BC: DEFENDERS #33

Borrowed Comics

THE DEFENDERS was always a bit of a weird series to me. On the outside, it looked like any other regular Marvel comic of the period. But crack the cover and get into the contents and the stories were almost all unrelentingly weird. This was definitely the case for the run of stories masterminded by writer Steve Gerber, but it was also true of the less-successful creators who both filled in for him along the way or succeeded him. Gerber’s DEFENDERS was unique, though it was of a flavor and a spirit that I didn’t entirely embrace in the late 1970s when I first read this comic. It was an issue owned by my friend David Steckel that I borrowed from him along with the following issue. And it was definitely memorable, even if it didn’t quite get me onto the DEFENDERS train any more solidly.

Here we go, Exhibit A: above is the opening splash page to the story in question. And as you can see, it depicts a homicidal Fawn staring at a mystic image being generated by the Orb of Agamotto, in which the malevolent Headmen have defeated the Defenders and laid them out on slabs for whatever they’re planning to do next. It’s an utterly unforgettable image, in that it’s so completely unlikely that just the very fact of its existence drives itself deep into your brain. Enhancing the disquieting effect is the fact that the page in question was composed by Sal Buscema, one of the most journeyman of journeyman artists of the period, and finished in ink by Jim Mooney, ditto. Neither of these guys were major stylists, so the page is right up the middle, apart from its subject matter. Weird, weird, weird.

And Steve Gerber knows that this is a weird place to come in. so much so that he devotes the next four pages (of a 17-page story) to an extended recap mapping out just how the story got to this point. It goes something like this: Nighthawk of the Defenders was captured by the team’s oddball collection of enemies, the Headmen–so named because each of them has some oddity surrounding their cranium. The Headmen then performed brain surgery on Nighthawk, removing the hero’s brain and replacing it with that of Chondu, one of their members. Kyle Richmond’s brain is left discarded in a dish. As Nighthawk, Chondu infiltrated Dr Strange;s Sanctum and attacked the team unexpectedly with his magical might. But Strange was more than he could handle and he was overwhelmed. Having doped out the brain surgery, Strange then moved Chondu’s mind into the Fawn, who happened to be there, replacing it with the mind of Defenders hanger-on Jack Norriss, the husband of Valkyrie’s human form. The team then headed off to confront the Headmen, but were clobbered by a detonation from new recruit Ruby Thursday’s head. But the Headmen still think that Chondu is in Nighthawk’s body, so Jack is still in the game.

After an aside that cuts away to a young couple in Central Park being captured by aquatic reptilian aliens and blasted off in their rocket (weird!) the plot begins to get moving. Arthur Nagan, the leader of the Headmen, explains that he intends to brainwash the hapless Defenders and turn them into pawns. Jack is having a hard time keeping up a convincing portrayal of Chondu, but Ruby at least is charmed by his rough straightforwardness, and this enables him to bluff things through as the Headmen prepare to make their next move. He gets the assorted Headmen to reveal their own conflicting goals: Nagan wants to craft the world into a precision instrument under his control, Jerry Morgan wants recognition and respect–he invented a shrinking gas years before Hank Pym, but his blew up in his face, shrinking his bones and expanding his flesh to the point where it hangs off of him. And Ruby has turned her entire head into a malleable organic computer and wants to do the same for all of humanity. Three weirdos, am I right?

Back at Dr Strange’s Sanctum, Chondu, who found himself trapped in the body of a Fawn and consequently unable to cast any spells, has been haplessly hurling his body at the windows intent on escape. He eventually manages to break through–but before he can get far, he’s snatched up by one of those amphibious lizard men that I mentioned earlier. The Fawn finds itself teleported into the midst of the other abductees in the center of a strange Greek-styled structure on an otherwise-empty island. Weird. Anyway, back at the Headmen’s digs, the Defenders revive, not less worse for wear from Nagan’s mental reconditioning. Doctor Strange demands the return of Kyle Richmond’s brain, which leads to a fight breaking out between the two groups. As one team is comprised of the Hulk, Valkyrie and Strange himself, you’d think this would be an easy win. But Gerber contrives ways for the battle to carry on longer than it truly ought to.

