What's better than our favourite superhero saving the world? well it has to be multiples of our favourite superheroes saving the world together. As a kid I always loved any comic that featured super teams from the Mighty Crusaders (the first team I can recall) to the Justice League, The Avengers, The Legion of Superheroes, The Fantastic Four, the Guardians of the Galaxy and more. There’s just something special about a super team, something unique in the way the characters interact and develop relationships over time, or maybe it’s just that 13 year old kids just love seeing groups of colourfully costumed characters beating the stuffing out a of a baddie, yeah it’s probably that!
One of my favourite teams at the time was Marvels Defenders which had a rotating line-up from 1972 until 1986, with Dr. Strange and the Hulk usually being constant members along with a number of other mainstay characters that joined and then left the team at various points in the comics run. Although the first issue of the Defenders that I bought was issue 5 (a great fun comic in its own right ) it was with issue 6 “The Dreams of Death” which saw the reintroduction of the Silver Surfer to the group, that it became my favourite comic at the time. Defenders issue 6 was cover dated June 1973 and appeared in the UK around October/November. I still recall the day I visited my local newsagent in the town we stayed in at that time around November and saw a big pile of various US comics neatly stacked on the counter with Defenders issue 6 at the top. I had only purchased issue 5 a few weeks previous to this and loved it so this was a no brainer, I immediately purchased issue 6 and headed home to devour every page (at 13 years old you just didn't read comics). The story itself features the Silver Surfer returning to the Defenders to apologise for the way he acted the last time they were together.
The Surfer finds them being attacked by Cyrus Black and helps defeat him and his henchmen. Black retreats and plans a new attack. During this respite Black discovers that he can make the illusions in his dreams become real and uses this ability to attack the Defenders again this time overpowering them. However, Namor realises that they are in a different reality and convinces Black that none of this is real which causes Black to wake up and realise that his plans have yet again failed.
Future issue of the Defenders would still be good with the legendary cross over storyline between the Defenders and the Avengers and Gerber’s Headmen storyline. But for me the first 15 or so issue were the best of the 152 issues featuring some of Sal Buscema’s best art with fun adventure stories by Steve Englehart.
I was probably about seven years old when I walked into my local newsagents in Cambuslang (near Glasgow) with my pocket money firmly he...
Following on from my last post featuring some of my favourite Marvel comic book covers from 1973, I thought I would show some of DC's ...
Nearly a half-century on I still consider 1973 to be the year that cemented my destiny in becoming a lifetime comic book fan. It was a yea...
You've piqued my interest to search out a few copies of The Defenders from the 1973 era, McScotty. I must confess that I was never a Defenders collector (I checked my notebooks of my comics collection from those days of yore and I never bought a single issue), although I do have a copy of Marvel Feature #1 (featuring the Defenders) somewhere that I picked up at a flea market a few years back and am yet to read.
ReplyDeleteI can certainly relate to the excitement of going into a newsagents and seeing a new pile of US comics on the counter. Where I grew up in Southsea there were very few newsagents that carried US Marvels, so it is likely that I never even saw the American comics of the Defenders. I'm really enjoying your blog highlighting your favourite comics, btw. Keep it up!
I was always lucky with newsagents in the various towns we lived in until the end of my school days (5 separate towns) as they all had newsagents that sold Marvel and DC comics and some shops had a lot of them. Strange for mostly small towns as all but one was. The trick was trying to get consecutive issues of any comic.Yeah seeing a big like of glossy comics was exciting when you were young. I was a Hulk and Suffer fan ( and Dr Strange) so I was always going to enjoy any comic with them in , and will Sal drawing I was always going to like the Defenders.
DeleteStill too early in the morning for me to remember when I started reading The Defenders. I think it was when The Valkyrie was part of the team. I wonder if Madonna was copying her 'bra' (hee hee - I said bra) when it became all pointy?
ReplyDeleteLol that would have been one of the early issues Kid. You never know re Madonna.
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