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Marvel Masterworks: The Defenders #5
Marvel Masterworks: The Defenders, Vol. 5
Collects Defenders (1972) #31-41, Annual (1976) #1, Marvel Treasury Edition (1974) #12.
Steve Gerber's Defenders run comes to its revolutionary conclusion! Gerber consistently broke the boundaries of what a super-hero comic could be, and his Headmen saga stands as one of the high points in a celebrated career. From the Elf With a Gun to Bambi and the Bozos, Gerber wove together an unlikely cast with a challenging critique of the era's culture. His stories would influence a generation of new writers — and with artwork by the stellar team of Sal Buscema and Klaus Janson, Defenders is an indisputable '70s Marvel masterpiece. And we've topped it off with the classic Defenders/Howard the Duck MARVEL TREASURY EDITION team-up. Need we say more?
Steve Gerber's Defenders run comes to its revolutionary conclusion! Gerber consistently broke the boundaries of what a super-hero comic could be, and his Headmen saga stands as one of the high points in a celebrated career. From the Elf With a Gun to Bambi and the Bozos, Gerber wove together an unlikely cast with a challenging critique of the era's culture. His stories would influence a generation of new writers — and with artwork by the stellar team of Sal Buscema and Klaus Janson, Defenders is an indisputable '70s Marvel masterpiece. And we've topped it off with the classic Defenders/Howard the Duck MARVEL TREASURY EDITION team-up. Need we say more?
277 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 27, 2015
9 people are currently reading
65 people want to read
About the author
Steve Gerber
642 books66 followersSteve 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'
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'
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 10, 2021
I think you either really like Steve Gerber's whacky approach to the Defenders or you really don't. Luckily for me, I fall into the pro camp, so this volume (entirely penned by Gerber) was a true delight for me.
It doesn't hurt that it's penciled in its entirety by Solid Sal Buscema and he has some great inkers delineating his pencils too. In fact, the inkers should get a bigger slice of the glory as throughout the second half of the book Sal's only doing layouts. It still really looks like his work, though, so the inkers did well, particularly Klaus Janson.
One word of warning: the murderous elf subplot is not resolved in this volume, so don't expect to find out what the heck that's all about in this book.
The Defenders' line-up in this book is: Dr. Strange, the Hulk, Nighthawk, Valkyrie, Power Man and the Red Guardian. In fact, this book contains the Red Guardian's first ever appearance! (This is the second Red Guardian, not the original who's the Black Widow's ex-husband.)
My next book: Beasts of Burden: Occupied Territory
It doesn't hurt that it's penciled in its entirety by Solid Sal Buscema and he has some great inkers delineating his pencils too. In fact, the inkers should get a bigger slice of the glory as throughout the second half of the book Sal's only doing layouts. It still really looks like his work, though, so the inkers did well, particularly Klaus Janson.
One word of warning: the murderous elf subplot is not resolved in this volume, so don't expect to find out what the heck that's all about in this book.
The Defenders' line-up in this book is: Dr. Strange, the Hulk, Nighthawk, Valkyrie, Power Man and the Red Guardian. In fact, this book contains the Red Guardian's first ever appearance! (This is the second Red Guardian, not the original who's the Black Widow's ex-husband.)
My next book: Beasts of Burden: Occupied Territory
May 21, 2016
Can't say I'm a fan of Steve Gerber's weird stories. They definitely fall in line with the Gardner Fox odd-ball, out-of-left-field style of plotting. I don't remember reading these as a youth so there's little nostalgia for this volume. Very early inks by Klaus Jansen honestly mar Sal Buscema's pencils. Valkyrie gets her second ugly golden costume. Not my favorite Defenders collection.
January 9, 2016
I actually own the comics and this was a phenomenal run. I've read a lot of Gerber's other work (Adventure Into Fear, Man-Thing, Howard the Duck, Marvel Spotlight Son of Satan, Avengers, Captain America, Daredevil, Iron Man, Sub-Mariner, Incredible Hulk, Marvel Two-In-One, and Marvel Presents Guardians of the Galaxy) and this is by far the best. Watch out! That elf has a gun!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 22, 2019
These comics suffer from a malady common to 70s Marvel comics, which is that they are horribly overwritten. Dialog is more frequent and flowery than necessary and the caption boxes are completely out of control. That being said, I have a lot of affection for these issues, written by Steve Gerber. They are so weird and unusual, in a way that nothing else at Marvel really was, and he refused to allow this title to fall into a routine. He was gone too young, but this is a great look at some of his most offbeat work.
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May 3, 2022It's not as good as I remembered.
Back in the eighties, the Defenders was one of the comic books I wanted to find on the book stall. It was so funny and so unpredictable. Now, I think I might find it funny if I remembered the references to what was happening in the real world but I don't. However, there is a piece about the Hulk watching Disney films, this was before Disney bought Marvel, and Valkyrie went to prison. Who doesn't love a riot in a women's prison?
Back in the eighties, the Defenders was one of the comic books I wanted to find on the book stall. It was so funny and so unpredictable. Now, I think I might find it funny if I remembered the references to what was happening in the real world but I don't. However, there is a piece about the Hulk watching Disney films, this was before Disney bought Marvel, and Valkyrie went to prison. Who doesn't love a riot in a women's prison?
September 21, 2022
I general forgot how Steve Gerber wrote the Defenders. The strangeness of the stories, the absolute almost non-direction that the strange tales take as he creates the stories without planning ahead. I love it. Everything from the Elf that kills to the use of the Headsman gang.
Worth the read, if you like Howard the Duck, he even is in this collection from the Howard the Duck Treasury Edition featuring the Defenders.
Gerber is a genius--albeit a strange one.
Worth the read, if you like Howard the Duck, he even is in this collection from the Howard the Duck Treasury Edition featuring the Defenders.
Gerber is a genius--albeit a strange one.
October 22, 2022
Okay, five stars is probably a little high for this but what the heck it is a blast! Gerber does such wonderful and wacky stuff with these characters and it is all quite imaginative and fun. Silly at times but definitely not the same old thing.
June 22, 2021
This is probably closer to 3.5 in that it is a little higher than other series from the same time period.
Gerber's writing on the Defenders if very different from other Marvel stories. In this volume, read as a whole, it is almost like a stream of consciousness, the characters, both individually and as a group seem to flit from one issue to another, sometimes within a single issue. Some of those issues are relatively minor and personal and there's usually an overall villain thread. In the end, just about everything gets resolved (except for one strange series of interludes that if Gerber continued probably would have finished.) During his run you get a full explanation of Valkyrie and I found I ended up liking her.
I didn't appreciate his writing as much on the last volume because it was so different it almost seemed mundane but I get it now and may go back for a reread of his run. The art is mostly by Sal Buscema and it is really good. It's a very interesting approach to a team book.
Gerber's writing on the Defenders if very different from other Marvel stories. In this volume, read as a whole, it is almost like a stream of consciousness, the characters, both individually and as a group seem to flit from one issue to another, sometimes within a single issue. Some of those issues are relatively minor and personal and there's usually an overall villain thread. In the end, just about everything gets resolved (except for one strange series of interludes that if Gerber continued probably would have finished.) During his run you get a full explanation of Valkyrie and I found I ended up liking her.
I didn't appreciate his writing as much on the last volume because it was so different it almost seemed mundane but I get it now and may go back for a reread of his run. The art is mostly by Sal Buscema and it is really good. It's a very interesting approach to a team book.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews