Essential Defenders, Vol. 3

Essential Defenders #3

by Steve Gerber, Roger Slifer, David Anthony Kraft

The Day of the Defenders first gathered Doctor Strange, the Hulk and the rest of Marvel's legion of loners - but can they survive "Defenders for a Day?" If the second team calling themselves Defenders doesn't finish them off, the third one just might Plus: more non-stop action when the non-team faces team after team - including the Emissaries of Evil, Zodiac and the Headmen Demons and gods alike threaten humanity, leaving its outcasts to defend it Guest-starring Iron Fist, Ms. Marvel, Havok and Polaris, the Son of Satan, Hercules and more Collects Defenders #31-60 and Annual #1

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Marvel, Superheroes, Fantasy, Comic Book

592 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1979

About the author

Steve Gerber graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in communications and took a job in advertising. To keep himself sane, he wrote bizarre short stories such as "Elves Against Hitler," "Conversion in a Terminal Subway," and "...And the Birds Hummed Dirges!" He noticed acquaintance Roy Thomas working at Marvel, and Thomas sent him Marvel's standard writing test, dialoguing Daredevil art. He was soon made a regular on Daredevil and Sub-Mariner, and the newly created Man-Thing, the latter of which pegged him as having a strong personal style--intellectual, introspective, and literary. In one issue, he introduced an anthropomorphic duck into a horror fantasy, because he wanted something weird and incongruous, and Thomas made the character, named for Gerber's childhood friend Howard, fall to his apparent death in the following issue. Fans were outraged, and the character was revived in a new and deeply personal series. Gerber said in interview that the joke of Howard the Duck is that "there is no joke." The series was existential and dealt with the necessities of life, such as finding employment to pay the rent. Such unusual fare for comicbooks also informed his writing on The Defenders. Other works included Morbius, the Lving Vampire, The Son of Satan, Tales of the Zombie, The Living Mummy, Marvel Two-in-One, Guardians of the Galaxy, Shanna the She-Devil, and Crazy Magazine for Marvel, and Mister Miracle, Metal Men, The Phantom Zone , and The Immortal Doctor Fate for DC. Gerber eventually lost a lawsuit for control of Howard the Duck when he was defending artist Gene Colan's claim of delayed paychecks for the series, which was less important to him personally because he had a staff job and Colan did not.

He left comics for animation in the early 1980s, working mainly with Ruby-Spears, creating Thundarr the Barbarian with Alex Toth and Jack Kirby and episodes of The Puppy's Further Adventures, and Marvel Productions, where he was story editor on multiple Marvel series including Dungeons & Dragons, G.I. Joe, and The Transformers. He continued to dabble in comics, mainly for Eclipse, including the graphic novel Stewart the Rat, the two-part horror story "Role Model: Caring, Sharing, and Helping Others," and the seven-issue Destroyer Duck with Jack Kirby, which began as a fundraiser for Gerber's lawsuit.

In the early 1990s, he returned to Marvel with Foolkiller, a ten-issue limited series featuring a new version of a villain he had used in The Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown, who communicated with a previous version of the character through internet bulletin boards. An early internet adopter himself, he wrote two chapters of BBSs for Dummies with Beth Woods Slick, with whom he also wrote the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Contagion." During this period, he also wrote The Sensational She-Hulk and Cloak and Dagger for Marvel, Cybernary and WildC.A.T.s for Image, and Sludge and Exiles for the writer-driven Malibu Ultraverse, and Nevada for DC's mature readers Vertigo line.

In 2002, he returned to the Howard the Duck character for Marvel's mature readers MAX line, and for DC created Hard Time with Mary Skrenes, with whom he had co-created the cult hit Omega the Unknown for Marvel. Their ending for Omega the Unknown remains a secret that Skrenes plans to take to the grave if Marvel refuses to publish it. Suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis ("idiopathic" meaning of unknown origin despite having been a heavy smoker much of his life), he was on a waiting list for a double lung transplant. His final work was the Doctor Fate story arc, "More Pain Comics," for DC Comics'

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite the bright addition of Hellcat and a lesser role for the drab Dr Strange, the series still struggles to entertain me. The fact that none of the characters that debuted in this volume are around much today, underlines my view? 4 out of 12

I read the comic books The Defenders #31-60, and Annual #1;

[Stewart Tame · Rating 3 out of 5]

It saddens me that the Marvel Essential volumes aren't in bookstores anymore. Sure, the paper is cheap, and they're in black and white, but they're great value for the money. Just like comics used to be. Okay, except for the black and white part.

Anyway, if I get a chance to pick one up, I usually do. It's a great way to read a large chunk of a classic series.