The melee takes its toll on the suburban house which the Headmen have been using as their headquarters, and it’s practically demolished in the scuffle. At a certain point, Nighthawk’s discarded brain is located, and Strange implores Jack Norriss in Nighthawk’s body to carefully convey it far away from the struggle until he can see whether it might be restored to its proper place. (As a helpful caption spells out, this is the body of Nighthawk with the brain of Chondu and the soul of Jack Norriss carrying the actual gray matter of Nighthawk to safety. Weird, yes?) But as the fight wraps up, Ruby is able to get the drop on the far-more-powerful Defenders by extruding a spray of powerful sticky goo that momentarily ensnared the Headmen’s foes, giving them the moment they need to flee the battlefield.

But the story isn’t quite over yet! As Norriss/Nighthawk enters the airspace of Manhattan and heads towards Doc’s Sanctum, he’s caught in a tractor beam that pulls him up into the rocket the lizard men were using pages earlier. And as the issue closes, Nightjack is confronted by the defenders’ old alien enemy Nebulon and the lizards, whom he introduces as the Ludberties of Zaar! On that note, the issue is To Be Continued! It’s not that I didn’t enjoy this story when I first read it, it’s more that I didn’t quite know what to make of it. It was clearly going for something that was a bit beyond my twelve-year-old brain, but I couldn’t really suss out what. Steve Gerber was producing stories at this time that were on another level entirely, filled with iconoclastic insanity and clearly delivered more towards an older audience than most who were probably picking up a super hero book. This is what made his work such a stand-out in this period, its uniqueness. Even today, you would be hard-pressed to find another comic book like this one, particularly a super hero comic book.

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43 thoughts on “BC: DEFENDERS #33”

  2. All way above my head, man. 😉. Too weird for me. I was around 3 years old when this was released.

    I’ve always liked Nighthawk’s look. I prefer the sometimes present white eye lenses. And the later boots that weren’t folded over, buccaneer style. He seemed like one of the epitomys of the new Bronze age, w/ echoes of the Silver Age.

    When I was old enough to stumble onto the Defenders, they were transitioning from 4 founders plus 3, to the refuge stop-over for some former, original X-Men (& 2 Champions & 1 Avenger).

    I’ve always felt there was more potential in the team than what I saw in the series. These were some heavyweights, on par with the JLA and Avengers

    I never fully understood the “non-team” idea. They used a team name. Looking back, I saw them as a loose alliance rather than a more typical team, which usually meant a charter and rules.

    .

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    1. Weird is a good word for these issues. Tom didn’t mention that somewhere in all of this, there was also an elf shooting people in random issues. Before too long, a new Red Guardian (who just happened to be a lovely Russian brain surgeon, Luke Cage and several grade C villains would be added to the mix. Oh and there was also the “Bozo” movement.

      As a 15 year old, I enjoyed it as I would a wild roller coaster ride. (Although seeing Kyle Richmond’s brain sloshing around in an open dish bugged the daylights out of me.). I also wondered if Steve Gerber would be able to keep all the plates spinning.

      The “non-team” aspect confused me as well. While they took pains to say they weren’t a team, if it walks like duck, sounds like a duck…

      I hope that Kurt joins these responses because he had a very interesting take on this team some years later that I definitely enjoyed.

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      1. The elf was intriguing until the stupid finish. Yeah, I know, Gerber was making a statement about randomness and meaninglessness, but it still doesn’t work.

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      2. “Yeah, I know, Gerber was making a statement about randomness and meaninglessness, but it still doesn’t work.”

        That wasn’t Gerber, that was Dave Kraft and Keith Giffen (and maybe Roger Slifer). Steve never got to finish the Elf storyline, though he probably had no idea where it was going.

