This two page spread summarizes pretty much every thing I love about The Defenders.
The team, along with Nick Fury and Moon Knight, begin this story amid the wreckage of the last arc.
Then it’s on to a solo mission: Nighthawk versus my favorite dumb villain: The Ringer!
This was Ringer’s first appearance.
And finally, dolla dolla bill y’all!
This is the first appearance of future Defenders official photographer and hanger-on, Dollar Bill, who Valkyrie meets while signing up for classes in college.
And Hulk eats.
One more thing: Elf with a Gun may be dead, but there’s another ultraviolent subplot brewing. We don’t know who he is yet, but there’s a vigilante beating people with a pipe.
He’s beating a fat guy who litters, so that means he’s either a more extreme Foolkiller (the fat guy is eating junk food) or a more extreme Punisher (punishing the crime of littering).
This is Lunatik.
Screw “Lunatik”, screw “Dollar Bill”, screw all of Dollar Bill’s weirdo buddies, screw the Elf with a Gun, screw David Anthony Kraft, and screw Keith Giffen. This period of ‘Defenders’ history is so horrible that it makes the miserable 1983-1985 “New Defenders” period seem like late Seventies Claremont/Byrne ‘X-Men’ by comparison. And this on the heels of Steve Gerber and Sal Buscema’s legendary 1973-1976 run, which was Marvel’s showpiece series until the aforementioned Byrne took over the ‘New X-Men’. If these characters and their creators are all so great, then where have they BEEN the past forty-six years-??? Marvel could not have been doing a better job of killing off this series if they were TRYING. Like putting Jack Kirby on ‘Captain America’, and ‘Black Panther’. How long did the Valkyrie’s celebrated college career last- a week-?? About as long as ‘The New Teen Titan’s Raven’s did. I thought about bombarding Marvel with hate-mail at the time, but ultimately decided against it. I didn’t want them to think I was petty, just because they were trying to destroy one of my favorite of their series. And just where ARE Kraft and Giffen- a VERY poor man’s Jack Kirby-today-?? Wal-Mart greeters, or dipping fries at Mickey D’s-???
Oops! According to their IMDB pages, they’re both DEAD!! Giffen died just LAST MONTH!! My bad!!
Oh wow. I had no idea….