(The dates for 1975 and 2025 are identical.)
The Defenders were provided some of Marvel's most entertaining stories in the 70's. This supergroup made up of some of the most erratic and unpredictable characters in the Marvel Universe was brimming with raw power. And that made writing them trickier I suspect.
If there could be only one, I might choose
Marvel Feature #1 as my all-time favorite comic book cover. This dynamic Neal Adams illustration features three of Marvel's most potent offbeat characters in a design which leaps off the stands at you. Great stuff! But it wouldn't have been possible I suspect if Doctor Strange had not been cancelled.
Doctor Strange #183 was the final issue of that run ending the Strange series as well as the venerable Strange Tales run which numbering the good Doctor inherited. In this issue Doctor Strange gets a new secret identity thanks to the cosmic changing powers of Eternity. He is now known to the world as Doctor Stephen Sanders allowing him to put some distance between himself as a magic warrior for Earth and the sometimes adoring public. An old friend sends him a telegram and he heads off to see what he can do. He finds his friend in poor health guarded by three men who turn out to be demons, servants of the The Undying Ones, ancient godlike beings who once ruled the Earth but who were sent into another dimension a millennia ago and now seem to want to return. He cannot save his friend but Doc does vow to save Earth.
But the cancellation of his own book meant that he had to do that saving in the pages of other heroes as a guest-star. He shows up in
Sub-Mariner #22 and conscripts Namor to help him uncover the ancient idol of the Nameless Ones, the leader of the Undying Ones. This seems key to bringing those old gods back. After a furious battle against some shape changers they win the day but it seems Doc must stay behind and sacrifice himself to save Earth.
In
Hulk #126 Jadejaws ends up captured by the cult of the Undying Ones and himself is catapulted into the Dark Dimension to battle the Night-Crawler an enemy of the Undying Ones who is able to block their path to Earth. Hulk finds Doctor Strange captive and a girl, regretting her role with the cult frees Doc by taking his place in a trap which blocks the Undying Ones from their goal. Doc and Hulk head back to Earth and Doc seems to give up magic and walk away, the threat ended for the time being.
A little later in
Sub-Mariner #34 Namor discovers that a weather machine being built by the United Nations might be a threat to the planet and so he gathers together the Silver Surfer and the Hulk to help him investigate it and destroy it if necessary. First they battle a tinpot dictator and free his people.
Then in the next issue they turn their attention to the weather
machine and must battle the Avengers (Thor, Iron Man, and Goliath). In
the end they save the day, and their short-lived alliance is at an end.
All of this was written by Roy Thomas and he must've liked the idea of
these heroes working together. They were all distinctly non-team
members, so he decides to create a "Non-Team" and dubs it The Defenders.
But first he has to bring Doctor Strange out of retirement.
That happens in a story called "The Return" by Don Heck in
Marvel Feature #1 which shows Stephen Sanders wandering back to his Greenwich village house and finding it not locked as he expected. Inside he finds Wong and another Doctor Strange entirely garbed in his infamous blue mask. This turns out to Baron Mordo who has taken advantage of Strange's retirement. When Doc comes back it's for good and he ditches the skin-tight blue mask look.
And that brings us to the lead story in
Marvel Feature #1 and "The Day of the Defenders". A threat from Doc's past, the "Scientist Supreme" Yandroth presents the Omegatron, a doomsday device which will destroy the Earth when Yandroth dies. When he does die Doc races to find allies to stop the machine which is disguised as a lighthouse on the northern Atlantic coast. It takes the combined might of Subby, Hulk and Strange to stop the post-mortem menace.
After that the "non-team" reassembles to battle Dormammu who seeks to
once again enter the Earth dimension, this time by stealing and
inhabiting Doctor Strange's body.
On Halloween in Rutland Vermont the battle rages as Clea and Wong recruit Namor and Bruce Banner to help. Dormammu is stopped once again, but barely.
And then it's "Hulk" versus "Hulk". At least that's the gag that
inspired Roy to pluck Xemnu from the pages of Atlas monster comics.
He was called "Hulk" there and now dubbed Xemnu the Titan he possesses the body of an astronaut and along with is pal these two go on television and concoct a kiddie show to lure children to a rocket site so that Xemnu might repopulate his dead world. The Defenders get drawn into this and have to stop the forced migration.
