Today we continue our coverage of Marvel Comics’ groundbreaking crossover event of summer, 1973, the Avengers/Defenders War. As you’ll recall from our post about Avengers #117 two weeks ago, the latest battle in the ongoing conflict between the super-teams ended without a clear winner or loser, as Captain America and the Sub-Mariner called a time-out to investigate their suspicions that the heroes were being played against each other by a malevolent third party (which was indeed absolutely the case).
But, as had been promised in no uncertain terms by Avengers #117’s end-of-issue “coming next” blurb — and which was proclaimed even more forcefully by Defenders #10’s John Romita cover — whatever “Breakthrough!” might be imminent wouldn’t arrive in time the stop the Mighty Thor and the Incredible Hulk from throwing down. And that was a good thing, since if that match-up hadn’t come to fruition, sixteen-year-old me would have asked for my money back. (Well, not really, since I was well aware the guy working the counter at the Tote-Sum would simply have looked at me like I was crazy if I pulled something like that. But you know what I mean.) As it was, however, I could just kick back and wait for writer Steve Englenart and artists Sal Buscema and Frank Bolle to bring on the brawlers…
For the record, your humble blogger was all in on Team Thor. The God of Thunder was by this time my favorite Marvel superhero (as he still is); and perhaps my favorite superhero, period (as he still may be). Which isn’t to say that I put any hopes (let alone cash) on the prospect of his actually, unambiguously winning this fight. Having followed these kinds of contests-of-champions ever since the first Superman-Flash race back in 1967, I was savvy enough to the ways of the major comics companies to know that the odds of Marvel allowing the bout to be unambiguously decided one way or the other — and thereby mightily pissing off the fans of the losing hero — were close to nil. Even so, I looked for my guy to make a darn good showing, and was prepared to take major umbrage if I felt he wasn’t given his due.
The only previous extended scrap between Goldilocks and ol’ Greenskin — which, as noted above, had taken place in Journey into Mystery #112 (Jan., 1965) — was something of an odd duck, as it was a continuity implant Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had dropped into the middle of their earlier masterwork, Avengers #3 (Jan., 1964). Though that tale had shown Thor and Hulk briefly engage with each other as part of a larger brouhaha that also involved the rest of the Avengers and the Sub-Mariner, it turned out that the two titans’ clash had actually gone on quite a bit longer than readers were originally shown. And how did this previous unseen slugfest finally come to light? Why, when Thor himself intervened in an argument between two groups of New York City youths arguing about, you guessed it, who’s stronger, Thor or Hulk? The bulk of JiM #112’s 16-page lead story was in the form of a flashback, in which our Asgardian stalwart attempted to answer that burning question by way of giving the boys a blow-by-blow account of the whole fight… though, in the end (and completely unsurprisingly), he’d had to tell them that there’d been no clear victor that time, and that while he had his own opinion as to who was mightier, he’d leave it to them to make up their own minds.
Naturally, however, in speaking directly to the Hulk, as opposed to a bunch of impressionable youngsters, Thor doesn’t feel the need to be quite so circumspect… as we’ll see in Defenders #10’s very next panel:
The impact of Thor’s next blow — a two-hander — knocks Hulk to the pavement, but hardly fazes him otherwise. From his prone position, he seizes hold of one corner of Thor’s cape…
You can almost hear Edna Mode saying, “I told him…”
As the saying goes: shit just got real.
And here we’ve arrived at the exact same tableau that’s also featured on John Romita’s cover. Who drew it better? Personally, I prefer Buscema and Bolle’s version; but it’s all a matter of individual taste, and your mileage is welcome to vary.
Actually, I rather doubt I was surprised by the ending of Chapter 9 — either by the Thor/Hulk fight ending in a stalemate, or by the two combined teams turning up to call the whole thing off. Regarding the former, as I’ve already stated, I had never been expecting a clear winner or loser (and just in case you’re wondering, I felt that the storytellers had done right by my favorite, so I was satisfied with that outcome); and as for the latter, well, the name of the chapter was “Breakthrough!”, after all.
Not that any of that made me any less eager to turn the page, you understand…
Naturally, Namor’s fellow Defenders are shocked, with the hot-headed Hawkeye immediately jumping to the conclusion that the Sub-Mariner is a traitor — “a regular Trojan Fish!” But the Prince of Atlantis goes into that imperious mode that comes so naturally to him, and his teammates promptly settle down long enough to hear his account of what he learned from Captain America in Japan: “The Avengers were told by Loki that we want to conquer the universe!”
This full-page splash reminds me quite a bit of a similar one rendered by Sal Buscema’s big brother John for Avengers #60 (Jan., 1969) — though that one was a tad more relaxed and casual, as well as more crowded (it did take place at a wedding, after all).
