My interest in DEFENDERS was rapidly waning, but that didn’t stop me from dutifully picking up each issue for some reason. No doubt this was because it was a Marvel team book and seemed like required reading to keep up with the Marvel Universe. This would go on for the next year or two, a slog of an era that mostly remains unmemorable to me, yet which I added to my stack of books every time it came out. Other titles were not always so fortunate, but for some reason, this and GHOST RIDER (once I started reading it with regularity) would get the nod long after I had ceased to enjoy them. Comic book readers can be strange creatures with strange habits.
This was the final chapter of a three-part story set in Asgard that delved into the origins of Valkyrie, a character to whom I never quite warmed. Artwork was provided by Herb Trimpe, whose style was often not to my tastes. I found it typically pretty stiff and lifeless, though I did like it on the Hulk reprints then running in MARVEL SUPER HEROES as well as the occasional licensed title such as SHOGUN WARRIORS. But in general, his approach left me cold, and that was the case here, even with Pablo Marcos bringing a bit more lushness to his line. Herb was a very solid workhorse artist who knew how to tell a story, but in a world of John Byrnes and George Perezes, he didn’t quite make the grade for me.
So a quick recap of where we are: the Defenders are in Valhalla, the Land of the Dead, where they’ve thrown their lot in with the forces of Ollerus the Unmerciful, who is looking to unseat Hela as the ruler of the realm. This is because Valkyrie, their comrade, has asked for their aid in this conflict. Except this isn’t the Valkyrie they know. Unbeknownst to them, it’s the insane spirit of Barbara Norris, the earthwoman in whose spirit Val’s had resided, now made over into a duplicate of Val (albeit attired in a different costume.) The real Val has been fighting on behalf of Hela in this conflict, so her fellow Defenders are unknowingly helping out the bad guys.
Things are going well for Ollerus, too, as his legions continue to advance, overwhelming Hela’s defensive army of warriors from Valhalla. Hela has petitioned Odin for aid, but the All-Father tells her that he’s going to stay out of the internal affairs of Niffelheim and let the cards fall where they may. If Ollerus takes Valhalla, so be it. And during the battle, the Hulk is shocked to see two Valkyries, but his simple mind assumes that the newcomer, the true Val, must be an impostor, and lays her low with a well-hurled boulder. This impression doesn’t last long, though, as Barbara Norris is completely out of her mind, and even the Hulk can tell that she’s not his friend Valkyrie.
So at this point, the Defenders switch up sides, throwing in with the real Val as well as Harokin, the leader of Valhalla’s army. With their power added to the realm’s defenders, Ollerus finds his advance thwarted. But he’d still got one ace to play: his mobile Mystic Mountain, which has served as his headquarters and stronghold. He causes it to advance into the heart of Valhalla, using it to crush all resistance before him.
It looks as though Ollerus’ forces have won the day as the Valhallan army is crushed and scattered by the unstoppable mountain. They have nothing within their arsenal to counter its power. Well, almost nothing. The single-minded Hulk hurls himself at the mountain, and with pure brute force smashes his way into it. He’s eventually able to locate the nexus of mystical energy that is animating the structure, but he can’t really do anything to smash it. So he does the next best thing: completely shattering and destroying the entire mountain itself with his bare fists.
So Ollerus’ gambit is lost, and in the aftermath of the conflict, Hela declares that henceforth, even she shall be forbidden to enter Valhalla. Only the most noble of souls will be allowed to dwell therein hereafter. And the Defenders will be restored to live back on Earth, which is good news for them. Among them is Valkyrie, who still inhabits Barbara Norris’ human form. It was Barbara in her body who was cast into Niffelheim as the prophesy that brought her back to Asgard had foreseen, so she is ready and able to resume her life on Earth as well. And that’s where this issue wraps up, with the Defenders crossing the Rainbow Bridge back home.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
The days of Kyle’s Kooky Quartet was really the bottom for the title. It only survived because of the Hulk TV show.
