Back in Defenders #21 (Mar., 1975), which was published ten months prior to the comic book we’ll be discussing today, writer Steve Gerber had introduced Marvel Comics readers to a new alliance of would-be world-conquering villains called the Headmen — or, if you prefer, reintroduced them, as all three of these bad guys — Dr. Nagan, Jerry Morgan, and Chondu the Mystic — had been plucked from a trio of one-off, completely unrelated comic book stories of the late 1950’s and early ’60s (recently, and randomly, reprinted together in Weird Wonder Tales #7 [Dec., 1974]), before being set to collectively become a major new adversary for Marvel’s premier non-team.
But then, having established these weird wonders via a single brief, inconclusive assay against the Defenders, Gerber put them aside for a while. Perhaps he wasn’t entirely sure yet just what he wanted to do with them, or maybe he had other stories he wanted to tell first; in any event, the Headmen got set on the back burner to simmer for the better part of a year, while the Defenders were kept busy with two successive multi-issue narratives involving the Sons of the Serpent and the Guardians of the Galaxy, respectively.
By October, 1975, however (and following a single, best-forgotten fill-in issue by a different writer), Steve Gerber was ready to return the Headmen to center stage… although the cover of Defenders #31 gave no hint that our heroes would be contending with the long-absent group inside the comic’s pages. Or, for that matter, with anyone, other than themselves. Assuming that the Gil Kane-Frank Giacoia illustration and its accompanying copy were more or less on the level, what in the world was up with Nighthawk? Naturally, we fans of October, 1975 were going to have to open the book and start reading to begin to learn the answer to that question…
Joining the regular creative team of Gerber and longtime penciller Sal Buscema with this issue was Jim Mooney — a veteran with a career spanning four decades who, somewhat improbably, was finding his work-life in the mid-Seventies more and more entwined with that of the much younger Gerber. Mooney had previously drawn multiple issues of Sub-Mariner and Marvel Spotlight (featuring “Son of Satan”) in collaboration with the author, and, earlier this year, had illustrated the final six issues of Man-Thing. Two months from now, he’d be joining Gerber and co-writer Mary Skrenes to launch one of the most unusual superhero series of all time, Omega the Unknown.
As we’ve covered in a previous post, Gerber had picked up the character of Trish (formerly known as “Trixie”) Starr from an “Ant-Man” story written by Mike Friedrich for Marvel Feature #5 (Sep., 1972), in which she’d assisted the tiny superhero against her uncle, the villainous scientist Egghead. In Giant-Size Defenders #4 (Apr., 1975), Egghead had sought revenge against his niece, who by then was dating Kyle (Nighthawk) Richmond. A car-bomb had left Trish alive, but without a left arm; and when Kyle subsequently found himself unable to commit to her forever with a promise of marriage, she’d broken things off with him.
Gerber’s script for this sequence is admirably subtle; while the disembodied arm clutching at Nighthawk’s ankle here (and that, giant-sized, was grasping his whole body on the opening splash page) is clearly Trish’s missing limb, the text never specifically says so… probably because Nighthawk himself never makes that connection.
The Marvel comics of the ’70s were rife with scenes where ordinary people (usually, but not always, New Yorkers), when confronted by a situation where someone is in obvious need, opted not to get involved. One has to give credit to Gerber for handling the situation with more than the usual amount of nuance, however, as Wally actually makes a good point above: If you’re living in the Marvel Universe, and you don’t happen to recognize a particular costumed person, the odds are just about as good that they’re a murderous lunatic as that they’re an upright champion of justice. And in the specific case of Nighthawk, well… even if this young couple had recognized him, the guy had actually started out as a supervillain — so there’s that factor, as well.
If you’d been waiting for the Headmen to make their return to this series, you might very well recognize the blue-black furry hand holding the gun in the next-to-last panel above. Otherwise, you’d have to remain in the dark for another few pages.
While Valkyrie has agreed to accompany Jack Norriss — the husband of the woman whose body she wears — on this outing, she doesn’t get the point of this particular sort of amusement park attraction. Still, after Jack is successful in ringing the bell on the high striker, Val welcomes the chance to gauge her own strength… with predictable results:
Jack may say he’s “trying to accept” Val — but it’s kind of hard to believe him when he keeps insisting that he’s her husband… not to mention that he still has to catch himself before he calls her “Barbara”. Try harder, dude.
I suspect that part of the problem here is that Steve Gerber is himself at least half-convinced that Jack has a case. Why else have his omniscient narrator refer to Val as “his [Jack’s] lady” at the beginning of this scene? I suppose one could argue that Gerber is just reflecting Jack’s own point of view with that line (in the same way that the narrative voice in the opening dream sequence seems to reflect Nighthawk’s POV), but I’m skeptical.
Yeah, I know. If the Hulk had thrown that one guy a bit harder — and directly at that tree trunk, rather than skimming him like a stone across the water, first — that man would be dead. And, sure, it’s a bit of a dodge to constantly portray the Hulk as lacking all self-control, yet somehow never killing anyone on one of his frequent rampages. Still, Gerber is just one among many Marvel writers who’ve asked for our suspension of belief on this matter over the decades, so I’m not going to come down on him too hard for it here — mostly because it’s simply too satisfying to see Hulk give those Bambi’s mom-killers what’s coming to them.
Brrr.
You might expect that this would be a good spot for some exposition about how Nagan knew that Nighthawk would be flying over a particular area of Central Park at a particular time, the better to leap out from behind a tree and zap him. Or how he managed to smuggle him out of that very public park back to the Headmen’s secret hideout. And what was with that weird waking dream of Nighthawk’s? Did Chondu cause that to happen, somehow? It seems likely, but we’re never given an answer, either to that or to any of those other questions.. at least, not in this issue.
For the record, this is the second appearance of The Elf with a Gun, following his debut six months earlier in Defenders #25. And, no, it doesn’t make any more sense in the current narrative context than the last one did.
Hmm, I wonder where Dr. Strange was going next with this “recreation” of his. Perhaps it’s best that we’ll never know…
As the conversation progresses, Chondu-in-Nightawk’s-body overhears one of the participants drop the name of Dr. Strange, confirming his suspicions. “We’ve stumbled onto far more than Nagan dared dream,” he gloats inwardly.
Chondu’s mystic bolts stagger the non-sorcerous Defenders, at least temporarily, so Doc Strange opts to open a dimensional portal through which he sends their foe before following himself…
While most of the names invoked by Chondu in this issue — Mantok, Kuubar, etc, — seem to be original constructions with no extra significance, “Nilrac” is obviously the name “Carlin” spelled backwards. It’s most likely a nod to Steve Gerber’s friend and sometime collaborator Bruce Carlin, who was at this time writing occasional pieces for Marvel’s humor magazine Crazy under Gerber’s editorship.
We’ve just seen Dr. Strange spend several pages mopping the floor with an inferior opponent, which could have been another example of the Sorcerer Supreme demonstrating why he’s just too powerful to function well in a superhero-team setting — until the end, that is, where he’s confronted by a situation which can’t be resolved by mere power alone. It’s a good omen for the remainder of this storyline… even if the title of this opening chapter, “Nighthawk’s Brain!” seems to have been something of a misnomer, given that we’ve spent precious little time inside Kyle Richmond’s mind (at least not once past that hallucinatory opening sequence).
And, in fact, it’s the next issue’s episode that, in your humble blogger’s opinion, would be a better fit for a title that Gerber has clearly derived from Donovan’s Brain. Unless, of course, he got it from “Spock’s Brain”. (Hey, it could be either. Or both.) But we’ll leave further musings along that line until next month, when we’ll be taking a nice long look at Defenders #32’s “Musical Minds!”
Much as I complain about Gerber’s handling of Stephen, this sequence was spot on.
And I love the “National Geographic” line.
Regarding Hulk’s use of violence, I’ve started watching the Bixby Hulk on DVD and while the Hulk has put one guy in hospital by accident (ceiling caved in) it’s noticeable he doesn’t punch them, which would probably be lethal. But the series rationalizes that by having him constrained, even unconsciously, by Banner’s morality (“David Banner doesn’t kill.”).