On the following page, Englehart and company allow us to eavesdrop on a few snippets of conversation: e.g., the Silver Surfer’s apology to the Scarlet Witch for almost getting her killed when he accidentally set off a volcano; Hawkeye’s self-justification to Iron Man for assuming the Avengers’ ill intent; and the Swordsman’s jabbing at his old student, Hawkeye, for being “as dumb as ever!“… all good examples of the entertaining characterization that was a hallmark of Englehart’s writing on both Defenders and Avengers. It’s all cut short, however, when Iron Man and Valkyrie remind everyone that they’ve left both Thor and Hulk still on the battlefield. D’oh!
The ears of both Dr. Strange and the Sub-Mariner perk up at Thor’s mention of Rutland, VT (site of a real-life annual Halloween Parade, not to mention multiple comic-book stories set at same), as the Defenders had fought the dread Dormammu there back in Marvel Feature #2 (Mar., 1972). Could it be…?
In hopes of learning more, Doc Strange decides they should examine the Evil Eye more closely…
I have to confess, it’s been a source of minor irritation to me for half a century that Doc appears to have lined up the Eye pieces wrong way around (at least if one assumes that he plans to fit them together one inside the other, like matryoshka dolls). Of course, it’s a moot point almost immediately…
And that’s it for this installment of the Avengers/Defenders War — which, as of now, is no longer a war between the two groups of heroes, but rather one of them against their true foe, who’s been revealed at last. Oh, yeah… this is gonna be good. See you back here in two weeks for Avengers #118, OK?
In 1973, Defenders # 10 was the one part of this epic that I missed. Didn’t even see it on the racks! And as a geeky comicbook kid of 11, I had been looking forward to the tumble between Hulk & Thor. Ah, well, got it much later, when I was in my 20s. Not exactly reaching the upper heights of comicbook achievements but still a fun read, although another one of those instances wherein you have to wonder how no one got inadvertently killed while the Hulk was rampaging, destroying streets, cars and buildings (seeing the panel of Hulk lifting a car to throw at Thor, I couldn’t help think of a similar panel in Miracle Man #15, wherein MM lifts a car to throw at Kid Miracle Man, and MM, narrating the scene afterwards, notes that during their fearful battle, many innocents were killed, including the people in the car! Eek! If I had read this as a pre-teen in 1973, I likely wouldn’t have given that panel any thought at all, but, well, perspectives do tend to change as we get older, at least as long as we also happen to get wiser in the process!
Also, couldn’t help but notice that while the Odin-son attempted a bit of diplomacy on ol’ Greenskin, he still couldn’t help but puff himself up while belittling Hulk, which he should have realized would just get his opponent more riled up. But then he also talked down to the Hulk during the one issue they spent as actual teammates in Avengers # 2 nearly 10 years earlier (another story I didn’t read until I got a reprint in GS-A #2, which I also got in the ’80s).
After all that excitement, was nice to see the Avengers & Defenders, minus their mightiest & most incredible respective members, hobnobbing peaceably, albeit with a little bit of expected bickering between Hawkeye & Swordsman. “Spare-Tire Avenger!” Ouch! Funny that in GSA#2, wherein Hawkeye more-or-less teams-up with the Swordsman to help save the other Avengers, captured by Kang, they got along much better, albeit in part because Swordsman is nearly delirious in his need to prove himself and Hawkeye for once displayed enough human insight to recognize Swordsman’s desperation, as well as seeing the need to work together to overcome a common foe and save their friends.
But all that’s nearly a year to come after the events of this mag and the grand finale of the Avengers-Defenders Clash. Enjoyed your overview of this thunderous chapter, Alan!
The lack of civilian casualties is one of those things that, like a lot of readers, simply didn’t occur to me as a teenager. As an adult, yes, questions such as that do indeed leap out at me. But at that point I feel there’s two choices a reader has: either just shrug it off as a convention of mainstream superhero comics, or if it bothers you that much and you can no longer work up the suspension of disbelief then stop reading them. I think that too many people who grew up on these comics who later became professionals got so hung up on things like this that as adults they tried too hard to make superheroes more “realistic,” and as a result for the last 30 years we’ve had way too many stories with blood & carnage, and the genre just isn’t fun anymore.
And I put “realistic” in quotes because superheroes are almost all *completely* unrealistic, regularly violating the laws of physics on a daily basis. I mean, if fans have no problem accepting the scientific impossibility of Bruce Banner transforming into the Hulk, instantly gaining a thousand pounds of gamma radiation-powered muscle out of literally nowhere, but they’re bothered by why no one ever get killed when the Hulk goes on a rampage, then maybe they are just overthinking the later part of the story.
