Avengers Rock Group: while earlier family acts such as the Fantastic Four charted in the 60’s, like the Rolling Stones of the Silver Age, the Earth’s Mightiest Rock Group would go on, in different incarnations, to be a blockbuster draw on tours. Perhaps, besides Thor and Keith Richards’ similar ages, and Mjolnir’s tong’s resemblance to Mick Jagger, they bear this most in common: they have endured as a live act. 1963 First line-up: Giant Man on Drums, Wasp on tambourine and vocals, Iron Man on bass, and Thor on 12 string guitar and harmonies, with the Hulk as the group’s first failed lead singer. While his attitude revolutionized rebellion in American youth, the group did not chart overseas, instead losing their singer for good, at a concert with Savage Submariner, the Elvis of the shellfish. A new talent would emerge, however, in the ice cool vocals of Blue Eyed Stevie Rogers. About this time, the group invented heavy metal, as the new line up consisted of Giant Man’s big bass, th...

The first five pages of this issue, #33, are a recap, from the point of view of...a fawn. A fawn, with the mind of a villain trapped in his head---the magician Chondu the Mystic, who now has no mouth or hands with which to conduct spells. He's watching the Defenders, captive at the hands of Ruby Thursday and the rest of the Headmen, mentioned a couple of blogs ago. That's also the location of Kyle (Nighthawk) Richmond's brain. What Chondu knows that his allies don't is this: they believe Chondu's mind is his own brain, which has been transplanted into Nighthawk's body. The frustrating truth is this: Valkyrie's "husband" Jack Norriss is now the dominant mind inside that brain...and Chondu's brain is now in a fawn the Hulk brought home, in #31. So their own treachery's being played against them. Talk about head trips. It's Steve's prose working with Sal & Jim's art to create absurdity worthy of Samuel Beckett. "Lus...

Imagine yourself at a juncture, with six directions: up, down, and to each of four directions. Your brain is typically busy conducting the input of your senses, as well as whatever internal train of thought occupies you. Can you imagine: the senses have stopped telling you anything about being in your body. One supposes, being in a coma could be like this, to a degree. Let me share with you some thoughts, inspired by a comic magazine published in 1975 under the name The Defenders, #32, and sold for twenty-five cents on the same spinner racks as Richie Rich and Wonder Woman. It's a chapter in a story about a man who tries to live as a two-dimensional style of character, a Stan Lee hero (as Alan Moore might say) and finds himself dealing with three dimensional problems, at the very same time he finds himself---removed from it! Less dimensional heroes have external conflicts, and we know their motive, and their intent to meet that conflict. But here, we have a hero at a most diff...

These details remain from #31: they begin and continue subplots . What I forgot to mention was that the Hulk befriends a deer and its fawn. Two hunters shoot the deer. "Men shoot Bambi's mother!! says the very, very angry Hulk. Run as they might, these men are born to fly...from the hands of the Hulk. But what, now, will he do with the fawn, "Bambi"? He decides Magician will know what to do. He takes the fawn under his arm and bounds towards New York, Greenwich Village, to see Dr. Strange and co. Jack and Val try a date at the carnival, just like in the old days, before he talked Barbara into joining the cult of the Undying Ones, and before she became host to the spirit of the ancient Valkyrie, Brunhilde. He tries to impress her with his shooting skills, but she really doesn't get why a man would win a stuffed bear for a woman. But after Jack tries the old hammer and bell strength attraction, Val decides to heft the mallet herself, to the jeers of the operator. W...

Sponsored by Integr8d Soul Productions, featuring DNA: The Mountain, drawn with crisp, clear story telling by Lue Lyron and the Marc Kane, with scenes and ideas you won't find anywhere else in entertainment!! The comic for those who don't read comics! Black and White, $3 plus shipping each. Available from C Lue Disharoon 542 6th Ave. San Diego, CA 92101 DEFENDERS #31 When you see any reference to Gerber’s Defenders, the words “Headmen Saga” almost always follow. The writer will: pick three hapless inhabitants of the same horror comic reprint that came out, summer of ’74. A cruel scientist named Arthur Nagan has his own head transplanted to a powerful gorilla body by his vengeful simian subjects; Jerry Morgan, the man attempting his own Pym Particles, shrinking his bones, but not his flesh; and finally, Chondu, a carnival mystic, recalled within these stories by Jack Norriss and his wife Barbara. “Remember? You said “chondu” was a good name for the fragrance of his perfo...

