Marvel Masterworks: The Defenders Volume 2

Reprints Defenders #7-16, Giant-Size Defenders #1 and Avengers #115-118
Written by Steve Englehart, Len Wein and Tony Isabella.
Penciled by Sal Buscema, Bob Brown and Jim Starlin.
Inked by Frank Bolle, Frank McLaughlin, Jack Abel, Klaus Janson, Dan Green, Mike Esposito, Al Milgrom and Frank Giacoia.

Variant cover.

Valkyrie, Hulk and Namor, the Sub-Mariner, all members of the Defenders, encounter the archer superhero Hawkeye. He's recently left the Avengers and wants to find a new direction in life. After a less-than-friendly encounter with Hulk and Valkyrie, order is restored and Hawkeye is invited to join the Non-Team.

Suddenly, an Atlantean arrives at their headquarters and tells Namor that his old foe Attuma is preparing to attack Atlantic City. The Defenders head to the Jersey Shore to battle Attuma and his minions. In a short battle, Namor, Hawkeye and Valkyrie are captured and imprisoned on Attuma's ship.

The heroes learn that Attuma's new partner is the Red Ghost. The Ghost uses cosmic rays to mentally control the captured Defenders and orders them to attack Atlantis. Thankfully, the Defenders' leader, Doctor Strange, returns and brings Silver Surfer with him to take on Attuma and Red Ghost.

Shortly after that, Loki, Asgardian god of mischief falls off a cliff after being blinded in a battle with his brother Thor. Loki is rescued by the dread Dormammu, ruler of the Dark Dimension. Dormammu tells Loki he will restore his eyesight if Loki will assist him in his "grandest scheme."

Dormammu wants to recover the Evil Eye, a device that will give him the power to destroy the Earth.  He manipulates the Defenders into finding the pieces of the Evil Eye, which are scattered all over the world. The Black Knight, a friend of the Defenders has been turned to stone. Dormammu tricks the Non-Team into believing that only the Evil Eye will restore the Knight's humanity.   

But Loki has second thoughts. He believes Dormammu will destroy Asgard after he eliminates Earth.  Loki secretly contacts the Avengers and tells them that the Defenders are evil and willingly aiding Dormammu. After hearing Loki's tale, the Avengers go in search of the Evil Eye. This leads to a clash of epic proportions between the Defenders and the Avengers!

On an island in the South Pacific, Silver Surfer battles the Vision on top of an active volcano!

Iron Man takes on his old Avengers teammate Hawkeye in Mexico!

Valkyrie and Swordsman engage in a sword-fight in a Bolivian castle!

Doctor Strange faces off against Mantis and Black Panther in an Indiana cornfield!

Captain America seeks the Evil Eye in Osaka, Japan and is confronted by Namor!

Last but definitely not least, two of the mightiest beings on Earth, Hulk and Thor, duel in Los Angeles.

Eventually, the Defenders and Avengers realize they've been duped and team up to battle Dormammu.  But to defeat him, they'll have to enter the Dark Dimension, where Dormammu reigns supreme.

The Avengers & Defenders unite to battle Dormammu!

After the clash with the Avengers, the Defenders still have to free the Black Knight from his stone prison. This requires them to time-travel back to the Crusades! The Defenders are surprised when they find the Black Knight battling giant gnomes! These gnomes are a difficult obstacle for the heroes to overcome.

Sometime later, Hulk is attacked by the Defenders' old foe Xemnu, the Living Titan. Doctor Strange and Valkyrie come to his rescue and help Ol' Greenskin battle Xemnu.

Next up, the supervillain Nighthawk pays a visit to Doctor Strange's Greenwich Village home, which serves as the Defenders' unofficial base of operations. Nighthawk has recently quit the criminal team known as the Squadron Sinister over their latest scheme.

The Squadron, which consists of Hyperion, Doctor Spectrum and the Whizzer, has "sold" Earth to an alien "geologist" called Nebulon, the Celestial Man. Nighthawk left the Squadron when he learned of Nebulon's plan. The alien has created a laser gun that will melt the polar icecaps and cover the entirety of Earth in water!  
 