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For me, the only good thing about this arc was wrapping up the years long dangling plot thread of Barbara Norris. The bad? Oh, there was so much. The first I regret and it was not liking the art at the time. Herb Trimpe, like Don Heck, was someone it took me too long to appreciate. Looking at the pages chosen I can see now he was a master at laying out the story to help the reader without getting in the way of the writer and when it came to conveying emotion he was a powerhouse. It also doesn’t hurt that I hadn’t realized yet that I prefer my art on the stylized side. Give me Colleen Doran over Neal Adams any day.
The rest? The story was boring. Kraft (and for that matter Hannigan too since he was mentioned in the credits) was absolute middle of the creative list for me. Didn’t excite me but didn’t turn me off enough if the art and character were to my liking. Barbara’s undeserved ‘final’ fate rankled. Val not caring that her original body had been cursed to damnation was wrong. Her friends acting like they’d just played a softball game and we’re heading out for beer and pizza after was tone deaf. The villains were way too D List.
What kept me reading through these fallow years was my love for the core group. Hulk, Kyle, Patsy, and Val were the Defenders and so appealing. Even the worst arc couldn’t diminish that. Eventually Isaac/Gargoyle would be added and it was even better. I think if DeMatteis hadn’t jettisoned all but Val and added members that had to move onto the original embarrassment that was X-Factor Defenders might have survived much longer. Gillis was certainly firing on all cylinders when the editorial misstep happened so who knows?
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If I remember right, DEFENDERS was one of a batch of titles canceled to create production space for the New Universe. It could possibly have survived if it wasn’t among Marvel’s lowest-selling books at the time, but since the “New Defenders” direction happened because the previous era had been slipping toward cancellation level, I don’t think sticking with it would have saved it.
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I think the main problem with DEFENDERS, by that point, was that J.M. deMatteis and then Peter Gillis wanted to do a sophisticated book like X-MEN, full of character depth and interpersonal drama, and Don Perlin was a very meat and potatoes kind of artist.
Perlin also seemed to enjoy drawing horror material, but didn’t bring much nuance to it. The horror-themed DeMatteis run might have been more of a winner with a moodier artist. Or a Perlin DEFENDERS could have worked with a more straight-up action writer. But it felt like a book where the writers and artist were just not pulling in the same direction.
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Writer & artist not pulling in the same direction could be the case, creatively, but @ least personally, JM has mentioned in interviews that he & Don became close friends. JM also mentioned that he found himself in the position of writing a straight-up team-book, despite the “non-team” tag (I never liked that), & up to that point he’d avoided writing “a straight-up team book”, I guess like the Avengers.
I’ve no idea if or when that sentiment changed. But I did like JM’s handling of the last days of JLDetroit (bit of a horror feel w/ Prof Ivo, now that you mention it), after taking the book over from Gerry Conway, before the launch of the JL he scripted for Keith Giffen (fellow Defenders alum) & editor Andy Helfer (I liked a lot of the books he edited).
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Kraft and Hannigan rate even lower with me. And while smashing the mountain was impressive “Hulk breaks the bad thing” is about the most simplistic ending you could ask for.
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Boy, this should have been great. You can tell they were going for a classic Lee/Kirby style cosmic epic (including bringing back a lot of characters and lore from the old “Tales of Asgard”), but it just falls flat. Aside from the Hulk (who’s tearing-down-the-mountain scene is admittedly pretty cool), this is not a team that’s qualified to go up against an army of Asgardians. If only Dr. Strange, or Namor, or or Silver Surfer, even Son of Satan (talk about mixing your mythologies!) had been there…
I was also disappointed in the retcons to Valkyrie’s origins. I thought the old version, where she was conjured from whole cloth to be the Enchantress’ stooge, and was now free to create her own identity, was way more compelling. This just makes her seem like a second-rate Thor knock-off, and raises the question of why none of her Asgardian companions ever came looking for her.