        It later got a bigger ending, by DeMatteis and Perlin, and that didn’t work either. At least not to my mind.

        Erik Larsen and I did a bit that looked for a page like the Elf had returned, but it was a fakeout, and turned out to be someone else. I’m not sure how many readers we had who remembered the Elf, though, so we made sure the scene worked on its own.

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      7. I liked the Elf.

        I also genuinely liked a lot of David Kraft’s work, but iI thought he was trying to “Out Gerber Gerber, never a good idea.

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      1. Always liked it. I think mostly because of the color scheme. The dark blue with the yellow accessories, then the red cape/wings. I never knew Len designed it. That’s cool. I kind’a figured it was Sal Buscema, or someone in the Bullpen. I liked it much better than the light blue suit with the black designs on it that he wore in his earlier appearances as the Squadron Sinister. Maybe in “Daredevil”, too.

        It was a bit generic, and consummately Bronze Age. But again, the colors were just satisfying. And I think I’d actually seen Hana-Barbara’s “Blue Falcon & Dog Wonder” before I saw Nighthawk (though Nighthawk came out well before Blue Falcon, who Wikipedia lists as first appearing in 1976). And though there are obvious design differences, one made me click with the other. But I liked Nighthawk’s look more. And then especially in the early 1980’swhen his mask was tweaked and the boots were changed from the folded over Buccaneer boots for a more streamlined look.

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      2. I think John Romita may have tweaked it a little, but Len said he designed it, and I’m willing to take that as authoritative. I think the color scheme worked well, too.

        I think the only improvement ever made to it was ditching the buccaneer boots for something sleeker. Everything else they did, I didn’t think was any sort of improvement.

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      3. I really liked that suit and I liked that he was a try hard who often came up short. Yellow boots and gloves aren’t that practical but Sal B, Giffen, and Perez made him look pretty classy. My introduction to the character in Defenders #17 is still one of my favorites.

        Nighthawk’s original suit had a few things going for it, like the novel use of black, but not enough to overcome the brown cape and the goofy face beak….and it was overall too light.

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      5. I like the original Squadron Supreme’s Nighthawk’s new costume [ Squadron Supreme#1-12 ( September – August 1985-1986 ) ] that is an updating of the original Nighthawk costume.

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  3. Last weekend’s Hammerhead story had me thinking of the Head Men and how he would fit right in, Silvermane too if he’s still has his cyborg body. I have wondered why Silvermane never contacted people like Head Men or Arnim Zola to get a young body ( which in John Byrne’s Sensational She-Hulk they demonstrated they could do cloning too ) which is what he wants ( I know the Head Men could use the cash he would gladly pay ). What was done to Nighthawk was a 1 sided body swop, since he never ended up in Chondu body nor did he or Chondu end up in Jack Noriss’s body. I like Nebulon.

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    1. Dr. Jerry Morgan [ World of Fantasy#11 ( April 1958 ) 1st story “Prisoner of the Fantastic Fog” — A man asks his gangster brother ( Sam Morgan ) for money to perfect his shrink gas, but when he can’t get any, he vents the gas outside, and his brother walks into it and shrinks. He turns himself in to a policeman, but the effect is only temporary since the gas is not perfected. — comics.org ]– so the shrink gas that screwed up Dr. Morgan was his second imperfect shrink gas, since the third one used in later Defenders story/stories works.

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  4. I started collecting the Defrenders with issue 4, when Valkyrie joined up and I was 10 years old. Within the nextv3 years I’d become familiar with Gerber’s unique stories in Man-Thing, Daredevil & Marvel Two-in-One. By 1974, I held him & Englehart as my favorite comics writers and I loved his run on the Defenders. Some of it may have gone over my young head, but his humor, social commentary and even the weirdness of his stories all appealed to me. Maybe in part because I felt like a bit of a misfit myself and his stories made me feel less alone in a world where it seemed everyone demanded conformity in thought and behavior.