Nighthawk tells the Defenders about this and convinces the Non-Team to join him in tackling the Squadron. They arrive at the Squadron's base and quickly gain the upper hand on the villains. But Nebulon arrives and easily beats the Defenders. He imprisons the Defenders in an energy globe and blasts them into space. 

The Defenders ultimately come out on top, thanks to the intervention of Nighthawk. The former villain says he wants to fight crime now and is granted membership in the Defenders!

Lastly, Doctor Strange receives a mental contact from Charles Xavier, known to the world as Professor X, leader of the X-Men. Xavier has discovered something amazing in the Carlsbad Canyons in New Mexico.

But shortly after the Defenders arrive in Carlsbad, they're attacked by Magneto and his new Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. The Defenders defeat the Brotherhood, but Magneto has a secret weapon.

The Defenders face off against the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

The master of magnetism has discovered alien technology that gives him the power to create new forms of life. He uses this tech to create Alpha, the ultimate mutant. Alpha easily beats the Defenders and he departs with the Brotherhood to New York. Magneto walks into the United Nations and declares himself ruler of the world. Alpha's power makes Magneto seemingly unbeatable. But as long as the Defenders are alive, there's hope for Earth's survival!

The Defenders are no match for Alpha, the Ultimate Mutant!

Review:
I'm a huge fan of the Defenders and this is one of my favorite lineups of the Non-Team.

Story:
Marvel Masterworks: The Defenders Volume 2 features stories from one of the classic eras of the Defenders. Even in the context of Bronze Age comic books, the Defenders shouldn't work. But somehow they do. It's always fun to watch Doctor Strange, Hulk, Valkyrie and Sub-Mariner interact with one another. The Non-Team nature means the cast is always rotating, so you never get bored with characters. Hawkeye and Silver Surfer don't stick around very long. But Nighthawk arrives shortly after their departure and Kyle Richmond goes on to become a Defenders mainstay for many years to come.  

The Defenders meet the Avengers and explain that they are on the same side.

I especially love how the Hulk is written in these Defenders tales. I still laugh when he calls Doctor Strange "dumb magician" and refers to Nighthawk as "bird-nose"! It's also nice to see the Hulk be happy for a fleeting minute or two. Like in this panel, where he realizes his fellow Defenders are his friends.

Hulk smiles when he realizes "Dumb Magician" is his friend. 
It's nice to see Hulk happy every now and then.

The centerpiece of this book is what's become know as "The Avengers/Defenders War." This is one of Steve Englehart's crowning achievements and one of the most entertaining stories of the Bronze Age...with one caveat. During the Vision's fight with the Silver Surfer, Scarlet Witch is around for the sole purpose of being a victim. This is silly, since Wanda had already been established as a heavy hitter.  Englehart makes up for it later by having Scarlet Witch play a major role in the battle against Dormammu, but it's still silly.

The other Defender vs. Avenger fights are all excellent. I was surprised when I re-read this to see that the Defenders won every battle, or at least walked away with the piece of the Evil Eye they were seeking. Maybe Englehart wanted to help the new team build their reputation against the old one. I was also surprised to see the Swordsman stab someone to death. It doesn't bother me, since Swordsman was a recently reformed villain engaging in self-defense, but I'm still shocked Englehart would write a story where an Avenger kills someone. The Hulk-Thor conflict is the highlight of the book and Englehart does a great job in the narration building up the powers of "Jade Jaws" and the thunder god.

Len Wein takes over after Englehart and the stories remain strong. The conflict with the evil mutants takes place during an interesting era for Marvel's mutant characters. The X-men series had been cancelled and turned into a reprint title.  But Professor X and the X-men made sporadic appearances in other Marvel series between the end of the old team and the first appearance of the new X-men.

It should be noted that Magneto is written here like a cartoonish madman villain dedicated to world domination. That's fine by me, but modern readers may be surprised by this, since the story was written about 8 years before the retcon that established Magneto as a survivor of the Final Solution.

Of course superheroes need quality opponents. Any book of Bronze Age reprints that features Dormammu, Loki, and Magneto as villains has to be good! Plus we get appearances by Nebulon, the Squadron Sinister, Attuma, and the Red Ghost, who aren't exactly slouches either.

Good stories all around from Englehart and Wein.   