When
The Defenders left the cozy pages of
Marvel Feature to venture off to their own title a lot of things changed. Roy Thomas and Ross Andru left and Steve Englehart and Sal Buscema came aboard. Englehart was just getting his motor revving when he took over the "Non-Team" and this first storyline showed off well the kinds of things he produced. Neat exciting stories rich in Marvel lore and crisp characterization.
In the debut issue Namor is literally thrown from the skies and it's up to Hulk and Doctor Strange to get to the bottom of it. They find a member of the Undying Ones cult named Necrodamus and it's a slugfest to the end. But surprisingly we learn that it was former ally the Silver Surfer who had beaten Namor and cast him out of the sky. The non-team vow to learn why.
Their quest takes them into the far reaches of the north where they find the Surfer, who is unwittingly the mind-controlled slave of a whole coven of Undying One worshippers. The fighting is fierce and we really get a chance to see each character shine as they battle one another and ultimately the evil they must confront.
This leads them to venture once again into the dimension of the Undying Ones where they find the young girl Barbara who had sacrificed herself before to stop the menace has gone mad and joined forces with the demons who want to take over the Earth. They stop the evil but at the cost of a young girl's sanity. The Silver Surfer is sick and tired and flies off in a huff. The three remaining heroes and the girl are left to wonder what comes next.
We see that they grew out of the final gasps of Doctor Strange's final issue and final threat, and then with Doc as the organizing core a new team is founded, one made up of misfits and outsiders and not a team which will ever have a charter. But there was one final piece still missing.
Who knows what larger plans might've been percolating in the mind of Roy "The Boy" Thomas when he concocted a delightful lark of a story for
The Avengers #83.
He had our assembled heroes (Goliath, Vision, Quicksilver and Black Panther) attend the Rutland Halloween parade and we meet not only the writer and his wife of the time but Tom Fagan, fan supreme.
At the same time this is happening the women of the Marvel Universe (Scarlet Witch, Medusa, Black Widow, and Wasp) fall under the spell of an enigmatic woman called the Valkyrie who convinces them that they have been held back by the male chauvinistic attitudes of the men in their lives. Weirdly they all agree to to go to Rutland and attack the male Avengers. The battle rages briefly before Wanda gets a clue that the Valkyrie is actually the Enchantress, and they have all been her pawns to help her get over the loss of her boyfriend the Executioner who ditched her for another dimensional queen. Like I said it's a hootenanny and a half.
Nor do I think it was part of some master plan when a year later in
The Incredible Hulk #142 Roy revives the Valkyrie, this time as a personality which dominates the feminist -- Samantha Parrington. In a story titled "They Shoot Hulks, Don't They?" which is mostly satire (Tom Wolfe has a cameo), we have the Hulk taking a nap in the Statue of Liberty and some upper crust society snobs named Parrington decide to use him as their next cause around which to have a fancy party and make a splash in the society pages.
Their daughter Samantha, a devoted feminist is appalled by this lame behavior and ends up getting enchanted by the Enchantress and becomes the Valkyrie just in time to battle old Greenskin. It all just rather ends, and the Hulk and Samantha go on their merry ways. I don't think we learn if the party was a hit. The comic was beautifully drawn though by Herb Trimpe and John Severin.
And that brings us to
The Defenders #4 when the Enchantress pops up yet again. This story is by Steve Englehart with very attractive art by Sal Buscema and Frank McLaughlin (Judomaster's daddy). This time we get some resolution to the problem she has with the Executioner, and we see her take her revenge on the Queen who snatched him up. We also see her infuse the personality of Valkyrie into the body of the mad Barbara Norris, creating seemingly a whole new person. All this takes place in the castle of the Black Knight, who himself has fallen under the spell of the Enchantress and ends up transformed into a statue for his trouble. This is a terrible thing for a great character, but it does set up one of the most famous stories in Marvel lore. Valkyrie by default ends up with the Ebony Blade and the flying horse Aragorn.
The story of Valkyrie really continues into the fifth issue of The Defenders when as she is attempting to find how she fits into this new world, the Valkyrie becomes embroiled in a threat the Defenders put down once before. Doc Strange had ended the threat of the Omegatron by slowing time down to an impossible degree, but changing circumstances had speeded it up again and the threat to the world was very real. The Omegatron teleports both Namor and the Hulk to use their fighting energy to fuel its ultimate transformation and only the intervention of the Valkyrie and Namorita who wake the Sub-Mariner, and the Hulk saves the day...literally.
Valkyrie has found a home of sorts and will become one of the core elements of the Defenders as the non-team moves into the future.
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