Agreed. It’s no stranger than the number of times people get knocked unconscious without suffering corresponding levels of brain damage.
I admit that’s among the reasons I mostly stopped collecting comics by the time I was in my late 20s. It was getting ever harder for me to suspend my rationality to enjoy the stories, although I liked the variant approaches several of the British writers, Moore, Gaiman, Morrison, etc., took to telling stories. Admittedly, they likely would not have appealed much to my 11 year old self, but, well, we do change as we get older. And I can certainly still wax nostalgic over the stories that thrilled me 50 years ago. And some of them I believe still hold up pretty well, however deeply mired they are in pure fantasy.
Regarding the conversation here about the lack of serious casualties in comic books of the 1960s and 1970s, don’t forget that the folks creating and/or editing these comic books remembered and may have even been affected at the time by the Wertham comic book witch hunts of the 1950s. My guess is, even aside from the Comics Code itself, there likely was a lot of caution that death, blood and mayhem would again raise the ire of the regulators just as death, blood and mayhem had done in the 1950s.
Of course, by the time comic books (regrettably in my opinion, but I’m a product of my youth) became more realistic regarding death and maiming of “civilians” in the late 1980s and the 1990s, the regulators were already distracted going after violence, gore and “immorality” in rap music, movies, video games, tv shows etc. to care about comic books.
Silver Age quite possibly. I can’t buy that for the Bronze Age. Conan and the vampire books were piling up a respectable body count.
I think it’s just simpler and more comfortable to tell a superhero story and ignore that stuff. Someone wrote a letter about the MTU Spider-Man/Captain Britain story, pointing out that Spidey throwing a steel girder at Britain’s head was a lethal attack. The response was that no, Spider-Man just calculated the exact way to throw it and knock Britain cold without hurting him. In another story Storm causes a cave-in that manages to block whoever the X-Men are fighting (Morlocks? I’m not sure) but so perfectly placed that there’s not a single casualty.
Absurd but the alternatives would require thinking of superheroes killing or crippling lots of people, which is uncomfortable as hell.
Yep. And as to the response about Spider-Man’s “calculations”, that strikes as absolutely ridiculous inanity. Like the trope of the expert shot in Western tv shows who can shoot a gun out of a bad guy’s hand without actually harming him or the shoulder wound from which only temporarily hurts the hero and doesn’t cause any lasting damage. The comicbook violence is akin to the violence in old Warners Brothers cartoons from which the characters easily recover from events that would have killed any real person or animal. To adult sensibilities, the comicbook violence appeared worse because the art wasn’t overly cartoonish but generally had a greater veneer of realism, despite all the other absurdist elements.
BTW, I loved “The Coyote Gospel” in Grant Morrison’s Animal Man run, a sort of meditation on cartoon & comicbook violence. Rather brilliant, IMO.
Ah yes, the movie rule that any arm wound can be fixed by putting it in a sling and declaring it’ll be fine in a few days.
Good point about the Bronze Age. I tried to ignore the non-super-hero books in the 1970s so I did not think of them.
Someone else on Facebook recently noted that Thor and the Hulk had briefly sparred in the March ’71 issue of The Sub-Mariner’s own title (#35) Together with Iron Man and Goliath, the Thunder God had faced off against Namor, the Silver Surfer and the Hulk in what some claim was a try-out for the Defenders comic (I’d have thought it unlikely myself, but that’s just my opinion). The clash was brief, and again Mjolnir played a critical part in the proceedings.
Other than that, thanks to iffy distribution, I missed all the Defenders part of this entire shebang, and so just went along for the ride in the Avengers’ title…I wonder how specific Steve Engelhart’s notes for Sal B were – liked that panel showing the Surfer giving a hand to Hawkeye to climb up on his board almost as background detail.
This was a blast. A minor point was that starting late on Defender’s with Valkyrie signing up in #4 the whole idea of them as a non-team just wanting to defend people hadn’t really registered before.
Nothing much else to say. This was first-rate stuff at the time and still holds up well.
Interesting who is talking. It is pretty much the people who fought. The only two with a prior history (who also fought) are Hawkeye and Ironman.
You would guess that Cap snd Nsmor might be talking.
I like that Swordsman and Valk are talking, Namor was always protective of Valk, but does not know the Swordsman (as an ally or enemy),
Cap talking to Viz and Wanda makes sense after the “Your Young Men Will Slay Visions” story. I wonder if the Surfer Knows Cap? Given their outlooks and world views, they might get along well snd Csp might hsve been a good guide for the Surfer in leanring this world.