Art:
The art is as good as the writing here, if not better.   

Sal Buscema pencils the Defenders stories. This book shows Buscema at the peak of his Bronze Age powers. He gives us lots of great fight scenes. Buscema was the definitive Bronze Age penciler of the Defenders series and his work still looks great today.

If there's any problem with the art in this book, it's the lack of a steady inker. But Sal B.'s work shines through no matter who inks him. Klaus Janson inks two of the issues reprinted here, I thought he was the best inker of the bunch. Here's a great two-pager, where Nighthawk describes what the Squadron and Nebulon will do to Earth if they aren't defeated:

Nice work by Buscema and Janson!

Bob Brown was the Avengers penciler at the time and he provides some good art as well. Brown received a special on-page commendation for his art in Avengers #118, which required him to draw 14 superheroes, a few SHIELD agents, Loki, Dormammu, a few other heroes making cameos. Plus, Brown does a nice job depicting Dormannu's Dark Dimension. Brown was 20+ years into his career at this point, but the art in the Avengers/Defenders War is one of his finest hours as a penciler.

Giant-Size Defenders #1 consisted of reprints, but it also included new "wraparound" pages penciled by Jim Starlin and inked by Al Milgrom. Their art is great and leaves you wanting more.

How does it look?:
I dug out my old copy of Defenders #16, here's a scan from that issue:

The same pages look like this in the Marvel Masterworks version:

Looks pretty good to me, no weird recoloring.

Extras:
A nice 4-page introduction from Steve Englehart where he talks about writing the Avengers-Defenders war. One gets the impression that Englehart is very proud of that storyline 40 years later, and rightly so. 

We also get three non-Bronze Age stories. As I mentioned above, Giant-Size Defenders #1 featured reprints with new filler material. A Sub-Mariner story from the Golden Age is reprinted, along with Silver Age stories that feature Hulk and Doctor Strange. I'm not crazy about this, since it means we get one less Defenders story.

Marvel Masterworks: Defenders Volume 2 is worth buying just to have the Avengers/Defenders battle, but the other stories are fun and action packed as well. Plus, this book features work by some of the finest writers and artists from of the Bronze Age and easily earns my highest grade.

J.A. Morris' rating:

4 Sals!

Giant-Size Marvel

Reprints Giant-Size Fantastic Four #4, Giant-Size Avengers #1, Giant-Size Defenders #4, Giant-Size Super-Heroes #1, Giant-Size Invaders #1, Giant-Size X-Men #1 and Giant-Size Creatures #1
Written by Len Wein, Chris Claremont, Roy Thomas, Steve Gerber, Gerry Conway and Tony Isabella.
Penciled by John Buscema, Rich Buckler, Don Heck, Gil Kane, Frank Robbins, Dave Cockrum and Don Perlin.
Inked by Chic Stone, Joe Sinnott, Dan Adkins, Vince Colletta, Dave Cockrum and Mike Esposito.

Seven Bronze Age adventures that feature the biggest stars in the Marvel Universe!

Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four is taking a subway train to a Jets game, but his Sunday afternoon is disrupted by a man named Madrox. He's a mutant, born with the ability to create multiple clones of himself.

 Madrox wears a suit that allows him to convert energy into superhuman strength. He proves to be a difficult opponent for the FF when his suit drains energy from New York's power grid. Reed Richards calls his old friend Professor Charles Xavier for help.

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A stranger breaks into the Avengers' mansion. The heroes try to apprehend him, but he possesses super-speed. When he finally slows down, the Avengers learn he's Robert Frank, the WWII-era hero known as the Whizzer. He's come to the mansion seeking a time capsule that was recently found by the Avengers.

Whizzer tells the Avengers how he and his wife Madeline, AKA the superheroine Miss America, worked as security guards at a nuclear testing facility. The nuclear energy affected their son, who had to be placed in the time capsule. Doctors said their son's contamination was so severe that he would need to be imprisoned in the capsule for at least 25 years. When he's freed from the capsule, he becomes Nuklo, one of the deadliest beings on Earth.

The Avengers begin their search for Nuklo;
Nice art from Rich Buckler.

