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Marvel Masterworks: The Defenders #3
Marvel Masterworks: The Defenders, Vol. 3
Hulk, Dr. Strange, Sub-Mariner, Valkyrie and Nighthawk join up with Luke Cage, Daredevil and Son of Satan to take on the likes of the Wrecking Crew, Satannish and Asmodeus. Then, spinning out of a storyline in Marvel Two-In-One, comes Steve Gerber! Deconstructing genre conventions and adding a healthy dose of absurdity, Gerber's innovative run turned the expectations of readers on their heads, so suitably we're including the original Atlas Era appearances of the Headmen-Gorilla Man, Jerold Morgan and Chondu the Mystic! COLLECTING: DEFENDERS 17-21, GIANT-SIZE DEFENDERS 2-4, MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE 6-7
239 pages, Hardcover
First published August 22, 2012
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101 people want to read
About the author
Len Wein
1,590 books155 followersLen 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.
Wein was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2008.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 10, 2021
Another fun volume of the adventures of Marvel's 'non-team' team, the Defenders.
You know, I never really understood the 'non-team' label Marvel applied to these folks. It seems to be applied to them because the entire roster doesn't go on every mission but that applies to plenty of other Marvel teams too and they haven't been saddled as 'non-teams'. Weird.
Anyway, this wasn't ever going to win any awards but it's good, old-fashioned superhero fun. I enjoyed it.
Guest stars in this volume include Luke Cage, the Thing, Daimon Hellstrom, Daredevil and Hank Pym (as Yellowjacket). Or do they count as members, seeing as this is a 'non-team'?
My next book: Marvel Masterworks: Marvel Two-In-One vol. 1
You know, I never really understood the 'non-team' label Marvel applied to these folks. It seems to be applied to them because the entire roster doesn't go on every mission but that applies to plenty of other Marvel teams too and they haven't been saddled as 'non-teams'. Weird.
Anyway, this wasn't ever going to win any awards but it's good, old-fashioned superhero fun. I enjoyed it.
Guest stars in this volume include Luke Cage, the Thing, Daimon Hellstrom, Daredevil and Hank Pym (as Yellowjacket). Or do they count as members, seeing as this is a 'non-team'?
My next book: Marvel Masterworks: Marvel Two-In-One vol. 1
September 12, 2022
Different stories of the Defenders. These not so much about mystical things and they are more inclusive of the rest of the Marvel Universe and New York. The Giant-Size issue with three villians from Tales of Suspense #9 with Chondu, World of Fantasy #11, featuring Jerry Morgan, and Mystery Tales #21 with Doctor Nagan, was a fun surprise. The story of Valkyrie trying to find out about the mad Barbara Denton runs through a fair part of this book and leaves the Defenders again fighting the Nameless Ones from the beginning of the Defenders' story way back in Marvel Features.
Can't help but like these characters.
Can't help but like these characters.
October 26, 2017
The third Marvel Masterworks volume of The Defenders comics collects issues 17-21 of the series along with 2 issues of Marvel Two-in-One and excerpts from Giant-Size Defenders 2-4 (the Giant issues were basically mildly longer Defenders stories with various older comics featuring Defenders members, the main stories are included in this collection). The first three issues were written by Len Wein, finishing up his somewhat mediocre run here and handing off writing duties to Steve Gerber, well regarded the best writer the Defenders ever had. He handles the writing of every comic in this collection with the exception of 17-19 and Giant-Size 2. It should be noted with the exception of few random tag-alongs, the official roster of the Defenders for this collection is Dr. Strange, The Hulk, Valkyrie, and Nighthawk.
The main story from Giant-Size #2 starts off the collection and it's not a bad story at all. The Defenders are lured into a trap set by Asmodeus and become ensnared in their own personal hells. The Son of Satan (a character introduced in Ghost Rider's series and one that Gerber would cut his teeth on for a while in the character's early years) is called upon to assist them. It's a fun little standalone story written by Len Wein and good primer for the next few issues that end his run.
The three issue arc (#17-19) that follows has the Defenders teaming up with Luke Cage to stop a nefarious gang of villains that destroy buildings around New York City and threaten to explode a gamma bomb. It's a real throwaway gang of villains, they aren't very well written I thought (they only seem powerful when it suits the story, like at one point the Hulk is overpowered in strength by them) and it's really only appealing to me because I love the 70s version of Luke Cage. It's a fitting end to Wein's run though, not terrible, but not memorable either.
Steve Gerber's run begins with two issues of Marvel Two-in-One, a series that pairs The Thing up with various Marvel heroes. In these two issues, the team-ups are with Doctor Strange and Valkyrie. The story is straight up classic 70s Marvel weirdness that begins with a magical harmonica that causes someones worst fears to come to life and ends with Valkyrie and the Thing battling Enchantress and The Executioner in a small Vermont town. It continues in issue #20 of The Defenders where Val is kidnapped by a cult that she was a part of before being cursed by the Enchantress to become Valkyrie. The Defenders and the Thing show up to rescue her before she's mated with a God to give the Cult more power. I liked how this storyline becomes focused on Valkyrie's search for her past and finally has her encountering Enchantress.
The next 3 comics (#21, Giant-Size 3-4) are all standalone filler stories. The first one features a rouges gallery of villains called the Headmen who use mystical powers to create chaos in New York to distract from a heist they are trying to pull off. They actually succeed, setting up things for a future Defenders storyline. The first Giant-Size story has the Defenders along with Sub-Mariner and Daredevil becoming pawns of the Grandmaster in a game he's playing with The Prime Mover that takes place across time and space. Pure insanity and fun, it's great to see the various team-ups that happen in this story. The final comic here starts with Nighthawk and his lady friend being blown up in a car and put into the hospital. Off all people, Hank Pym (in his little seen Yellow-Jacket getup here) teams up with the remaining Defenders to figure out who did it and make them pay. It's actually quite a dark story and ends in a very unexpected manner.
Also included are some short bonus comics from various series from the 50s that tell the back story members of the Headmen. Great archival stuff to include here.
I know it seems like I'm really heaping tons of praise Steve Gerber's way here, but it's well deserved. Once Steve Englehart left the series, it kind of resorted to the standard superhero fare of the Silver Age that didn't really progress the series or it's characters at all. Gerber really excelled at creating these complex, interesting stories that addressed a lot of social issues at the time and even the unaddressed reality of a world inhabited superheroes (when the Hulk destroys a regular familyman's house, a moment is given for the man to contemplate how their lives are ruined). He liked taking these characters teaming them up with random heroes and tossing them into different realms, planets, or places in time and letting things get crazy while still keeping it fun. You'll really see this come into play in the fourth Marvel Masterworks volume when they team up with the original Guardians of the Galaxy lineup.
A great read, not to be missed!
The main story from Giant-Size #2 starts off the collection and it's not a bad story at all. The Defenders are lured into a trap set by Asmodeus and become ensnared in their own personal hells. The Son of Satan (a character introduced in Ghost Rider's series and one that Gerber would cut his teeth on for a while in the character's early years) is called upon to assist them. It's a fun little standalone story written by Len Wein and good primer for the next few issues that end his run.
The three issue arc (#17-19) that follows has the Defenders teaming up with Luke Cage to stop a nefarious gang of villains that destroy buildings around New York City and threaten to explode a gamma bomb. It's a real throwaway gang of villains, they aren't very well written I thought (they only seem powerful when it suits the story, like at one point the Hulk is overpowered in strength by them) and it's really only appealing to me because I love the 70s version of Luke Cage. It's a fitting end to Wein's run though, not terrible, but not memorable either.