Some of the earliest comics in my collection, purchased when I was five or six years old, are early issues of the Defenders. Something about the team captured my imagination. So when I recently spotted a copy of this book in a used bookstore, I grabbed it. Continuity-wise, it picks up about a dozen issues later than those earliest comics. The team is still more or less the same people. Quality is decent for a 70's Marvel title. Steve Gerber stands out as the most impressive writer of the lot, with Gerry Conway as a close second. I'm also fascinated to see such early artwork from Keith Giffen, who really didn't make it onto my radar until his Legion of Superheroes work at DC years later.

At one point, the series almost falls apart. There are a few issues where the art starts being credited to a ridiculous number of people, and we start getting Defenders stories taking up only half an issue, with a backup story filling in the rest. I'm assuming that there were deadline problems, though I decline to speculate as to their exact nature.

Also worth noting are a few issues where the coloring--obviously not reproduced in this volume--is credited to F. Mouly. I'm assuming that's Francoise, known for her association with Art Spiegelman among other achievements. Not a name I normally associate with superhero comics …

Anyway, fun book! I definitely enjoyed it. Recommended!

[Alexander C. Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of comics!

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

If, for God only knows what reason, I would be forced to grab only a few books from my home before never seeing that place again, this book would be among the grabbed.

That's because this fairly thick volume contains some of the most important comic books of my youth. Steve Gerber's run on the title began earlier, but reached its zenith (and unfortunate but still relatively satisfying conclusion) here. The Headmen! And the return of Nebulon! And just one ridiculous situation after another.

I also loved how Gerber kept throwing things into the mix as if he had plans for a thousand issues of this title, especially the renowned "Elf With A Gun."

Re-reading this for the fiftieth time, though, I'm reminded of some of the other thoughts I had from earlier revisitations, like: why does the Hulk stay the Hulk all the time? Did I miss something that happened in a Hulk comic? (I wasn't as into the Hulk by himself then, though I'm sure I was reading the title around that time--I was a Marvel zombie for a while there. In my defense, it was the seventies.)

Also: looking at this stuff now, on the other side of fifty, I can see where Gerber hated doing standard comic book superhero fight scenes. They're almost superfluous to the stories he did--that really hit me this time around (you should pardon the expression).

This is also VERY very seventies, but now that we live in the age of computer animated wonders, I can almost see this being brought to widescreen life. Except, of course, that the Essential series from Marvel was done in black-and-white, so that the pictures I formed from reading this were . . . well, not so colorful. But still!

I was talking with a friend recently about the art of Sal Buscema, and I found myself defending the younger Buscema brother because he was the quick-draw of the Bullpen in those days, and he often had to fit in a hell of a lot more word balloons and captions than, for instance, most comic book artists have to today. Like, say, the late great Steve Dillon, who had a lot more room to do cinematic layouts than Sal did. Also, Klaus Janson did a lot of inking in this, which helped a lot.

Even the run of comics included here which followed Gerber were really great. David Anthony Kraft turned in some solid work here with his Zodiac/Scorpio stuff. And Moon Knight! Seriously, I must have read these comics dozens of times as a kid, and they still have the same zing to them now that they did then, even in black and white.

I have all of the Essential Defenders volumes, of course, but this is the best of them all, and if I could only save one . . .

[John Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Steve Gerber's scripts may not hold up for new readers, but this was the "Watchmen-Dark Knight" level stuff of my childhood. I still find Gerber's run amusing, but was more impressed by David Anthony Krafts' scripts, with a two issue storyline loaded with Blue Oyster Cult references.

[Joel Jenkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really like the stuff written by David Kraft. The art isn't quite as consistent as the Sal Buscema days, but there are still some nice layouts. Thus far, the David Kraft era is my favorite of the Defenders run.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting transition stage to the team, as we hit the grand finale of all the wonderful weirdness Steve Gerber was doing and move into a more low-key kind of weirdness with David Kraft. ( whatever happened to him? Never a huge name, but a decent writer)

The title plays musical artists during Kraft's run, but since we get Giffen at his most "I wanna be Jack Kirby when I grow up', Carmine Infantino and some Ed Hannigan, I won't complain.

This volume has the Scorpio story, one of my favorite Defenders arcs, as well as the strange trip to Russia and one Clarmont issue that was actually an issue of Ms. Marvel in disguise.

bummed this volume ends before we get to the 'tunnel world' story, but that just gives me the excuse to track down volume four.

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read these comics way back when I was a kid. The Defenders are an iconic comic team. Great read and an important part of the Marvel comics mythos. Very recommended

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marvel Comics Group- in its phase as a slightly anarchic bastion of experimentation and creativity- published the comics reprinted here from 1976 to 1978,
Leading off this volume we have the second half of Steve Gerber's run.

