My family were big fans of the Muppet Show every since it first premiered in 1976. We watched it with alarming regularity every Sunday evening at 7:30. So when Jim Henson and company brought their chaotic creations to the big screen, we were sure to be there. And so we were when The Muppet Movie opened at around the time I bought this issue of DEFENDERS. There are those who prefer one or another of the later Muppet films, but in my opinion, none of them ever captured the characters better nor showcased their individualistic and anarchic value more spectacularly than this first Muppet Movie. It remains a great piece of entertainment.
Which, sadly, is more than I can say for DEFENDERS #75. As a series, DEFENDERS had been predicated on a shaky premise to start with: the idea that its leads formed a “non-team” that would still routinely come together every month to join forces against some threat or another. But ever since the departure of writer Steve Gerber, like air slowly being let out of a tire, the entertainment value of DEFENDERS was slowly leaking away. This wasn’t entirely rock bottom, but it was at least circling the drain. And yet, despite all of that, I still never wavered in buying it each and every month. It’s likely that I had drunk the Kool-Aid about the Marvel Universe being an interlocking tapestry, and feeling that a team series in particular was going to be important to keep up with. Comic book fans can make dumb choices sometimes.
We were at least beyond the dreary multi-part Tunnelworld saga, so that was a plus. But in the current story, writer Ed Hannigan was once again attempting to tap into Gerber’s particular strain of madness by bringing in one of Gerber’s other characters: the Foolkiller. The Foolkiller was something of a left-wing parody of the sort of two-fisted vigilante that populated men’s paperback book series and the like. He dispensed lethal punishment to all of those he felt didn’t live a poetic life, considering them fools. The whole thing was absurd, but here Hannigan tries to make the character a bit more plausible, fitting him into a super hero universe. It doesn’t work all that well. I liked the concept of the Foolkiller, but while i tried to enjoy most of this issue, it took some sustained effort from me.
As this story opens, the Foolkiller has wormed his way into the Richmond Riding Academy where the Defenders hang out and he’s taken Dollar Bill hostage. The situation is a complete mismatch, as almost any of the super heroes in attendance–Valkyrie, Clea, Hellcat–ought to be able to take Foolkiller down expediently without jeopardizing Dollar Bill’s life. But the plot calls for them not to do this, so they go along as Foolkiller pops in a tape of the recent broadcast of Dollar Bill’s documentary about the team, explaining how the footage reveals them all as fools. As Valkyrie makes a move against him, Foolkiller is able to momentarily stun her with his zap-pistol, then bring the entire ceiling of the building down atop them all, escaping in the chaos. Meanwhile, heading back from a meeting where he’s been legally ordered to give him his costumed life, Kyle Richmond gets a call about the battle being raged at his Riding Academy, and despite the court order against him suits up again as Nighthawk to enter the fray.
There’s a bit of a strange PSA here in the narrative as we cut to the Incredible Hulk, who has come across a beached whale. At first angry about the whale disturbing his solitude, once the Green Goliath realizes that the whale cannot re-enter the surf on its own, he uses his great strength to pull the whale back into the ocean. There’s an editorial note giving readers concerned about similar whales the address of Greanpeace. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Valkyrie is finally able to get her hands on Foolkiller, and that’s all she wrote for him. She clobbers him quickly and well, ending the ongoing conflict.
By the time Nighthawk is able to get to the Academy, the place is already swarming with EMTs, firefighters and cops, and the place is in an absolute wreck. Nighthawk flips out at the damage done to his property, right at a time when his fortune and good name are already being challenged. When a reporter hungry for a statement mistakenly calls him Hawkeye, Nighthawk loses his cool, declaring that the Defenders are disbanded before kicking them all off his property. It’s at this point that the Hulk shows up and starts smashing up cop cars, thinking the authorities are hassling his super hero friends.
Valkyrie steps in to calm the Hulk down, but upon hearing that the group is kaput, the upset behemoth leaps away. Val wasted no time in blaming herself, because Kyle left her in charge of the team while he was gone, and she let all of this happen. At this point, Richard Rory and Amber, who had accompanied Foolkiller, ask for Val and Hellcat’s help in locating their missing friend James-Michael Starling. J-M had been the headline character of another discontinued Gerber strip, OMEGA THE UNKNOWN. And indeed, in a final epilogue, we see Omega himself laid out on a slab in a Las Vegas morgue. At the cancellation of the OMEGA series, Marvel had promised that the story would be concluded in DEFENDERS, no doubt imagining that Gerber would handle it there. Instead, this chore fell to Ed Hannigan to complete–and not mincing any words, he utterly botched it. But we’ll find out more about that as we get to the point where I bought both of those issues. For the time being, this was another underwhelming issue in a string of underwhelming issues. But still I kept plugging along and buying it.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 