After several good-to-great arcs on the series, this was a step down. And sadly, that downward trend became the rule, rather than the exception.
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Some mileage was gotten from Val being angry that no one looked for or missed her but yeah, not enough. As for the comparison to Thor’s set up, she was Val 24-7 Instead of having Barbara be her Don Blake, the insane host was completely submerged. The classic Thor set up was used in Fearless Defenders to very bad effect though. I hated Val being killed off to make room for another complete reinvention of Jane Foster but at least I don’t have to read stories with her body swapping with a character with zero charisma who dragged long a love interest even more boring.
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Yeah, I never cottoned to Val as a real Valkyrie. Nor to Gerber taking “I don’t want to hit another woman” and making it Valkyrie’s kryptonite.
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I wish Marvel just let them be “Earth’s Other Mightiest Heroes”. Jason Aaron’s Avengers run was sort of what I’ve always wanted for the classic Defenders. And by the end of his run, he had 3 of them on his team. But I’d prefer the Defenders as a roster of badasses not bound by a rulebook or government permissions & licenses & liaisons. No spell necessary. Just a similar enough world (weary) view. A loose alliance of autonomous powerhouses, whose only charter was the bond of their word. No monitor duty. No insurance waivers. Maybe a secret handshake or some passwords/codewords. 😉
Dr. Stephen Strange; Banner’s Hulk; Namor the Sub-Mariner; the Silver Surfer (Norrin Radd); the current (Black) Nighthawk/Kyle Richmond; add in Ava Ayala as Hellcat in the dark blue suit Breyfogle drew for the miniseries Englehart wrote (yellow as the main color is for ripe bananas, lemons, & yellow squash); & an incarnation of the Valkyrie.
A truly formidable force for anyone in Marvel’s vast cosmos to contend with. On Earth or anywhere else (including different Earths). As much as I loath the endless stream of hero vs. hero fights, the different paths & outlooks of the Avengers & Defenders would cause tensions. There’s a stinkier whiff of arrogance & a real sense of independence to the Defenders. Just as Bendis created between the traditional “Avengers style” & the Illuminati. So if you had to resort to it for a big sales bump, you could have an “Avengers & Defenders War 2”, or something like it.
Lots of drama & character conflict since many of the core members from each have a shared history that go as far back as the WW2 Invaders, through the creation of the Avengers, & shared experiences (Kree/Skrull War, Infinity Gauntlet/Thanos conflicts, the original Secret Wars), & countless guest appearances in all their related/respective solo & team books.
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I imagine everyone here knows that Steve Englehart’s the guy who invented Val’s “never kick a woman” kryptonite, even if Gerber used it more. Englehart also started the “Barbara’s spirit sometimes pops out” schtick, while I don’t recall Gerber using that bit at all. I was happy to see that the spiritual mixmaster between Val and Barbara ironed out a little better– after all, it couldn’t have led to any good storylines– but really, did any reader even bring the matter up? Did Kraft just have a desire to eliminate a troublesome bit of continuity, even though he didn’t end up staying all that much longer with the title? Regardless, every plot-point in this three parter feels rushed and under-thought, but some good potential was there.
Englehart’s feminist kryptonite was never explained in DEFENDERS #4, but I thought the loose implication was that Enchantress didn’t want her creation lifting a hand against her. As a subsequent Gerber story showed, that injunction didn’t keep Val from clobbering Lorelei’s axe-happy partner. But why does a sorceress need a special injunction to control her own magical creation? In a funny way, Enchantress’ “don’t hit me” rule makes more sense in retrospect once Val became a sentient agent with her own will–though I don’t have any reason to think Englehart planned things that way.
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Argh– Amora, not Lorelei…
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Another great article that was sent to me. Was good pals with Herb. Miss that guy as a fan and friend and co-worker. Seeing his work come out in Defenders and Shogun Warriors and anything ,was always a highlight for me growing up.
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