It’s interesting, at this point, Dr. Strange (outside of the Defenders) probably knows the FF, Spider-Man and Thor fairly well, and is sort of a “Legend” to the reast of that Community.
The odd thing is the dynamics of these things are sort of like wakes and weddings for people in the Real World.
You sometimes wonder how these charactres would have related, Did Don Blake call Steven Strange for referals if one of his patients needed to see a specialist? Would Peter Parker call Matt Mudoch if he needed a patent lawyer if he invented something or if Auant May wanted to grieve her assessment? Did circa-1973 Nick Fury, Cap and Ben Grimm belong to the same VFW Post?
Spidey and Strange were tight; one thing that bugged me about JMS spider-totem retcon was that Peter should have called in Stephen Strange for his opinion at once. Strange and Thor — they’ve met, but he’s worked more with the Black Knight. FF, probably in-between.
There’s a Thor story where Don Blake treats Stephen Strange but doesn’t recognize his name as the legendary surgeon. I like your Ben/Nick/Steve thought but everyone pretty much forgot Ben’s military service as soon as it was mentioned; according to Reed he was a WW II legend but it never reflected people’s reactions.
While it would have been nice if the over-all Avengers-Defenders War had lasted maybe for another issue or two longer, just to really ramp up the tension, and if the Thor/Hulk fight had been a bit more sprawling and had held actual consequences in it’s wake, this was another great chapter in a great story that I’m sorry I missed back in ’73. While I did read the original Journey Into Mystery comic wherein Thor and Hulk originally squared off, like you, Alan, I always found it almost as entertaining to see how the creative team would manage to pull the two heroes into a draw as much as witnessing the fight itself. This was good practice for the Mavel/DC team-ups that came along later, of course. Superman vs Spidey, Batman vs The Hulk. Can you imagine the amount of times spent in meetings to make sure one company’s hero doesn’t come out looking better than the other? Anyway, I digress. This was an excellent story in an excellent arc and if I couldn’t read it in ’73, I’m thrilled to be reading it now. Thanks, Alan.
“As the saying goes: shit just got real.”
Alan, watch your language! You want to get the Comics Code Authority mad at you? 🙂
Seriously, I have been a fan of Sal Buscema’s work for many years. I really feel that he often did not receive his due from some fans in the Bronze Age. Perhaps his work was not compared favorably by readers to that of his brother John’s. But I have long regarded Sal Buscema as one of the strongest pencilers in mainstream comic books. I’m sure I’ve previously commented along these lines, but Sal is a really strong storyteller. He’s great at laying out action sequences, as well as quieter character-driven dialogue scenes. Both are on display here, first with the dramatic Hulk vs Thor battle, and then with the Defenders and Avengers comparing notes at Doctor Strange’s sanctum. He’s also one of those pencilers who really knows how to choreograph scenes featuring multiple characters, which made him one of the best artists to work on team books like Defenders and Avengers.
My only minor quibble is that I would have preferred for this issue to have been inked by Frank McLaughlin rather than Frank Bolle.
Oh, yeah, always laughed at Hawkeye’s line angrily accusing the Sub-Mariner of being a “Trojan Fish” line. I think Clint Barton could rival Namor when it came to hotheadedly jumping to conclusions.
It’s funny, I’m actually a good bit more profane in my everyday life than you might think from my regular use here of words like “gosh”, “jeez”, “heck”, and “darn” (not to mention the ever-popular “eff” and its derivatives). I’m not sure if it’s more a matter of my putting myself in the head of my more innocent younger self of half a century ago, or if it’s rather that it somehow feels unsporting to use language stronger than what was generally available to the writers of the comics I’m examining — but often, when I *do* try to use “bad” words, the effect is jarring… at least to me. Still, there are certain occasions… 😉
The perspective and … everything about the “Yon Uru hammer is Thor’s …” panel is the oddest thing I’ve ever seen that Sal drew
A few years ago, I posted that Sal Buscema had played Tevye in a production of “Fiddler on the Roof” in Alexandria, Virginia in 1997. In the last week, I have discovered that Sal actually played leading roles in a number of community theater musicals in the Northern Virginia area in the 1990s and earlier. Unfortunately, I had no idea about this at the time or I certainly would have auditioned for musicals there (I lived in the Maryland suburbs of the Washington, D.C. area and only auditioned there).