Steve Gerber's run begins with two issues of Marvel Two-in-One, a series that pairs The Thing up with various Marvel heroes. In these two issues, the team-ups are with Doctor Strange and Valkyrie. The story is straight up classic 70s Marvel weirdness that begins with a magical harmonica that causes someones worst fears to come to life and ends with Valkyrie and the Thing battling Enchantress and The Executioner in a small Vermont town. It continues in issue #20 of The Defenders where Val is kidnapped by a cult that she was a part of before being cursed by the Enchantress to become Valkyrie. The Defenders and the Thing show up to rescue her before she's mated with a God to give the Cult more power. I liked how this storyline becomes focused on Valkyrie's search for her past and finally has her encountering Enchantress.
The next 3 comics (#21, Giant-Size 3-4) are all standalone filler stories. The first one features a rouges gallery of villains called the Headmen who use mystical powers to create chaos in New York to distract from a heist they are trying to pull off. They actually succeed, setting up things for a future Defenders storyline. The first Giant-Size story has the Defenders along with Sub-Mariner and Daredevil becoming pawns of the Grandmaster in a game he's playing with The Prime Mover that takes place across time and space. Pure insanity and fun, it's great to see the various team-ups that happen in this story. The final comic here starts with Nighthawk and his lady friend being blown up in a car and put into the hospital. Off all people, Hank Pym (in his little seen Yellow-Jacket getup here) teams up with the remaining Defenders to figure out who did it and make them pay. It's actually quite a dark story and ends in a very unexpected manner.
Also included are some short bonus comics from various series from the 50s that tell the back story members of the Headmen. Great archival stuff to include here.
I know it seems like I'm really heaping tons of praise Steve Gerber's way here, but it's well deserved. Once Steve Englehart left the series, it kind of resorted to the standard superhero fare of the Silver Age that didn't really progress the series or it's characters at all. Gerber really excelled at creating these complex, interesting stories that addressed a lot of social issues at the time and even the unaddressed reality of a world inhabited superheroes (when the Hulk destroys a regular familyman's house, a moment is given for the man to contemplate how their lives are ruined). He liked taking these characters teaming them up with random heroes and tossing them into different realms, planets, or places in time and letting things get crazy while still keeping it fun. You'll really see this come into play in the fourth Marvel Masterworks volume when they team up with the original Guardians of the Galaxy lineup.
A great read, not to be missed!
September 9, 2023
"Freaky stuff on the fringes of the Marvel Universe" is an obvious remit for the Defenders - the core of the team is all the weird dudes who don't fit in other teams, so they should be sorting out the weird things other teams don't sort out. But until now "freaky stuff" has generally meant either Doctor Strange comics by any other name, or a tedious parade of minor villains. it's only when Steve Gerber comes on as writer that this concept really starts emerging, and The Defenders starts to acquire its very distinctive vibe.
Gerber is a hard writer to pin down - his comics are central to the feel of Marvel in the 1970s, but at the same time they're odd books off to the left of the line: Man-Thing, Omega The Unknown, Howard The Duck. Even when the comics hit big, the characters didn't always transfer well - Howard was a huge cult success, but nobody else (at least back then) could get him right. He was interested in social issues, but mostly inasmuch as they shed light on human psychology - people and their various pathologies.
His first story in Defenders Masterworks Vol 3 is delightfully Gerberish. It's a 3-parter, which in a fit of typical 70s editorial chaos stretched across 2 issues of Marvel Two-In-One before picking up in Defenders, but it's all collected here. The plot involves assorted deadbeats and squares having their lives changed by the sound of a mystic harmonica, which makes them confront the path their lives are taking - so a young professional literally becomes a faceless company man, until he vows to quit and write a novel. Two kids from the slums are menaced by a giant rat, the symbol not of their wasted potential but their subsconscious acceptance of it. It's all very Steve Gerber and very 1970s: dark little morality plays presented with force, imagination, wit and more than a touch of self-righteousness.
How Gerber makes this approach fit with the demands of a superhero team - even one as loose as the Defenders - is a question for the next two volumes to answer. For this one, he represents a real jump up in quality, making the Len Wein issues that occupy the first third of the book look entirely pedestrian. There's some lovely Gil Kane art on Giant-Size #2, and Sal Buscema is reliable whatever he's drawing, but he can't work miracles, and a three-issue Wrecking Crew story would require one.
