Why the Defenders are the Greatest Non-Team Ever!

Steve Englehart took over the writing for the first twelve issues of the Defenders when they graduated to their own title. He was the perfect choice in many ways, as he wrote the Dr. Strange series (highly regarded) and had written many issues of the Hulk. He was complemented by the pencils of Sal Buscema, who had followed his brother John to Marvel, and was just blossoming into his own full talents an artist. (I had the chance to speak with Mr. Buscema a few months ago on World Talk Radio and he mentioned that the Defenders were one of his favorite series.) Englehart’s first issue started off with a bang: the Hulk wanders thru a hillside and encounters Namor falling to Earth. Namor is unconscious, protected by an invisible barrier, and the only thing the Hulk can do is to locate Dr. Strange. (I love ol’ Greenskin’s line: “Don’t worry, fish man. Hulk will save day.”) Thus begins an adventure that leads the trio to their fourth member, the Silver Surfer. The Surfer fits all the requirements for Defenders membership: he’s the ultimate loner, flying above humanity, and sometimes attacking them when he’s going stir crazy inside Earth’s orbit. The Surfer left after three issues, mostly due to Stan Lee’s edict that the Surfer be used sparingly in case Lee would ever return to the character, but he would return sporadically.

Just as the Surfer exited, the Defenders were faced with a woman who had lost her mind: Barbara Denton. She had been imprisoned by the Nameless One and driven insane. When the Defenders encounter the Black Knight and the evil Enchantress, the witch binds Barbara’s soul with an Asgardian female warrior known as the Valkyrie. The Valkyrie has almost no memories of her life as Barbara, but she’s fully formed and ready to kick ass. While I liked this character, she didn’t really seem to fit the classic Defenders profile. Her main purpose was a character unique to the series; just like in the Avengers, when Roy Thomas created the Vision, this was a character that couldn’t be found in any other comic. An ongoing sub-plot developed about the Valkyrie’s search for Barbara’s past. She became part of the glue that held the loners together.

The Defenders reached its stride (and possibly series high point) during issues #8-11. They crossed over with Marvel’s standard bearer group title, The Avengers. At the time, Englehart proposed something that had never been attempted before: a cross-over storyline between two titles that would last for the entire summer of 1973. When I saw the cover of Avengers 116, with the Silver Surfer blasting the Vision over a flaming volcano, it intensified my interest in the whole Defenders concept. The Defenders were not only outcasts in this situation, they were the underdogs. A Silver Surfer vs. Vision and the Scarlet Witch was pretty even, but how about Iron Man vs. a guy with arrows—Hawkeye? Dr. Strange vs. Mantis and Black Panther in a physical brawl? Yet the Defenders managed to overcome nearly every battle. This culminated in the classic Defenders #10 when the Hulk took on the Thor in an incredible fight that somehow climaxed yet avoided answering the question of which one was stronger.

The war with the Avengers legitimized the Defenders in the Marvel Universe. Sales were good and the title switched to a monthly publication status. When Marvel launched a series of quarterly Giant-Size titles, the Defenders was one of them. Len Wein took over writing the regular series and turned in some solid work. He also brought in a new, regular Defender, called Nighthawk. Nighthawk had been a “Batman” (with wings) amalgam for the pseudo-Justice League team, Squadron Supreme. AKA Kyle Richmond, Nighthawk joined the Valkyrie as a unique member of the team, with his own ongoing sub-plots. Nighthawk entered the series just as Namor left, which was a big loss for the team dynamics. While Namor had a fire and ice relationship with the Hulk and Dr. Strange, Kyle was pretty much a pacifier; I never felt that Nighthawk was a good choice for a Defender. Wein also experimented with bringing in different loners, such as Luke Cage, Power Man. My favorite Wein story was in Giant-Size Defenders #2, drawn by Gil Kane with a fantastic inking job by Klaus Janson. This may have been the first time I saw Janson’s inks and it blew me away. The Defenders get help from another loner, the Son of Satan, to rescue the Hulk who is trapped in hell.

Steve Gerber took over the writing of the Defenders with issue #20. Gerber was the most unlikely choice to write any super-team. His most popular works were Man-Thing, Howard the Duck, Crazy, Son of Satan, the Zombie, and other titles. He had done some nice stories with the Thing in Marvel Two-In-One, but when it came to writing books like Daredevil, something was lacking. With the bizarre non-structural nature of the Defenders, Gerber’s talents were able to shine through. He immediately took to the characters Valkyrie and Nighthawk, and further developed their backgrounds. Valkyrie discovered that Barbara had a husband, Jack, who had been searching for her. Jack follows Valkyrie to New York and in effect becomes a Defender, aiding the team in unlikely scenarios. Jack gets the most sympathy out of any of the characters, because he’s on a hopeless quest: he loves Valkyrie because she’s Barbara; yet Val has little memory or emotion for Jack. And in the only story where I appreciated this character, Nighthawk discovers that his fortune is being used to fund a Ku Klux Klan like organization called the Sons of the Serpent. But Gerber’s wackiest and most infamous contribution to the Defenders were the Headmen: Dr. Nagan, Jerry Morgan and Chondru. The first two are men of science, while Chondru is a mystic. The Headmen were, in a way, the dark mirrors of Namor, Hulk, and Dr. Strange. They came up with bizarre plots to foil the Defenders, such as excising Nighthawk’s brain and replacing it with Chondru’s, who infiltrates Dr. Strange’s mansion. Later the Headmen are joined by a technological perversion called Ruby and an alien called Nebulon, who has a Scientology-like religion to make people believe they are “Bozo” clowns! The Headmen storyline ran for over a year in Defenders #31-41, and finally concluded in the first and only Defenders Annual.

Defenders Annual #1 was Steve Gerber’s swan song on the regular title. In a way it makes a fitting place to stop reading the series, for the Defenders never again had a writer that really understood the quirky dynamics of the various loners. In this last tale, Gerber took things a step too far: Kyle Richmond, who always wanted more legitimacy, actually set the team up in a headquarters with computers and a meeting table with the characters’ logos. This took the team into Avengers territory. Not a good move, but there was a hell of a weird fight with the Headmen at the end. Gerber would write one more Defender tale in the Howard the Duck Treasury Edition, which featured Howard teaming up with the group. The best part was a quirky villain called the Black Hole, who said an infamous line when using his powers (“The Black Hole Sucks!”), and seemed entirely appropriate for both Howard and the Defenders.

Various other writers took the Defenders to strange places. David Kraft wrote some tales that almost worked, along with penciller Keith Giffen. Later J.M. DeMatteis would write a long run, and his most notable creation was a character called the Gargoyle. DeMatteis brought back the Son of Satan and had him romance a female hero called (appropriately) Hellcat. Towards the end, the Defenders jettisoned Dr. Strange and the Hulk in favor of some ex X-Men. Most recently, Kurt Busiek brought the Defenders back and came with the planet entity Gaea as the reason why the big three kahunas needed to come together to save the world. But I felt that he made a mistake in also bringing back Nighthawk, Valkyrie, etc. The new Giffen/ DeMatteis/Maguire series looks promising, because from the icons on the cover logo, you can see they know who the core Defenders are: Hulk, Namor, Dr. Strange, and Silver Surfer. All outcasts, all loners, coming together through weird circumstances to save the world. That’s exactly right, and the laughs never hurt Gerber, so it won’t bother me at all now. Nuff said.