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    1. While I did like benevolent authoritative, “establishment” teams like the JLA and Avengers, I did like certain other teams that seemed more on the fringe. Not as far out as the Champions (more conventional than Gerber’s Defenders plots, but the line-up seemed like spare parts and left-overs). The Defenders seemed on the fringe by choice, not because they weren’t effective. Again, their full line-up could’ve stacked up well against the JLA and the Avengers.

      I was drawn to teams like the X-Men and the Outsiders in the mid-80’s, for similar reasons, being a bit independent, if not rogue..

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  5. Steve Gerber’s writing is balm for the spirit. His Defenders books are unique and completely original. Love the Valkyrie. Maybe he has a notebook lying around explaining his unpublished plans for Omega the Unknown?

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      1. Thanks for the response Kurt. Theirs an interesting letter from one of the readers in the lettercol of Omega where he theorizes about the secret behind Omega and James-Michael. Steve responds ‘Thats not right but it’s close ‘ That’s the only hint I’ve read regarding Omega. I can’t recall the issue number in which the letter appears.

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      2. As much as I enjoyed the redo of Omega, I’d have loved for someone to have known what Gerber’s plans were, though it was probably more vague than I’d like. I also wish the book hadn’t been tied up like it was. I still hate it and the Elf conclusion.

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      3. At some point when Jim Mooney was still alive, I think they should have asked Mary Skrenes to finish it. I don’t know if she’d have been willing (I suspect not), but I’m also guessing they never asked.

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      4. She says they did ask her. She refused. She told me, “…when I left New York, I was leaving comics. The thought of coming up with a finale for Marvel was sickening.”

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    2. Given what I know of Gerber’s working methods, I doubt he had anything worked out with OMEGA. While I suspect Mary Skrenes was the principal writer of the feature, at least the early episodes, it was my impression when talking to her that she wanted to put her time in comics in the rear-view mirror as much as possible when she left the field in 1977. She’s bitter about that time. Whatever she may have had written down is likely lost, and she doesn’t remember it anymore. As for what Gerber said in fan-press interviews, he had a shaky relationship with the truth in those things, and he seemed the type who got a kick out of the tease.

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      1. That makes a lot of sense. Amber and Ruth in Omega are the best roommates in fiction. I’m hard put to find more human writing than Steve’s in any medium. There’s a new version of Omega which I haven’t read which looks like a watered down version. Omega kind of reminds me with his costume of Superman/Jor-el and James-Michael is a kind of Billy Batson. With Jim Mooney on art the book definitely has DC silver-age influences.

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  6. I adored Gerber’s DEFENDERS, and this remains one of my favorite storylines of all time. I think this works as an epic superhero saga, while also being an effective parody of epic superhero sagas. The concept of two different villains trying to take over the world at the same time, working to out-maneuver each other while the Defenders try to deal with both (not to mention their own personal issues) made for some really rich, complex stories. The Headmen’s cold intellectualism and Nebulon’s spiritual fervor, which gives them very different views on how the world should be run, are really fascinating, and much more thought-out than the typical world-conqueror.

    I concur with Tom that having Buscema and Mooney, the epitome of the “Marvel house style”, working on this deeply subversive story just makes it that much more subversive. To me, this is Peak Comics.

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  8. I absolutely loved this series — Steve Gerber and Steve Englehart were my favorite writers of the era, and DEFENDERS was definitely on of my favorite books. And it was about to get better, as Klaus Janson joined the creative team.

    Everything Gerber did with them was both weird and solidly rooted in character, and I could have happily read a hundred issues of it. And the Headmen, in particular, were a blast. I loved their “origin” — the pre-existing Headmen all appeared in horror stories that were all reprinted in the same issue of WEIRD WONDER TALES, and Gerber figured, hey, why not?

    I was very happy to bring them back, with Erik Larsen — and to bring in MODOK and Orrgo, a couple more head-intensive villains, along the way.

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      1. I’m very glad you liked it. It was bumpy ride, doing that book — Erik was ill for a while, I ended up working very late into the night the day before the final script was absolutely do to make the deadlines — but it was also an enormous amount of fun to do, and I wish it had been popular enough to continue.

        I particularly liked the issue narrated by the Toad Man. And the one narrated by the Hulk.

        “Fun” comics aren’t as much in disfavor as they were at that moment in the industry, so if Marvel ever collects that series, I think readers will have a chance to discover it and have fun with it themselves.

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      2. Kurt, yes, I would certainly be happy if Marvel published and Epic Collection of yours and Erik’s run on Defenders, with The Order by you and Jo Duffy included, of course. On that later part, I was really happy to see Jo back writing for Marvel, even if it was only for a single storyline. She’s such a great writer. One of the Star Wars issues she wrote was one of the first comics I ever read as a kid.

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  10. Re: Omega the Unknown. Omega is some kind of royalty on his world or ruler a bit like Black Bolt who also doesn’t speak. He comes from a race of advanced intellectual beings who lack emotion leading to stagnation and the slow decay of their civilisation. Omega like Jor-el sends his son James-Michael to Earth to mingle with humans and learn about emotions. This being a complex Gerber book it doesn’t go well. The nihilistic robots represent life with no meaning. A possible reading of Omega the Unknown. Without knowing the intent of the books creators that’s as far as I get.

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  11. I’ve never read this, but this issue was discussed on Alan Stewart’s excellent blog Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books back in December. The general consensus among Alan and the various comments left on that post, and Alan’s retrospectives of the other parts of this lengthy storyline, was that it was weird but very cool & imaginative, yet also undermined somewhat by having way too many moving parts and by Steve Gerber’s habit of plotting by the seat of his pants, making stuff up as he went along.

    Still, though, I guess that Gerber’s Defenders was at least very distinctive compared to a lot of the more standard superhero books Marvel had been putting out for the previous decade and a half, especially the ones following Jack Kirby’s departure that sought to (rather unsuccessfully) evoke his epic work.

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  12. Steves Defenders/Guardians of the Galaxy space epic with Sal Buscema art is wonderfully enjoyable with poetic ideas.

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    1. Steve gave us Starhawk & Aleta [ The Defenders#27-29 ( September-November 1975 ) ]. I just wish the 1990s Guardians of the Galaxy series didn’t rob us of Starhawk being active now like the Deluxe or original Official Handbook says he was ( Early 21st century ), by making him the offspring of Quasar & Her/Ayesha/Kismet. Where is Immortus when you need him to erase that timeline, I rather Starhawk & Aleta active in Earth-616’s universe that Vance Astrovik/Marvel Boy/Justice.

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  13. The Guardians of the Galaxy of the 70s were part of cosmic Marvel. Really interesting science based characters. Steves work on the book equals his work on Howard the Duck and Man-Thing. I loved the addition of Nikki to the team.

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  14. Sorry, can you do something about the layout of the comments? It’s always difficult, but here we have lines only two or even one character wide.

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  15. I still remember walking up to the counter at Heroes and Villains, a local Tucson comic shop, the day after I read that Steve Gerber had died in 2008. When I mentioned his passing to the young clerk on duty behind the register, he replied: “Who’s Steve Gerber?” I wanted to tell him that anyone who asked that question really shouldn’t be working at a comic shop, but instead I just accepted my change and walked out shaking my head. Even as a kid, when I opened a comic and saw Steve Gerber’s name in the credits, I knew it was not going to be like any other comic I read that month, and I absolutely loved that.

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  16. I always liked the way Sal drew Valkyrie with one eye covered. A shy looking superhero. Brilliant. The plot where Val is arrested and placed in a Detention Center for Women and is magically unable to strike a woman is insanely clever. The art team of Sal & Klaus has an unearthly feel adding to the strange goings on and beautifully photo-realistic too.

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