DEFENDERS from here on out was rough sledding for a very long time, and I’m surprised that my younger self stuck with it for as long as he did, especially since I had no problem dropping other books that I wasn’t enjoying. (Well, in some cases. I bought GHOST RIDER for years too, for reasons that defy understanding.) But somehow, it felt like I had to pick up DEFENDERS every month, that to not do so might be to miss out on some important nugget of story-material pertaining to the Marvel Universe. Despite having just turned twelve, I was pretty dumb–but it speaks to the mythology that had been built up around Marvel on its letters pages and Bullpen pages about how each release was just one stitch in an ever-growing interconnected tapestry. As a young reader, i definitely bought into this.
Ed Hannigan was a pretty good artist and an absolutely great cover designer–genuinely first flight. But as a writer, at least at this point, he was dull as could be. The start of his run was mainly dedicated to cleaning up plotlines that had been started by his now-departed predecessor, and while he did yeoman service t bring those stories to some manner of conclusion, those endings really weren’t worth the trip. Simultaneously, Herb Trimpe wasn’t an artist whose work I loved either. I found him to be good on HULK, and so his presence here is understandable. But his Jack Kirby-derived style often felt stiff and blocky to me. If you put him on something like SHOGUN WARRIORS, whose giant robots were intended to be a bit stiff, then it worked well. But on a feature like DEFENDERS, I often found his pages to be unattractive and lifeless. Sorry, Herb.
This issue begins the wrap-up on the long-running mystery of just what the deal is with Lunatik, a crazy vigilante character who’d been bouncing around in the series for close to twenty issues now, typically interacting with Valkyrie. So this story opens with the Defenders returning home after their recent exploits and Val getting a letter in the mail that includes her course schedule for her next semester at Empire State University as well as an invitation to a “Midnight Mixer” social being held a few days from then. Needing a break from all of their super heroing, the Defenders decide to attend the dance en masse.
At the dance, the civilian-guised Defenders renew their acquaintance with both Dollar Bill, the film student who had recorded a documentary about their activities that caused them no end of headaches, and Professor Turk. As they speak, a student, Ledge, comes forward to accuse Turk of secretly being Lunatik, who had previously put Ledge in the hospital. The way they’re drawn, either Turk or Ledge could easily be Lunatik. Val and Patsy leave the dance following the altercation to get some air–and who do they happen to see striding across the college grounds but the aforementioned Lunatik? Val gives chase while Patsy reaches out to Kyle Richmond for back-up.
Valkyrie catches up to Lunatik as he savagely attacks a bunch of students who are just hanging out after what he deems curfew time. As before, Lunatik spouts a steady stream of commercial jingle slogans and pop culture references–he was an early forerunner to characters such as Deadpool in this regard–and mixes it up with Val. But eventually, after a couple of pages of conflict, Valkyrie is able to clock Lunatik with her thrown sword Dragonfang, and everything seems like it’s all going to be wrapped up nicely. Except that, cutting elsewhere on the campus, Patsy has now donned her Hellcat gear, and she too has come across Lunatik. Not seeing Valkyrie around, she moves in to clobber Lunatik before he realizes what’s happening.
Lunatik is surprised to be jumped by Hellcat, but he puts up a good fight for a number of pages. Still, Patsy is able to eventually knock him unconscious. So now the threat of Lunatik is definitely ended, right? Wrong! Because Nighthawk has now arrived on the campus, and from the air, he too sees Lunatik sneaking around and flies down to dive-bomb him. Lunatik, though, spies Nighthawk’s reflection in a nearby window and is able to avoid Kyle’s sneak attack. And as with the other two conflicts, Nighthawk and Lunatik spar for a few pages before the high-flying Defender can overcome his wily foe.
Getting together an comparing notes, the Defenders trio is absolutely baffled by the fact that each one of them as a defeated Lunatik in tow. As the team tries to make sense of all of this, a crowd of students forms around them. And from that crowd, Professor Turk steps forward–and declares that he is really Lunatik! What’s going on here? Hell if I knew. But the story was a t this point To Be continued, so it was going to be thirty days or so before I’d find anything more out.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
I think it was made pretty clear in issue 60 via a split face panel with 1/2 of Lunatik’s face on the left, and 1/2 of Professor Turk’s on right that they were the same person.
I stuck with Defenders from around issue 50 and dropped it at the end of this storyline I think.