He has the mind of a toddler, which makes him extremely dangerous. Nuklo escapes the mansion and the Avengers split up to find him. Plus, Scarlet Witch makes a surprising discovery about her past.
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Kyle Richmond, better known as the superhero Nighthawk of the Defenders, is out on the town with his girlfriend, Trish Starr. Suddenly, their car explodes, sending Kyle and Trish to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Henry Pym hears about this and deduces who caused the explosion. Trish's uncle is Egghead, Pym's arch foe. Pym puts on his Yellowjacket costume and chases down Egghead, who admits that he was involved in causing the explosion.

Right:The Defenders go after the Squadron Sinister;
Left:Yellowjacket corners Egghead.

At the same time, Nighthawk's Defenders teammates, Doctor Strange, Valkyrie and Hulk, visit him in the hospital. Nighthawk suspects that Egghead must have been working with his former colleagues, Hyperion, Dr. Spectrum and the Whizzer, better known as the Squadron Sinister. The Defenders pay a visit to the Squadron and a battle ensues.

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John Jameson sits down for dinner with his fiance, Kristine. John's career as an astronaut took him to the moon, where a strange rock transformed him into the Man-Wolf.

When he sees Spider-Man swing by, John is suddenly overcome by unbearable pain. He cuts his dinner short and walks around the city for a while, worried that he will once again turn into the Man-Wolf.  Unfortunately, his fears are proven correct.

That same night, Peter Parker visits the Daily Bugle. City Editor Joe "Robbie" Robertson shows him pictures of several homicide victims. All of them had bite-marks on their neck. Peter realizes that this means Spider-Man's old foe Morbius the Living Vampire is behind the killing spree.

When Morbius arrives in New York, he encounters the Man-Wolf and forces him to join forces. Spider-Man will have to defeat both Morbius and Man-Wolf. And dealing with Man-Wolf is always complicated, since John Jameson is the son of Spidey's harshest critic, Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson!
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During World War II, the greatest superheroes of the day unite to battle Nazi Germany. Captain America and Bucky! Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner! The Human Torch, and his young sidekick Toro!  The new team is ready to take on the Axis Powers overseas and Nazi sympathizers on American soil.

Bucky & Cap beat up some Nazi saboteurs.

At the same time,the Third Reich is preparing a secret weapon of their own. Nazi scientists have created Master Man, their own super-soldier who will act as Germany's answer to Captain America. When Master Man attacks Winston Churchill's ship, it's up to the Invaders to save the Prime Minister.

The Invaders meet Master Man.

When Churchill himself meets this new team of heroes he dubs them the Invaders!  

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The team of mutant superheroes called the X-men have been captured and are imprisoned on the island of Krakoa by an unseen mutant foe. Cyclops makes it back to the X-mansion and discovers his mutant power, shooting optic blasts, has disappeared. When Professor Xavier hears Cyclops' story, he decides to recruit a new team of X-men to rescue the old one.

We see Xavier travel all over the world to recruit a new team, which consists of:
Nightcrawler⁠—super-agile and able to teleport!

Storm⁠—possesses the power to fly and control the weather!

Colossus⁠—transforms his skin to "organic steel" armor!

Thunderbird⁠—a skilled tracker who also possesses super-strength!

Wolverine⁠—gifted with an amazing ability to heal and a skeleton laced with unbreakable adamantium steel!

Banshee⁠—master of the "Sonic Scream"!

Sunfire⁠—able to generate nuclear firebolts!

Left:Xavier convinces Thunderbird to join his new team;
Right:The All-New X-men try on their costumes for the 1st time.

The All-New, All-Different X-men are born!

They are brought to Xavier's headquarters and given costumes made of unstable molecules. Cyclops briefs them on their mission. They will fly to Krakoa and free the other team. But when they arrive at Krokoa, the new X-men are shocked when they learn the identity of the being that captured the old X-men.

Can the new X-men learn to operate like a team and rescue their predecessors? And what is the mystery of the mutant that lives on the island of Krakoa?
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For several months, Greer Nelson has fought crime as the Cat.  She becomes much more feline in appearance when the cat people transform Greer into Tigra, half-tiger, half woman!

Tigra encounters Werewolf By Night on a Mexico beach and a fight ensues. But they join forces when they're attacked by agents of Hydra!

