First, it's great to hear that Englehart's COYOTE is doing well and being rediscovered by a new generation of readers. As for me, I've got my TPBs right here. (pats and strokes them lovingly)
SE: They came and asked me for it. After Wonder Con last year there was a party at a local comic book store called Comic Relief. It is one of, if not the major comic book store in the Bay area. Across a crowded room was Erik Larsen, who came over and said he’d like to reprint all the Coyote stuff for Image. It was completely out of the blue from my side of the fence and really welcome. It was nice to have that interest in Coyote.
Wow, has my opinion of Erik Larsen improved dramatically in the past month. Mostly I remember him as the guy that did that really, really ugly version of the DOOM PATROL for a little while before becoming an Image founder, the comic book equivalent of Anna Nicole Smith: a person famous for being famous. Surprisingly, Kurt Busiek is known for his love of Larsen's SAVAGE DRAGON, however, I personally never saw it. The Dragon's best moment came in the 1990s when he guest-starred on Kirby's SECRET CITY books.
Recently, however, Larsen published a series of articles that articulated something I always was saying very well. Further, he deserves nothing but accolades for the absolute CLASS for republishing Englehart's COYOTE.
So, I say, kudos to you, Larsen!
SE: That’s what we hope. In fact, if the reprint books continue to do well and people continue to say they’d like to see more of it, then I would go down the road with the new material from Coyote.
Sweet sassy molassy!
What if after dynamiting a vault, a long-lost TARZAN book by Edgar Rice Burroughs was discovered?
NRAMA: Not to necessarily imply anything, but Coyote seems more…drug influenced than anything you ever did.
SE: I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I enjoyed my time as we went through the ‘70s and the ‘80s.
Wow, my heart just stopped from surprise.
Seriously, is there a bigger not-so-secret secret that Steve Englehart's was pill popping through the seventies and eighties?
I mean, the whole "Approved by the Cosmic Code" was a dead giveaway.
On the other hand, I was not raised in the desert by coyotes on peyote so Coyote is not me.
Coyote is many things, but he does not reek of self-insertion. Coyote has a lustful, whimsical, impish personality that is more likely to giggle than scream if someone were to point a gun at him. Stainless Steve has such a wonderful sense of how people behave and writes all sorts of different kinds of characters that it is difficult to point out Steve's "Mary Sue."
On the other hand, if ANYBODY has a little bit of Mary Sue in them, it is Batman, not Coyote. Englehart created the Night Man and Shroud, both based on the blueprint of Batman (the latter much more obviously), and his AVENGERS WEST COAST included Moon Knight. Englehart by all accounts is intelligent yet cynical, which would make the naive Coyote a poor choice for a self-insertion but makes Batman a GREAT choice for it.
[quote[ "This one's primarily about a book from left field: BLACK RIDER. It's a Marvel one-shot (but see below), part of a Western month coming up in June but soliciting in the next few weeks. [/quote]
Oh...heck yeah.
Whether it's "Go WEST, Young GODS!" or the Phantom Rider in AWC, or heck, even the Southwestern setting of COYOTE, Englehart can write Westerns better than anybody else around.
Stainless Steve getting back in the game is the best news I've heard since Geoff Johns and Busiek are getting on SUPERMAN. Consider it sold, Steve!
Dilber MC Theme by HarzeM