The Steve Gerber stories are SO creative and smartly-written, with Buscema's competent layouts and nice superhero art.
The ideas are so weird and original! The inks vary a bit in their outcome, but overall I like the Buscema/ Janson combo. If anything, a bit more subtlety in the art would better compliment Steve's restless wit and canny observations. These are not standard sorts of stories on the whole- the villains are strange but thought-provoking. Plots are both bizarre and driven by commentary about the modern world and individual struggles for identity in sublime pop form.

Steve Gerber continued writing in comics and cartoons; after he authored Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, Man-Thing, and the team-up adventures of the Fantastic Four's The Thing, he was chief editor for G.I.Joe and Dungeons & Dragons cartoons, as well as writer for cult classic Thundarr the Barbarian. He won an Emmy writing for Batman/Superman Adventures cartoons. He returned to comics at DC with the enjoyable Nevada for Vertigo and the harrowing Hard Time, which picked up his "secretly super child in the system" theme -in prison! He even authored a humorous BBS For Dummies computer guide with a coterie of other writers. The world lost Steve to pulmonary fibrosis- the same poorly-understood disease which took my father's life at 59- in February, 2008.

The influence from these comics is understated compared to some of their more famous counterparts a few years later, but both Gerber and Kraft later write good ensembles. Slifer and Kraft team up to script Conway's plot (following Gerber's departure) for a cool Red Rajah arc that, for the first time at Marvel, gets the "female team" concept right! (Slifer himself went on to create DC's Lobo and become show-runner for 80s cartoon classic JEM.) The scene where the heroines converse about their resistance to The Star of Capistan's mind control is the arc highlight.



I can't miss talking about Luke Cage's appearances here- still a street-level hero-for-hire, but a distinct voice with a set of experiences that reverberate nicely beside white privileged Nighthawk and the brainy Soviet heroine, Red Guardian. (Dr. Tania Belinsky, aka The Red Guardian, comes into the story through her civilian identity as a surgeon, to conclude the most bizarre hostage situation of the Marvel Age- involving Nighthawk's brain!) The awkwardness of down-to-Earth Luke (and to some extent, Jack Norriss) alongside the bizarre nature of their capers really accents the stories. A parody of 70's self-help fads turns out to be a terrific, if byzantine, villainous plot. Luke's language is less weighted down by "jive" Blaxploitation slang and reflective of a street-smart, self-taught intelligence, beside the wise, bookish and fatherly Stephen Strange.

Deep-dyed comic fans often recall "Who Remembers Scorpio?" as a highlight of 70's Marvel. Scorpio himself, dark while still comic-book-colorful, has more of a real personality in his arc here than maybe any single antagonist before him in Marvel history. In his self-awareness and personal disgust with the inhumanity of society and its commercial systems, he's a clear precursor to acclaimed modern writing, with motivations and expressions that are both misguided yet realistic and understandable. Dave Kraft writes inventively, no less so here, where even the confrontation in the mighty Marvel manner comes about unconventionally. He nails the Defenders' classic non-team description so well there, as you'll see.

Scorpio must've been puzzling and haunting to many young fans, but his existence inspires a sort of introspection that fits squarely with the "college campus crowd" that lent Marvel its early cache of pop coolness. It's unsettling how this young writer poses a comic book super villain- a goofy cliche in the minds of dismissive adults- with authentic depression struggles that seem drawn from some real fifty-two year old. You can be forgiven rooting for his bizarre plan to make his mark work- despite its villainous incarnation, he seeks a society of his own, as he feels profoundly disconnected from socializing. Their issue-long awakening in #50 is brief, but a hint of some offbeat characterization- especially in Gemini, divided in loyalty over the conflict- shimmers through in the most interesting take on the Zodiac I ever read.

Perhaps it's just as well the mystique behind his origins remain unrevealed. DAK is still busy drawing realistic characters from real life in his co-writing and editing effort, Yi Soon Shin, a trilogy of comics with Chicago's Onrie Kompan. The draw to the real world in the midst of fantastic entertainment reflects in Kraft's decade-plus long career editing and publishing Comics Interview- now available in hard back volumes.
Kraft gets the advantage of Keith Giffen on art for a while- the results are uneven, but dynamic! Kraft picks up the intelligent and unconventional, creative vibe from Gerber, having proof-read his books and become friends with Steve, himself. "The Dude" particularly writes great female characters. His Hellcat is actually a successful feminist role model without falling into didactic, manifesto-laden agendas- instead, she (and her teammates) has an actual personality! A sex drive (hinted with a confident wink)! A sense of humor- and empathy!

Kraft even turns in a subtle Nighthawk story-and a parallel to the Scorpio-driven critique of modern commerciality- that sets him up with a unique perspective in a way that jibes with Gerber's efforts to distinguish Kyle Richmond from his Batman-clone origins.

He sends Valkyrie to college- a storyline that reflects the way classic Marvel would mix the world outside your window with the fantastic. It's cool because both his female leads are not cookie cutter women- they've both moved on from early relationships in an attempt to define themselves. Val's campus forays spark an attempt at collecting some supporting characters besides Jack Norriss for Dynamic Defenders.

Both Kraft and Gerber use the Hulk to great effect- the hook for little kids to enjoy the book. Hulk also provides comic relief under both authors in his unbridled-id way. His limitations work well within an ensemble. He still maintains the "self-awareness" tone, even in his brilliantly simple dialogue.
Kraft seemed to have an affinity for the workings of Marvel's green people-his She Hulk run is different and rather daring for its time, setting another standard, not only for her personality, but as a bench mark for a new kind of heroine.


The return to Russia- following an old school misunderstanding battle between Hulk and Namor, with Kirbyesque panache and callbacks to Jack's Fantastic Four work- is also a brilliant way of displaying the changing attitudes from the days of bland evil Commie enemies. If The Presence isn't a Mao-inspired poet-super-villain, what is he? There's also an environmental theme about radiation contamination and the oceans, tied by Atlantis to world politics- ambitious, yet still a straight-ahead superhero adventure.

The collaborations with Carmine Infantino go from rather ultra-smooth and slick (this may have been Janson's finishes) to an awful, distorted look the next issue. That's too bad, because this is the introduction of Lunatik, a pop-culture-quoting scofflaw with insane and violent vendettas of his own against rule-breakers. This Alice Cooper- inspired menace deserved return engagements; other writers could've constantly updated Lunatik's lyrics-driven lingo to cool effect. No shit, he and Dr. Strange were David (Kung Fu) Carradine's two favorite Marvel characters.

The return of Dr. Strange in the last stories is pretty awesome; the rock and roll vibe of the book reaches its climax here, and also brings us Devil-Slayer- another obscure Marvel character with quirky unmet potential. Ed Hannigan turns in pretty solid work, too.

My 2010 posts dive into the wealth of Steve's work; I have a couple of new ones referencing DAK's run.

This volume's very cool for giving you a glimpse at some under-appreciated efforts to transition from the Marvel of Stan Lee to the modern interpretation. It's better than nostalgia- it's written to entertain all ages, in a way that bears a standard for the sort of comics the late Darwyn Cooke championed famously.

Keep in mind, these can also be had at a modest price, as the original singles in color- the black and white reprints here are a decent way to get the stories and see what you like best!

[Jason Luna · Rating 5 out of 5]

A solid volume of team based action. I'd say at times it was better than your basic Avengers/JLA stuff, it gradually got a little more confusing as it went along. But in any case, as good a place as any for seeing superheroes bash on baddies, maybe have some team strife.

The best part is the first half of so, with Steve Gerber still writing Defenders. He likes to put a lot of humor in his stories, as well to use a lot of dark characters and cartoonish superpowers. He's very effortless at writing a fun and original superhero romp.

He gets replaced by David Anthony Kraft and some supporting writers about halfway through. Their stories are generally interesting too, but a little impersonal and at times too much detail in one issue, and then randomly resolve the storyline in one issue. It's like they're trying to mimic Gerber's ability to write unique stories in one issue (like "what is Valkyrie's ex-husband doing now?" Or "what is that murderous elf?") and instead just writes a lot of big text that rambles along.

But all the stories, no matter who's writing, are able to present generally likable/relatable characters, and a solid use of action to make for compelling reading. It definetly does not feel like condescends to a younger reader, while still being fun.

5/5

[Robert Bowers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best thing that ever happened to this series? Steve Gerber left. And he took his ridiculous story telling and characters with him. I mean does anyone really miss Howard the Duck? Or the Headmen? And the truly idiotic story of Nighthawk getting a brain transplant? The series takes a positive swing with Gerber's departure.

[Karl Kindt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some neat art by Sal Buscema and others, but the writer is wretched at worst, unreadable most of the time, and laughable at best (especially Kraft). Marvel sure did shovel some sh!t along with the shine in the 1970s.

[Vince Coleman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Classic super hero stuff, made more fun by its sort of "friends hanging out" feel. Though it does tend to lose its thrill for me after Doctor Strange leaves. I can't even really bring myself to finish it...

[Steven Heywood · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of a mixed bag but all of it readable. Sometimes the subplots get too many and nowhere useful, a not-uncommon malaise in the seventies, though the ruthless elimination of one of these is pretty neat.