Review:
Giant-Size Marvel contains some good stories and art, but more often than not the overall quality doesn't rise above mediocre. And some of the stories and art feel rushed.  

Story:
The best and easily the most important story comes from Giant-Size X-Men #1. This is the tale that introduced the "All-New, All-Different" X-Men, characters that set the Bronze Age comic world on fire. The battle with Krakoa that introduces the new team is still great 40 years later.

The second best story is the Avengers tale that features Nuklo. The original Whizzer makes his first "modern" appearance here, and writer Roy Thomas' love for WWII-era characters is used nicely here in a flashback that features the All-Winners Squad. Thomas does a good job showing that Nuklo is a truly tragic character.

Whizzer recounts his time in the All-Winners Squad

  
Thomas' enthusiasm for WWII stories is also on display in the Invaders story. It isn't great, but it's a decent introduction for the team. 

The FF battle with Madrox is okay, and Madrox would eventually become a regular in the X-books.  But it's only 21 pages, which sort of defeats the purpose of including it in a collection of "giant-sized" stories. Speaking of mutants, it's interesting to note that Chris Claremont co-wrote the Madrox' story with Len Wein. This story guest stars Professor X, and of course Claremont would go on to have a long history with Xavier during his years as writer of Uncanny X-Men.

As for the rest of the stories in this tpb, they're not very interesting. I'm a big fan of the Defenders and Steve Gerber, who wrote Giant-Size Defenders #4.

The Defenders tackle the Squadron Sinister, with help from Yellowjacket.

But we are never told if the Squadron Sinister worked with Egghead to set the bomb that injured Nighthawk and Trish Starr. Nighthawk just presumes that's the case, and the Defenders go after the Squadron. What happened? Did Gerber forget? It makes the story feel rushed and almost unfinished.  

Art:
I'll cut to the chase and say the art contained in this tpb isn't very good. In some cases it's almost painful to look at. Like some of the stories, lots of the artwork in this book looks rushed, like pencilers and inkers were brought in at the last minute.

John Buscema and Gil Kane are two of the all-time great pencilers. But they're not always served well by their inkers in this book (I see a little too much of Chic Stone's work in the FF story). The Invaders portion features Frank Robbins inked by Vince Colletta, I've never been crazy about the work of either during the Bronze Age. Don Perlin was a solid penciler during his years at Marvel, but Colletta's inks over Perlin makes the Tigra/Werewolf story the worst part of the book. In fairness to Colleta (who inked 3 of the 7 stories in this tpb), he was likely working against a tough deadline and probably did the best he could under the circumstances.

On a positive note, Dave Cockrum's art in the X-Men story is some of his best and looks great. Rich Buckler was in his "Kirby-esque" phase and his Avengers art is very good, even if Dan Adkins' inks water down Buckler a bit. Buckler gives the battle with Nuklo an epic atmosphere.

How does it look?:
A mixed bag.

Here's a scan from my copy of Giant-Size Super-Heroes #1:

And here's how it looks in Giant-Size Marvel:

Looks pretty good, but that's not the case for every issue reprinted in this tpb.

This scan from Giant-Size X-Men #1 was borrowed from Diversions of the Groovy Kind:

And here's how the same page looks when reprinted:

The recoloring of this page is obvious and unnecessary, and that's too bad. There's more recoloring in the portion that reprints Giant-Size X-Men #1 and that's unfortunate.

Extras:
Giant-Size Creatures #1 featured an essay by Roy Thomas that is included in this tpb. We also get a checklist for all the Giant-Sized comics that Marvel published in the 1970s.

Giant-Size Marvel is a curious publication. I'm not sure why Marvel wanted to showcase these stories in a tpb reprint, since most aren't exactly classic tales and the art is mostly sub-par. And why were these Giant-Size stories selected, instead of comics like Giant-Size Super-Stars #1 (a classic Hulk/Thing fight)? Or Giant-Size Spider-Man #1 (featuring Spidey and Dracula)? The X-men story has been reprinted many times, but its inclusion (recoloring notwithstanding) and the Avengers story earn this book a half-Sal higher rating than it would otherwise achieve.

J.A. Morris' rating:

.5



2 and a half Sals.