Buscema also blossoms once Gerber's on board - his figures have a wonderful solidity which is great for action scenes but also turns out to work really well when lynchpin Gerber villains the Headsmen show up: Buscema really sells the grotesque designs for Nagan and Jerrold, hitting just the right balance between caricature and realism. Their appearance is the volume's high point, the moment Gerber feels like he's arrived as writer, and the first time The Defenders feels like it's doing something no other Marvel comic would try.
Gerber is a hard writer to pin down - his comics are central to the feel of Marvel in the 1970s, but at the same time they're odd books off to the left of the line: Man-Thing, Omega The Unknown, Howard The Duck. Even when the comics hit big, the characters didn't always transfer well - Howard was a huge cult success, but nobody else (at least back then) could get him right. He was interested in social issues, but mostly inasmuch as they shed light on human psychology - people and their various pathologies.
His first story in Defenders Masterworks Vol 3 is delightfully Gerberish. It's a 3-parter, which in a fit of typical 70s editorial chaos stretched across 2 issues of Marvel Two-In-One before picking up in Defenders, but it's all collected here. The plot involves assorted deadbeats and squares having their lives changed by the sound of a mystic harmonica, which makes them confront the path their lives are taking - so a young professional literally becomes a faceless company man, until he vows to quit and write a novel. Two kids from the slums are menaced by a giant rat, the symbol not of their wasted potential but their subsconscious acceptance of it. It's all very Steve Gerber and very 1970s: dark little morality plays presented with force, imagination, wit and more than a touch of self-righteousness.
How Gerber makes this approach fit with the demands of a superhero team - even one as loose as the Defenders - is a question for the next two volumes to answer. For this one, he represents a real jump up in quality, making the Len Wein issues that occupy the first third of the book look entirely pedestrian. There's some lovely Gil Kane art on Giant-Size #2, and Sal Buscema is reliable whatever he's drawing, but he can't work miracles, and a three-issue Wrecking Crew story would require one.
Buscema also blossoms once Gerber's on board - his figures have a wonderful solidity which is great for action scenes but also turns out to work really well when lynchpin Gerber villains the Headsmen show up: Buscema really sells the grotesque designs for Nagan and Jerrold, hitting just the right balance between caricature and realism. Their appearance is the volume's high point, the moment Gerber feels like he's arrived as writer, and the first time The Defenders feels like it's doing something no other Marvel comic would try.
October 31, 2022
Fun collection.
Not quite as solid as the previous volume in terms of consistent story telling or art. That said it is never bad.
Bottom line, uneven but necessary for any Defenders fan.
The last actual of The Defenders in the collection was off enough to drag my star rating down to four. The art looks rough, the blocking of the action is actually close to bad and the dynamism, which is Marvel’s specialty was sub par. That issue all felt rushed.
Not quite as solid as the previous volume in terms of consistent story telling or art. That said it is never bad.
Bottom line, uneven but necessary for any Defenders fan.
The last actual of The Defenders in the collection was off enough to drag my star rating down to four. The art looks rough, the blocking of the action is actually close to bad and the dynamism, which is Marvel’s specialty was sub par. That issue all felt rushed.
September 13, 2018
The later issues in this collection are an improvement, as they introduce Steve Gerber to the title (and he brings with him one of my favorite villain teams, the Headmen)!
November 22, 2020
Steve Gerber's run on The Defenders begins here and like the other titles he worked on he brings his own unique quirks.
August 25, 2012
By no means the best Marvel has to offer, yet I enjoyed the book because 90% of it was new to me. And I look forward to the next volume in the series.
April 30, 2017
Another fun read as the Defenders add their most committed member, Nighthawk. Daredevil and Luke Cage also team up with them to defeat the Wreaking Crew and save the earth while fighting for the Grandmaster.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews