Defenders Epic Collection Vol. 2: Enter: The Headmen

Defenders Epic Collection #2

by Len Wein

The Defenders, comicdom’s #1 non-team, are back and things are about to get weird in all the best ways. As we begin, the Defenders confront Nebulon and the other-dimensional Squadron Sinister. It’s an encounter that will bring Nighthawk into the fold and change the team forever. Then, Magneto and his Ultimate Mutant strike, the Wrecking Crew debut, Luke Cage and Daredevil join up and Valkyrie continues her search for answers to her fractured identity. After Steve Gerber takes the writing reins, the series is injected with a dose of knowing absurdity and cutting social commentary in the form of the bizarre Headmen and the bigoted Sons of the Serpent. Gerber crafts challenging stories that set the tone for the Defenders and define them even today.

COLLECTING: Defenders (1972) 12-25, Giant-Size Defenders (1974) 1-4, Marvel Two-in-One (1974) 6-7; material from Mystery Tales (1952) 21, World of Fantasy (1956) 11, Tales of Suspense (1959) 9

Genres: Comics

464 pages, Paperback

Published June 25, 2024

About the author

Len Wein was an American comic book writer and editor best known for co-creating DC Comics' Swamp Thing and Marvel Comics' Wolverine, and for helping revive the Marvel superhero team the X-Men (including the co-creation of Nightcrawler, Storm, and Colossus). Additionally, he was the editor for writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons' influential DC miniseries Watchmen.

Wein was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2008.

Reviews

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume illustrates exactly why I loved the Defenders so much. Individually, these characters were not usually among my favorites, but together this team kicked butt. Len Wein provides the writing on the first couple of stories, with Sal Buscema handling the artwork (unless otherwise noted).

Defenders #12 - This volume launches with a fun romp and the return of Xemnu the Titan. Not the strongest opening, but it’s deliciously campy.

Giant-Size Defenders #1 - An inventive way to incorporate some reprint material into a new narrative by weaving the earlier stories into a larger framework. Good job with that Tony Isabella. Includes material from Hulk #3, Strange Tales #145, and story of a young Namor originally appearing in the 1950s. Not a great story, but the framing sequence features art from Jim Starlin, so that makes up for a lot of what’s lacking it he narrative itself.

Defenders #13-14 - Nighthawk arrives, Marvel’s version of Batman, and he’s bringing the Squadron Sinister with him: Hyperion, Whizzer, and Doctor Spectrum (aka Marvel’s villainous versions of Superman, the Flash, and Green Lantern respectively). But this arc also features the introduction of Nebulon, who will become extremely important in the next volume.

Defenders #15-16 - Professor X needs help (and his X-Men aren’t available) against Magneto and his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants: Mastermind, Blob, Lorelei, and Unus.

Giant-Size Defenders #2 - And this is where I came in with buying the individual issues when I was a kid. This is a fascinating story of kidnapping the Hulk and demonic possessions that introduces the Son of Satan to the non-team. Beautiful art from Gil Kane & Klaus Janson.

Defenders #17-19 - This fun story from Wein, with some assistance by Chris Claremont on the third issue, bring Luke Cage, aka Power Man, aka the Hero for Hire, into the ranks of the Defenders and pits them against the Wrecking Crew.

Marvel Two-In-One #6-7 & Defenders #20 - And now Steve Gerber comes aboard, with George Tuska and Buscema handling the art, and he brings the crazy. The Enchantress, the Executioner, the Cosmic Harmonica, and then that blue-eyed, idol of millions himself, Ben Grimm, the Thing, joins the team.

Weird Wonder Tales #7 (includes material from Mystery Tales #21 (1954), World of Fantasy #11 (1958), & Tales of Suspense #9 (1960) - This issue of reprinted stories is included at the end of the volume, but I’d recommend reading it before the next issue (if not to start off the volume). And provides background on the members of the group who will eventually become known as The Headmen.

Defenders #21 - This one-off features a team of villains who will (possibly) become the Defenders greatest threat: the Headmen (aka Dr. Arthur Nagan, Dr. Jerold Morgan, and Chondu the Mystic).

Giant-Size Defenders #3-4 - The first of these two features more art from Starlin and introduces Daredevil to everyone’s favorite non-Team. It also offers the return of the Grandmaster, an Elder of the Universe, and the first-appearance of Korvac, who return to menace Thor, the Avengers and the Guardians of the Galaxy (see Avengers: The Korvac Saga). The second, also included in Giant-Size Marvel TPB, has art from Don Heck that introduces Yellowjacket to the team, brings back the Squadron Sinister and even throws the criminal mastermind Egghead in as a bonus. Or maybe it’s the Squadron Sinister as the bonus in this poignant tale of loss.

Defenders #22-25 - And that brings us the dynamic Defenders 4-part epic Battle Royale against the Sons of the Serpent. A group of neo-fascist Americans who want to bring about the white Christian nation. Yes, this was not a threat created by Donny the whiny baby and his cronies to motivate the MAGA cult, it has been around long enough for this movement to be used as villains in a comic book from the mid 1970s. That should tell you just how out-of-touch, out-of-date, and out of their collective minds, Donny the whiny baby and the MAGA cult actually are. You know you’re acting a like a bunch of un-American asshats when you’re using the bad-guy’s scheme from a 1975 comic book story as your political platform 50 years later. The MAGA cult really needs to get a grip on reality and maybe get a life while they’re at it. And yes, I am calling Donny the whiny baby a comic book villain (I’ve previously compared him to a James Bond villain, so why not). This story also brings back Daredevil, Power Man, Son of Satan and Yellowjacket to the Defenders in order to defeat the vile, racist, and contemptuous Sons of the Serpent. Gerber and Buscema are in top form with this one.

This is one wild ride of a volume and there are lot of wonderful stories in here, many of which lay the seeds for future stories and conflicts throughout the Marvel Universe.

[Petergiaquinta · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been ringing in the New Year with some auld lang syne thanks to Volume 2 of the Marvel Epic Collection of The Defenders. While it may not be all that literary, it’s been a great trip down memory lane with a nostalgic look back at my favorite non-group of superheroes from my grade school days. It’s also provided me with an unexpected preview of 2025, which sadly is bound to be a really shitty shitty year.

Len Wein gets top billing here as the primary author of this collection of issues #12-24 of The Defenders (along with Giant-Size #1-4, Marvel Two-in-One #6-7, and some delightful extras from way way back as a bonus treat at the end) but it’s really Steve Gerber who should get the credit because it’s his arrival to the title that really adds that quintessential quirky flavor to the group, distinguishing them from the Avengers and the X-Men, or even the Champions, another short-lived unconventional supergroup of the mid-’70s that Marvel let wither on the vine. The Defenders are the loosest of superhero confederations, whose members are frequently at odds with each other and spend a lot of time reminding the reader that they aren’t a group at all. The membership is constantly in flux, with Dr. Strange as the only real anchor to the group attempting to corral the other mercurial original members, the Hulk, the Sub-Mariner, and the Silver Surfer, all of whom spend a lot of time sulking and leaving and rejoining and then leaving again. With later members Valkyrie and Hawkeye (and sort of the Black Knight) adding to the dysfunction of the earliest issues, things are rather messy in the membership roster, but by this point in the series, the non-group seems to get cemented a bit more solidly with the addition of former baddie Nighthawk, a Marvel quasi-parody of DC’s Batman, whose multi-millions and extensive real estate holdings give the group a Long Island hideaway and a lot of needed cash to hold things together better. After all, winged horses, silver aliens and green-skinned giants are hard to keep underwraps in Greenwich Village.

Anyway, for me it was Issue 20 that introduced the 10-year-old me to the Defenders, coincidentally the first issue that Steve Gerber wrote for the title, although I was pleased to discover he had penned the two issues of Two-in-One just previous to #20 that introduced Ben Grimm to the Defenders with the Thing’s team-up with Dr. Strange and Valkyrie in Lovecraftian New England with the return of the Nameless One and the harmonica of destiny, a subplot which returns us to Barbara Dent’s origins and briefly brings back the Enchantress and the Executioner. For grade-school me, this was quite a lot and in retrospect Steve Gerber’s wackiness, his full pages of text in comic books, and his tendency to tie in superhero exploits to contemporary social issues had a tremendous impact on me in developing both my intellect as a young reader and my socially aware consciousness. And Gerber’s work on Howard the Duck at the time only helped increase that.

Along with introducing the Thing, these issues of The Defenders see the welcome addition of Daredevil and Daimon Hellstrom to that revolving non-membership of superpowered misanthropes, and the unexpected cosmic introduction of the Grandmaster is a lot of fun as well, but it’s when Hank Pym and Luke Cage show up to help battle the Sons of the Serpent that things really get cracking.