Aboard the Captain America, Jack Norriss has awakened, to wander the ship in thought, alone. He finds Doc stock-still, and begins loudly apologizing. Strange returns to his body, catches what he says; Jack offers his aid, and Stephen gives him a chance. They materialize in the midst of the com room invasion on Earth, where Nighthawk’s smacking Badoon in mid-rant while saying, “Oh Shut up! You all LOOK alike---you all talk alike----I’ve had it up to HERE with you!! Val notes Stephen’s arrival (not lost on Jack, who’s armed) as he paralyzes their opponents. As a team, Strange and Jack begin transporting from prison to prison freeing all 50 million remaining humans, who take arms in vengeance. From a parapet, Strange stops to ponder “the necessity of what I’ve done.” Jack points out “you could’ve zapped the Badoon off the face of the Earth all by yourself---why---?” Starhawk arrives to second Strange’s perception: “Freedom must be earned to be valued.” It gets weird. Starhawk s...

DEFENDERS #29 [IMG]http://i56.tinypic.com/2nb4nti.jpg[/IMG] Transported by a power beyond their knowledge from the Sisterhood Swamp World, Vance Astro and the Valkyrie arrive to find Nighthawk, Charlie-27 and Martinex about to die on World Cam as an example of the futility of revolution. No subtle maneuver occurs to Vance before using his psychokinesis to shatter Badoon weapons. Because he explains the shackle exhibit a mind-deadening principle that nullifies their powers, Valkyrie turns her efforts from the Badoon to the shackles. The team flees into reinforcements, frozen by Martinex; as they regroup, Nighthawk passes along the bad news: Doctor Strange is dead. Astral travel can leave a body that way, it seems; Doc’s actually speeding towards Hulk and Yondu’s location, where the Badoon have delivered them to the techno-drunkard world . Mon-tee, host of Super-Death Sweepstakes, sends the freshly-condemned blonde wife of Emperor Goozot and “Mr. Green” to a polar location, at whic...

“My Mother, the Badoon!” (My Mother, the Car, was just a bit before my time) It’s 3015 A.D.: we have Val and Vance Astro stranded with Starhawk on a weird swampworld; Hulk and Yondu marooned “on a planet of drunkards and robot slaves” and Doc trying to find them again so they can resume their liberation mission, just as they’re boarded by the Badoon. Between Marti’s fire and ice projection powers, Charlie-27’s ramrod approach (“with eleven times the mass of his Terran ancestors”) and Nighthawk’s darkness-doubled strength they show well against the Badoon and their mindless “Zoms,” human slaves, which is why the Guardians hold back their full force. But Nighthawk’s stunned and taken hostage; now the Badoon wish to be led to the power source, as Doc probes the likely planets, judging by suns and potentially-habitated planets. He detects a “solar-powered entity” and his friends, in the Capella system, second from the sun. The “One Who Knows” tells her to put away her sword or suffer f...

DEFENDERS #27 [IMG]http://i55.tinypic.com/2nh3ptj.jpg[/IMG] 27 “Three Worlds To Conquer!” Lord Droom of the Badoon Empire decides to wait until the orbiting Captain America ship teleports its payload to the Earth’s surface. As Doc Strange points out, Hulk’s a bit distrustful of technology; “he’s rarely seen it employed for his benefit.” Droom sends a ray “to bisect and deflect the four beams from the ‘Captain America’” and scatters the teleporting heroes away from Earth, “into the trackless void of sub-space.” Now the stowaway Jack Norriss rushes out upon hearing the bad news. “Where is she? Where’s Barabara?!” The answer: a pool of blood red water, amidst purple and gold vegetation, along with “the 1,000 year-old master of pschokinesis,” who figures from the two moons they’ve missed Earth. Now the webbed, hirsute hands reach forth: lizard creatures with no self-control drag Asto into the crimson mire. Valkyrie’s great strength allows her time to fight back, but this has the...

