Englehart then turned his attention to the Beast, formerly of the original X-Men, who’d mostly disappeared since Englehart turned him blue and furry a few years earlier. The Beast joined the Avengers, and became the first Marvel weedhead. ‘The Beast was a product, in his second incarnation here, of my life in California,’ Englehart said. ‘He got older, and he started listening to rock and roll, and—quite frankly—he started smoking dope, although we couldn’t say that in the books.’ What he did instead was show the Beast reading Carlos Castaneda and playing Stevie Wonder records, signifiers that ‘he was a young, intellectual guy who’d gotten hip.’
on Steve Englehart in Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. I need to get my hands on some Gerber, Englehart, and Starlin. Looks like I have a shopping list when I’m Manhattan tomorrow…