Gerber’s work here feels almost prescient as he joins a fatuously arrogant New York multi-millionaire real estate slumlord with a racist paramilitary organization that seeks to drive non-white “vermin” from the U.S. and restore the “great white race” to its “dominance once again.” The Supreme Serpent interrupts Johnny Carson to take over the nation’s airwaves and spew his racist filth while standing in front of a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag. In one of Gerber’s full-pages of text that could have been scripted for the Serpent leader by Steven Bannon, he speaks his fanatic screed: “Inflation. Unemployment. Recession. The average American is shocked by the high cost of food and gasoline…he is asked to cut back while the government lavished billions of dollars annually on those too lazy to work, malcontents who think this nation owes them a living, persons who by their very presence in this nation threaten the wellbeing of the majority–the white majority. Who are these parasites who would steal the bread and butter from white children…who would take your job away from you? You know them. They’re the neighbors you prayed you’d never have! They’re black, red, brown, and yellow of skin.”

And so here we are fifty years later in real life with the Supreme Serpent about to be inaugurated again to the office of the presidency. At the end of Issue #23, that guy wasn’t kidding when he tells Dr. Strange, “You’re sadly mistaken, whoever you are, if you think you have defeated us. The Sons of the Serpent have multiplied during our years in hiding. We number in the thousands now, white traitor. We shall return in force.” And so they have.

(As a side note, and a great big spoiler so stop here if you don’t like spoilers, I was reading around on-line, and Steve Gerber has taken some unfair criticism from folks on his presentation of race relations in these issues, particularly regarding the big reveal of the African-American exec Pennysworth exposed as a major player behind the scenes in the Serpent organization. And to them I would just say, “Horseshit,” especially when you consider the demographics of voters in the recent election. Sadly, it’s just more prescience on the part of Gerber when you consider how many black, Hispanic and Arab American men supported the party of the Serpent and enabled its leader to take hold of the presidency again.)

Oh just look at me go on and on…and I haven’t even gotten to the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the Squadron Sinister, or the Headmen, whose humorous name is attached to this collection’s title. And it’s that wackiness of the Headmen and their major head issues that thanks to Gerber really got me interested in these comics back in the day. But I don’t have any time left for that now other than to say I’m amazed to discover here in this Epic Collection the origins of the members of the Headmen. Turns out that Steve Gerber was a deep reader of some of those early strange tales horror mags that Atlas Comics published back in the ‘50s and resurrected three of the minorest of minor figures in Arthur Nagan, Jerold Morgan, and Chondu the Mystic from the pages of Mystery Tales, World of Fantasy and Tales of Suspense, to become his Headmen. These three original stories are included in the back of this volume, a great highlight for me who had never seen them before. The best backstory is that of the evil mad scientist Dr. Nagan, whose experiments with transplantation go awry when his superintelligent apes transplant his own head onto the body of a gorilla.

These three head cases lurking in their suburban lair in Westbury, Connecticut, go on to cause some mayhem later in the pages of The Defenders, especially after they meet up with Ruby Thursday. Alas, my library does not have the next Defenders Epic Collection, so unless I go down in the basement and dig up the original comics, I won’t be able to read those next hilarious adventures.

[Troy-David Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the introduction of the Headmen (a team of obscure villains) but that is a comparitively minor element of the book.
A larger part is the sub-plot of the true identity of Valkyrie/Barbara Norris, and the development of the team itself as they undergo several rapid-fire line-up changes. Change is a constant for this group. While picking up Nighthawk, they lose Namor, and see Daimion Hellstrom, Luke Cage, Daredevil, and Yellowjacket as irregular-regulars.
The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is back, and the introduction of Alpha the So-called “Ultlmate Mutant” is a decent story. Reading Magneto’s dialog, you’ll find it difficult ro identify him as an analog to Malcom X: he comes off like any other Marvel villain, and would continue until Claremont took him over.
The best part of this collection is the Steve Gerber story involving the Sons Of The Serpent. Their hate-filled racist invectives ars effectively showcased and the story is quite thought-provoking. Also, Gerber gives us Elf With A Gun. Look gor him in continued stories.

This volume is quite good: it starts off a bit shaky but gains momentum to the end.
Great things are in store for the next volume.