a small town in California.
“It’s a superhero thing, but it’s kind of from the idea of the people in the town knowing that there’s something going on but not knowing who’s doing it and so it leads to suspicion,” he said. “I’ve sort of set up this petri dish here. You can’t just sort of sit down and bat out 10,000 words without knowing exactly what is going to happen. You know, I kind of know the basic structure of things, but I really do like to let the characters, moment by moment, I get inside their heads and go with where they’re going to go.”