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I liked Hannigan’s writing for the most part…he couldn’t quite match Steve Gerber’s level of insanity (and the editors probably didn’t want him to), but at least he maintained some of the off-beat flavor of the title. His stories did tend to drag on a bit, though. I really enjoyed Lunatik, his brand of “fourth wall”-bending humor is commonplace now, but was novel at the time.
I’m not sure what was going on with Herb Trimpe’s art…this run definitely seemed like a step down from his glory days on the HULK series. Maybe he and Hannigan just weren’t simpatico, I dunno. Still, I preferred his work to Don Perlin’s, who stayed on the series for what seemed like an eternity…
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I love Trimpe art even inked badly here. Can’t explain it. It’s just a quirk of my taste. I’ll admit he did look better if a Severin inked him.
And Hannigan has to be my least favorite Defenders writer but I still stayed on the book to the end. I had too much affection for Bird Nose and sword Girl, I guess,
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I have been known to refer to this period as āHanniganās Bog,ā with all due respect to Ed.
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I thought Hannigan was a good artist that had never excited me and thanks to Google I wonder why. His body of work as an artist, that I read at least, is like ninety percent stuff I remember enjoying reading. I never read anything else written by him though. Was any of it more successful than his Defenders run?
BTW, know those things you daydream about where things happened differently in comics history, like DC buying Captain Marvel from Fawcett instead of the character going into limbo? I’d change things so that Defenders sold as well as Avengers into the modern day…
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Ed was a very solid artist, a world-class cover designer, and a serviceable writer. Most of his writing is perfectly fine, in the sense that you wouldn’t read it and think, “I did not like that.” But you might not be likely to say “That was great, I want the next issue now” either. And I expect he was a very good co-plotter, with a good sense of how to deliver an idea visually.
DEFENDERS just needed…more. It had a reputation of weirdness (and plenty of weird unresolved plot threads) that maybe Ed felt he should live up to, but he might have been better served to emulate the pre-Gerber days of Roy, Steve and Len. I always got the impression that — in the early days, at least — DEFENDERS was a book that sold on the newsstand because of the Hulk, and in the direct market because it was weird, and as the newsstand market failed and the weirdness never really matched Gerber and Kraft, it just had less and less of a reason to be.
The other writing he did, aside from a fill-in here or there or co-plotting, was a short run on BLACK PANTHER, a few issues of POWER MAN & IRON FIST, and a couple of mini-series he wrote and drew at DC — a creator-owned project called SKULL & BONES and an Elseworld called LEAGUE OF JUSTICE. And they were fine. Nothing to be ashamed of, nothing that really stood out among the other books of the time.
So I wouldn’t say he was a bad writer so much as a middling one, but DEFENDERS needed a strong writer with a distinctive vision,* and Gerber definitely did that, Kraft did it in an undisciplined way, and DeMatteis had a different-but-solid approach. It’s no crime not to do as well as those writers on a tough book.
*or maybe a strong writer who could do meat-and-potatoes superheroes on a high level — Roy’s pre-series stories, Steve’s beginning run and Len’s brief run were successful, and weren’t wildly unusual, just solidly-crafted Marvel books that had energy and fun.
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I think Nighthawk, Valkerie, and Hellcat added some juice to the Defenders book feeling like a halfway house/casual hangout for B and C-level heroes trying to make a go of it. The original group of big guns: Doc Strange, Hulk, Sub-mariner, and Surfer held less appeal to me…though I liked Doc and the Hulk interacting with Nighthawk, Val, Hellcat…and add on members like Yellowjacket, Daredevil, Moon Knight etc. made the book a fun read for a while.
It’s a tough needle to thread because unlike the FF, Avengers, and X-men… the Defenders as a “non-team” is a weak concept. Since every super hero in the MU pretty much becomes an Avenger these days I think the Defenders concept becomes even tougher to resolve…..unless they’re just the dregs of the Marvel Universe.
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Elf with a Gun [ Defenders#25 ( July 1975 ) Steve Gerber & Sal Buscema — Gerber left without explaining him ( Marvunapp.com )– was J.M. DeMatteis explanation Gerber’s? ], Lunatik [ Defenders#51 ( September 1977 ) David Anthony Kraft, Keith Giffen & Klaus Janson — was he meant to be Arisen Tyrk?] and “Unidentified Empath” ( as the Official Index calls him ) [ The Avengers#178 ( December 1978 ) Steve Gerber, Carmine Infantino & Ruby Nebres — is another writer going to come up with an explanation for him that is different from what Gerber planned? ]– are there more of these guys?