DEFENDERS #26 (spins out of Giant Size Defenders #5) “Savage Time” by Steve Gerber & Sal Buscema, with Vince Colletta The hours before day break find Jack Norriss and Barbara---whose mind is the Valkyrie’s---hashing out what to make of her body’s marriage to him before she became who she is now, as winds sweep the New Jersey Palisades. A kiss proves unwelcome. An earthquake gives her an opportunity to demonstrate the freakish powers now hers, which he fears, to save him with winged Aragon, her steed. Among parties interested in this unusual tectonic upheaval: the Defenders, who review the situation of the futuristic Guardians of the Galaxy, freshly time-crashed in the present, from an alien-invaded 3015 A.D. Their ship, the U.S.S. Captain America, needs repair. Nighthawk notes the weather’s “gone completely haywire” and Dr. Strange concludes “the only explanation can be the temporal displacement caused by our---visitors.” They are: Charlie-27, ultra-dense last survivor of a fu...

We begin with the fate of Son of Satan and Power Man after they vanished into that hole in the air. The splash of Defenders #25 shows Clea as she draws Hellstrom and Cage through the Crystal of Agamotto, to exit from Doc's amulet, before the hanging captive Defenders. Clea manages to make contact with Doc’s mind as he awakens. Cage frees Nighthawk, while the Soulfire Hellstrom ejects from his nethermetal trident frees Doc. Enter Yellow Jacket: “Nighthawk – what's going on here? I heard – what on Earth – ? You're free! But who – how – what?” As he points out, they have as many members as the Avengers, “maybe more”; not bad for a non-team! Doc’s still too weak to teleport them to the surface, but Cage and Hellstrom are aware of Valkyrie’s impending fate: to burn before the frightened masses. Yellowjacket’s analytical probing cannot yield what the inner whispers of Daimon Hellstrom’s intellect do. The Soulfire bursts forth upon the hidden mechanisms, and the platfo...

http://www.imwan.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=69590 Perhaps it’s intuition---or some side effect of the increasing ripple effect of the Transmetamorphosis changing the Earth---but the soldier’s aware of another presence suddenly arrived upon the seen. He has never heard of the blessing of the Vishanti, but across time and space, he is aware that heroes gather---perhaps to stop this change rocking the Earth with change, or perhaps, to make sense of it as chaos has its sway. Holt looks at Blancley, and now both see in their midst a dark stage, figures stabbing the darkness with the lights of their essences, though their bodies assemble from various places across time and space. To stand before such a door way is to immerse one’s self in facing the direction of all one’s fears, and sense, moving forward, your survival’s path, its methods. Now both soldiers become aware of aid, not only from the strange non-team of beings diving with Valkyrie into the perilous recesses of the sprea...

Pressing on to thoughts of Atlantis for Namor, her submerged kingdom destination is lost amidst a multi-hued disruption in her brain. Her drop to the floor brings the other three present, where she recovers from her faintness to apologize for only summoning Daredevil and Daimon Hellstrom. These two pages are strongly made of yellow, red and shadows; appropriate, for the gathering of Luke Cage, Power Man, with these heroes, costumed devil without and shirtless, caped devil within. Banner suggests Clea relax without apology and takes over, listing the Defenders only reachable by the Crystal, clearly, cleverly, and humbly decides to try a simple phone call to the one whose number is known...a hero for hire who recently worked with the Defenders as if by accident against the massive threat of Thor villain the Wrecker and the newly formed Wrecking Crew, Asgardian powered mortal thugs. Luke Cage doesn't know a Bruce Banner, and if he's the Hulk, Luke's George Wallace; he's ...

Defeated! Lower Manhattan, fire bombed, and its Defenders, fallen! Doctor Strange, The Master of the Mystic Arts---unconscious! The high-flying Nighthawk---brought low and wingless! The vibrant Valkyrie---yet to revive! Suspended, enthralled by four double headed, coiling steel-cast serpents, even the Yellowjacket stings no more. All of these Defenders are captives hidden away in a location completely unknown, surrounded by enemies. The greatest of their powers avails them nothing, and remains undisplayed, for they have been rendered unconscious at the human level (as was the Hulk, too fearsome to take captive even while unconscious...and so, left to change to Bruce Banner, unseen by his foes). So do we learn of the unfeeling, hateful plan of racial nightmares planned by the masked Sons of the Serpent, now infecting American media with their divisive, racially coded rhetoric. "As Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden," their violence in the ghettos will displ...

Defenders #23. Kyle reveals to Stephen that he'd met Holliman earlier that night: “He wanted to talk real estate with Kyle Richmond. I wasn't in the mood.” “Perhaps you should have listened more closely, Nighthawk. The forces of karma work in puzzling ways.” How very puzzling---as we’ll see! Whatever reasons drive Kyle to express his exceptionalism through his costumed identity, rather than his millionaire self with its connections, have as much to do with the limitations of a superhero story of the 70’s as the character trying to fit into one. The Defenders are much further from the answers for it. They head back to the Sanctum for tea and pondering---unaware of the remaining three Serpents spying on them. The Serpents, however, find a violent sting awaiting them through Yellowjacket, last seen in GS Defenders #4. Surreptitiously he’s skulked after them over the rooftops, and in a splash page smash he begins to take them down. The first two of them fall to wisecracks a...

DEFENDERS #22 Writer: Steve Gerber Art: Sal Buscema & Mike Esposito The Valkyrie---as Barbara Norriss---walks lost in thought about her recently discovered human identity, through the filthy lower Manhattan streets. Her reverie ends when she finds two men in a knife fight, which she disrupts. When they remain violent, she draws Dragonfang, hung invisibly at her side, triggering the appearance of her costume through a spell. Her speech to the fleeing men is interrupted by a scream, leading Valkyrie to charge into a tenement to investigate. There, a poor woman named Elena desperately tries to remove a huge rat from her baby's crib, which Val does with ease, swiftly. However, Elena's plight and bitterness trouble her, and compassionately, she takes the woman and child to Dr. Strange's Sanctorum. The upper East Side of Manhattan finds Kyle Richmond, a.k.a. Nighthawk, brooding at a fashionable party, still upset over his missing and badly injured former love Trish Starr, to ...

Defenders (1972 series) #20 "The Woman She Was...!" is written by Steve Gerber and drawn by Sal Buscema and Vince Colletta. Cover by Gil Kane. Guest-starring the Thing. Continued from Marvel Two-in-One #7. The Enchantress created the Valkyrie by trapping the spirit of one of Odin's shield-maidens in the body of an Earth woman named Barbara Denton Norris from a small New England town. Despite her Norman Rockwell upbringing, Barbara had fled the little hamlet for a drug-fueled life in New York City, leaving behind her confused husband Jack. But now that the woman called Barbara is gone, wiped out by the Enchantress' spell, the Valkyrie finds herself picking up the scattered pieces of her tragic life. The mundane thing that brings the Valkyrie back to Cobbler's Roost is a harmonica with the enigmatic name "Celestia" written on it. The musical instrument ended up in the hands of Alvin Denton, Barbara's widower father, who believed playing the harmonica w...

Remus Sharptooth attempts his escape in a Gnomlin-built craft---it lifts vertically for take-off, as the Defenders attempt to strike it from the air. The creature Anomaly watches from behind a smoking data base; standing at the precipice, Corpse Flower wonders if Sharptooth’s decision is influenced by the Viking Captain, Ray Awen, who still makes up his subconscious mind. Hulk’s skips, powered by his mighty legs, give him velocity to match the launching craft. The fleeing sorcerer-wolf turns to hurl bolts of blood-red lightning at the clutching emerald behemoth, whose bulk is nearly half that of the escape craft! As all the heroes pursue Remus Sharptooth, abruptly, they observe what he has forgotten about all crafts built by Gnomlins: in the end, they stop and they explode!!! Just before this explosion, the Wolf Oversoul appears to Remus Sharptooth. He promises the sorcerer another existence to come, an incarnation in the world of Semeicardia. Thus he achieves a strange peace as...