Or Download it, here! Download this episode (right click and save) "> David Anthony Kraft tells the story behind the story about writing The Defenders for Marvel Comics Group. He goes into the heads of some of the characters and provides some unique insights as well as some creative background. It's actually part two! Take a look at my August posts.

Marvel Comics Group- in its phase as a slightly anarchic bastion of experimentation and creativity- published the comics reprinted here from 1976 to 1978, Leading off this volume we have the second half of Steve Gerber's run. The Steve Gerber stories are SO creative and smartly-written, with Buscema's competent layouts and nice superhero art. The ideas are so weird and original! The inks vary a bit in their outcome, but overall I like the Buscema/ Janson combo. If anything, a bit more subtlety in the art would better compliment Steve's restless wit and canny observations. These are not standard sorts of stories on the whole- the villains are strange but thought-provoking. Plots are both bizarre and driven by commentary about the modern world and individual struggles for identity in sublime pop form. Steve Gerber continued writing in comics and cartoons; after he authored Howard the Duck, Omega the Unknown, Man-Thing, and the team-up adventures of the Fantastic Four...

Sponsored by Integr8d Soul Productions. Order "Devils and Angels" or "Puzzle Girl" in black ($13 plus shipping) or white ($11 plus shipping) by sending money and message (size, color, design) to luelyron@gmail.com for PayPal, or write there for the address if you want to send a check! Devils and Angels is the cover to D'n'A: The Mountain, our b & w modern supernatural comic! It's only $3.25. 4-way Street So, as the team returns in #119 from a battle they had almost no chance to win (see Scarlet Witch’s post, Avengers/ Defenders War), Mantis senses Swordsman’s pain, but he makes light of it with bluster. Black Panther’s questions about Mantis turn out to be based on his respect for her training, but she says her past is nothing of note. Suddenly she pitches forward—her “Mantis Sense”?---warning of mystic vibrations of great danger in Rutland, Vermont. So quickly, the team is off to what becomes a costumed parade/ party / battle w...

“That’s right,” says the nebbish man, fist clenched, other hand outstretched; despite his sawed-off frame, he is every inch the villain. Some self-help seminar! He’s just tactlessly suggested his audience cover their desire to improve with self-loathing. Oh sure, you might think you can debase yourself and who you have been up till now, as part of the road to change---but however much you might need to clean the slate, so to speak, are you willing to embrace that you are completely ridiculous? In this case, the villain’s real thoughts about humanity show through, dictating his self-righteous approach to helping humanity “save” itself. So, is he doing it for money? Oh, no---he’s actually just doing this because, after his last defeat (despite superhuman “dimension spanning” powers), he was discovered by, and indoctrinated partially by, the Lubderdite race. Upon telling about him, Marc remarked: “he sounds like one of those missionaries that would come to tribal people, kill their ...

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...