Anyway, whenever Sal did a show, he used to give the cast and crew drawings–although not, at least in the pre-1997 shows I know about, of Marvel characters. Here is a Washington Post article which quotes him in connection with a production of “Oliver” he was in back in 1990 in which he played Fagin. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1990/11/15/small-stars-shine-at-last/f7c87f25-b729-4e7d-a0b1-8cfcdd1e4473/?fbclid=IwAR0N5Jm5ruevpRDXs3jtROgKixUqKElplyuXNXdyy7iX9oYaCzQRfC1PpSk
Alan, if you let me know how to copy jpegs here, I can post one of Sal’s theater biographies in which he mentions his Marvel work as well as some of the drawings he gave cast members (although, again, I don’t have photos of drawings he gave cast members of Marvel characters) in “Oliver” and “Zorba” (where he played Zorba).
I suspect that by the time Sal was doing these plays, he probably was not very happy at all with how the comic industry had turned, particularly Marvel. I would love to have asked him about that and the silver and bronze years had I been blessed to be in a show with him back then. I live in Northern Virginia now and act in community theater there, but I have not found evidence of a Sal Buscema show in the area since 1997 and he hasn’t done one at least since I moved into the area in 2008.
To be perfectly honest, Stu, I’m not sure there’s a simple way to upload or paste a JPG into a comment, even on my end. On occasions when someone has shared an image, I think it’s being pulled from somewhere else on the Internet via a URL. Maybe someone else out there has another idea, though…
I must be crazy, because whenever I discuss this storyline with other fans, no one else grasps what is quite plain to me: The Defenders were the clear winners of this “war.” Which is why I think so highly of the story. The default outcome is a draw, because you don’t want to say one of your teams is better than the other. But Englehart spits in the face of this formula, having the Defenders dispatch their Avengers counterparts in every instance—often with ease. EVERY piece of the Eye is grabbed by a Defender; not any of the Avengers. The best any of the Avengers can do is battle their Defender to a stalemate, as Thor does with the Hulk here. (Which, practically speaking was actually good enough, as it would have kept them from reassembling the Eye.) And all this makes perfect sense, because four of the Defenders (Doc, Hulk, Subby, and the Surfer) are the most powerful beings in existence—on the Avengers side, only Thor is in their class. All of this plays into what makes this such a great, GREAT story.
I never caught that but you’re right.
I suspect it helped that as Englehart was writing both books, you didn’t get the turf wars I’ve read about in some crossovers (e.g. Chris Claremont shows Dr. Strange is an infant to Margali Szardos so Strange-scribe Roger Stern retcons Margali’s power down).
As much as I love my old comics, I must concede that creators could get very childish about these things back in the day.
Given the extensive discussion above about the lack of dire consequences to “civilians” during big super hero/super villain fights in the 1960s and 1970s (as frasersherman noted, this does not apply for horror or sword and sorcery books of the 1970s), a humorous(?) coincidence happened to me today.
I’ve been slowly but surely reading all of the super hero comic books I missed from after I stopped reading them at the end of October 1979. I’m up to September 1995 (yep, I hope to catch up before I die, but I doubt it since I do other things too). Anyway, the book I read today was “The Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe”. This tongue in cheek book set in an alternate reality (remember back in the 1960s when Stan Lee used to scold the Distinguished Competition for doing imaginary tales and said that Marvel would never do them?) postulates a world where Frank Castle’s family isn’t killed by mobsters, but are accidentally killed during a super hero/super villain fight in Central Park. Castle blames the super-beings for his family’s death and decides to kill them all.
That’s not the best bit though. The Punisher is hired, financed and equipped to do this by a group of people, some very wealthy, who were disfigured, maimed, paralyzed etc. as a result of being caught in the cross-fire of super hero/super villain fights (for example the wealthy leader of the group was disfigured and crippled when Dr. Doom threw the Human Torch into his car). Given our recent discussion, including talking about how later writers decided to make collateral damage real and realistic, I found this 1995 treatment very amusing (if somewhat horrifying).
I’m sure that a lot of you know about this already and probably read the orginal when it came out 28 years ago, but if not, you can read it online on Marvel Unlimited (with a subscription) or get the Cliff’s Note version here: https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Punisher_Kills_the_Marvel_Universe_Vol_1_1
Yes, it is extremely unrealistic within the context of the Marvel Universe how easily these folks are killed, but the whole thing is a joke–well written I might add in terms of character dialogue. Don’t look for outstanding artwork though (except perhaps the page where Wolverine turns into a skeleton). Written by Garreth Innes, penciled by Doug Braithwaite and inked by Michael L. Halbieb.
Finally, I was just thinking today that civilians DID sometimes get killed in Marvel super hero books back in the 1960s and 1970s in battles if they knew the hero well. Captain Stacey is the first that I remember (although he kind of committed suicide to save a young boy).
Minor typo: “Breathrough!” s/b “Breakthrough!”