Steve Englehart majored in psychology at Wesleyan University, where he was a member of The Kappa Alpha Society, earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1969.

Then, as Marvel editor Roy Thomas said in a 2007 interview, Englehart became ...a summer replacement or some such for [writer] Gary Friedrich.

When Gary wanted to go away for a while, he got Steve, who was sort of a young aspiring artist when he came up to Neal [Adams]'s studio, and he ended up at Marvel as a proofreader.

Evidently he liked the result, because right after that, Gary turned back a job he'd been holding onto - dialoguing a little story plotted by Al Hewetson - and Roy asked me to script it from scratch.

2, #1 (Oct. 1972)[11] During his first credited superhero work, on a series starring erstwhile X-Men member the Beast in Amazing Adventures vol.

2, #12–17 (May 1972 – March 1973), Englehart integrated the Patsy Walker character, the star of a teen romantic-comedy series, into the Marvel Universe alongside the company's superheroes.

[12] He and artist Sal Buscema launched The Defenders as an ongoing series in August 1972[13][14] and introduced the Valkyrie to the team in issue #4 (Feb.

[21] In the fall of 1972, Englehart and writers Gerry Conway and Len Wein crafted a metafictional unofficial crossover spanning titles from both major comics companies.

Beginning in Amazing Adventures #16 (by Englehart with art by Bob Brown and Frank McLaughlin), the story continued in Justice League of America #103 (by Wein, Dick Dillin and Dick Giordano), and concluded in Thor #207 (by Conway and penciler John Buscema).

Englehart and Brunner, audaciously, also created a multi-issue storyline in which a sorcerer named Sise-Neg ("Genesis" spelled backward) goes back through history, collecting all magical energies, until he reaches the beginning of the universe, becomes all-powerful and creates it anew, leaving Strange to wonder whether this was, paradoxically, the original creation (Marvel Premiere #14).

[25] Englehart's Doctor Strange #14 featured a crossover story with The Tomb of Dracula #44, another series which was being drawn by Gene Colan at the time.

We partied all day, then did some more acid, then roamed around town until dawn and saw all sorts of amazing things (most of which ended up in Master of Kung Fu, which Jim and I were doing at the time).

[28]Englehart and artist Starlin co-created the character Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu,[29][30] though they only worked on the early issues of the series.

[38] In 2010, Comics Bulletin ranked Englehart's work on Captain America, The Avengers, and Doctor Strange fourth, eighth, and ninth, respectively, on its list of the "Top 10 1970s Marvels".

In this arc, he recreated the Batman as a pulp-oriented, dark character;[43] the Joker's persona as a homicidal maniac; and introduced love interest Silver St.

[45] The Englehart and Rogers pairing was described in 2009 by comics writer and historian Robert Greenberger as "one of the greatest" creative teams to work on the Batman character.

[46] DC Comics writer and executive Paul Levitz noted that "Arguably fans' best-loved version of Batman in the mid-1970s, writer Steve Englehart and penciller Rogers's Detective run featured an unambiguously homicidal Joker...in noirish, moodily rendered stories that evoked the classic Kane-Robinson era.

[55] A 25-page Englehart-Rogers story featuring Madame Xanadu, originally commissioned for Doorway to Nightmare, sat in inventory for years before being published as the one-shot Madame Xanadu in 1981, in DC's first attempt at marketing comics specifically to the "direct market" of fans and collectors.

[57][58][59] Englehart returned to mainstream Marvel comics later that decade with stints on West Coast Avengers, the second Vision and the Scarlet Witch limited series (with artist Richard Howell), Silver Surfer (again with Rogers), and Fantastic Four (during which editorial disputes led to his using the pseudonym John Harkness, a name he had first used on his last issue of Mister Miracle).

He has admitted to writing the novel Hellstorm in the TALON Force series under the house pseudonym Cliff Garnett.

[81] In 2021, Englehart created titles and themes based on Shang-Chi for the album Prism Club from InRage Entertainment.