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Another example of a creator ( Roger Stern ) leaving without telling anyone his ideas on his character can be seen at comics.org [ The Amazing Spider-Man#289 ( June 1987 ) plus Tom DeFalco quit the book without providing the identity of who he intended it to be ] concerning the identity of the original Hobgoblin.
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Stern returned for a time to complete his story of the Hobgoblin. Like the Green Goblin, Hobby lost his spark after his ID was made bare.
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I can’t cite an exact source so take it as you will but I don’t think DeMatteis’ explanation for the Elf With A Gun was Gerber’s, whatever the latter writer had in mind for the concept. Personally, I was happy with the Elf’s story ending after he was hit by a truck. The sudden, random conclusion seemed very Gerber to me.
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oddly enough that sentiment was first proposed by one of the KISS members in their Super Special #1 ( which was written by Gerber if memory serves me). I think it was Peter Criss that says about the appearance of the Elf With A Gun, āI hope he gets hit by a truckā¦ā.
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I’ve waited all these years, and I believe that we needed another Steve Gerber all along. Love or despise his work, he had the only brain that could do it.
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Love was it for me. His Epic and Marvel work is still unparallelled in many ways.
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I remember Hannigan’s “Skull & Bones”. By then I’d lost my taste for his work. He was still solid, but it wasn’t what I was into then. Same for his “Green Arrow” run written by Mike Grell, post “Longbow Hunters”. A d Ed’s art with the great John Beatty on the 1st “LotDK” arc, written by Denny O’Neil. “Shana “? I bought all of that story, but it was too quiet for me.
Before all that, I knew Ed’s awesome cover work. Inked by luminaries like Dick Giordano and Klaus Janson, among others. But to me his best stuff was drawing some of Bill Mantlo’s Spidey stories, including some with Bill’s (and Ed’s?) Cloak and Dagger. Maybe it was the inks, but the art seemed darkly atmospheric, & well suited to the story.
The “non-team” concept failed for me. And Nighthawk’s trying to force a conventional team out of them felt painfully awkward. It didn’t need to be as formal as the Avengers. But bringing it up so often & making it a point of contention or source of drama, was off-putting.
I also wasn’t interested in Son of Satan, or Devil Slayer, or other randos who dropped in. The initial 3 heavy hitters, plus relatively quick addition Silver Surfer set the bar really high. Earth’s “other” mightiest heroes. A little darker, a bit less compliant with Authority as the Avengers. They had their own code, & needed no one’s permission.
“To live outside the law, you must be just”. A lined credited to Bob Dylan, used in ads for DC’s Outsiders, and retroactively applicable to the Defenders. A loose alliance of noble & powerful heroes who walked their own path. Unsanctioned.
Valkyrie fit in. Hellcat, OK. Nighthawk’s look was classic Bronze Age. Influenced by the Silver, and far more conventional in appearance than his teammates. He was a bit redundant. But totally visually recognizable as a superhero, & I think worked in the line-up, at least, again, visually. That dark blue was more serious than Cap’s lighter shade back in the day. (Why was Cap’s blue a lighter, weaker shade than the blue in the US flag? I disliked that.). The other primary colored components of his suit. He should’ve been much more than a B sister. I think he suffered from the period dialog & ideas of the day. He wasn’t allowed to transcend his times, but instead was trapped by them.
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Nighthawk was always fascinating to me, precisely because he was such a sad sack. He had no strong motivation to take up the cape; the Grandmaster handed him his costume and powers, said “You’re a supervillain now”, and he just shrugged and went along with it. He was happy enough to tag along with the Squadron Sinister, until they finally went too far (threatening to destroy the planet), and he sort of fell backwards into the Defenders. “Hmm, I guess I’m a superhero now. Cool.” He eventually became the de facto leader, mainly because no one else could be bothered. I always got the impression that the other Defenders just sort of tolerated him, and didn’t have the heart to tell him to get lost, because it was obvious he didn’t have anything else going on in his life. I guess I’m just charmed by the idea of the superhero equivalent of a AA baseball player, convinced that he’s going to break into the big leagues any day now, but never quite gets there.
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I thought more of Kyle than you and still prefer his character to the alt world jerks. It might have taken seeing what would happen if he stayed a villain to change his course and maybe he was in over his head as leader rather than member and patron but he kept on trying.
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*Cell phone typo; I know the 1st “LotDK” arc was “Shaman”. Fat fingertips on a sensitive touch screen. š
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