I’ve always found Sal Buscema’s art to be rather bland, especially compared to his brother John’s, but Jim Mooney’s inks really invest some life and dynamics into them. Nothing bland about the resulting visuals here.
Re-experiencing this opening chapter in Gerber’s grand Headmen/Nebulon epic, this tale has some genuinely creepy overtones, mixed our heroes in mundane scenes and some very dark comedy, all common aspects of Gerber’s style. The mysterious, murderous elf fits in as a symbol of random, unpredictable horror even if never directly related to the overall story. Actually, sort of echoes the illegal killing of Bambi’s mother. Hulk’s handling of those hapless hunters was both horrific and hilarious, even if we have to convince ourselves that the guy whose head slammed against a tree didn’t suffer anything worse than a terrible headache – and notice even there, Gerber & Buscema are playing with the theme of “head games”. Even the scene with Valkyrie and Jack – he can’t bring himself to accept that the persona currently inhabiting the body of the woman he married is not that of his wife. And echoing that long-simmering aspect of Val’s character, now she, Doc & Hulk are forced to confront Nighthawk’s body inhabited by someone other than their friend Kyle Richmond.
I also find it very intriguing that as the Headmen’s attack on the Defenders gets going, their knowledge of the Defenders is very minimal. They have reason to believe Nighthawk has some connection to some very powerful people, and that the Hulk is one of them but not much else. Yet they engage in a very elaborate and unusual scheme to find out more and put that knowledge to use in their complex plan to take over the world. Of course, as made clear by the battle between Dr. Strange and Chondu in Nighthawk’s body, in a direct confrontation with the Defenders, our heroes would mop the floor with the original trio of Headmen pretty quickly. Nathan’s gorilla body may be far more powerful than an ordinary man, but still no match at all against the Hulk and even Valkyrie should be able to make short work of him. But plying their trade mostly in the shadows, taking down Nighthawk by subterfuge, they can still do considerable damage. “Oh, that. Well, unless we find some use for it, I imagine we’ll simply toss it away.” Chilling, yet oh so mundane. “Brrr” indeed!
15 year old me salutes Gerber/Sal B/Mooney all over again.
The start of Gerbers greatest epic at Marvel! I can’t wait for the fourth Headman, the other threat, and the silly yet horrific thing Nagan does next. Was this Gerber’s swan song in the title? It’s a shame because nothing he did at DC appealed to me enough to buy it.
“men killed Bambi’s mother !!”. That has got to be one of my all-time favorite panels ever since I saw it 50 years ago.
And it’s okay now that Disney owns Marvel. 😉
I think most of us would feel that Chondu is clearly evil in taking over Kyle’s body, and we all maybe looked forward to a resolution where the rightful order of things is restored, but Val has just as callously/carelessly taken over Barbara Norriss’s body and I’d bet most of our sympathies are with Val and not Barbara. Is it because all we’ve seen of Babs is her flirting with evil (quite literally in the end) or being screaming-loony-insane, that she doesn’t deserve the same consideration as Kyle?
I don’t think it happened, but you would have thought at the end of this storyline (where I think even Jack Norriss got in on the mind-swapping), that after Kyle, Jack and Chondu (and Bambi?) had been restored to their rightful bodies there would have been some uncomfortable moments for the one character whose mind was still conspicuously in someone else’s body. She may not have caused the situation (as it was imposed by the Enchantress), but she doesn’t seem at all interested in doing anything to put it right.
It feels like something Gerber should have addressed but didn’t. As clever a writer as he seemed to be, he seemed focused only on the (sometimes heavy-handed) social commentary points he wanted to make to the exclusion of some plot points that should have been addressed but weren’t. I think that’s part of why I never enjoyed his work as much as Englehart or McGregor.
I’d also say that he created some tedious, unlikable and grating characters, and Jack Norriss is the prime example.
That’s a very good point about the Defenders’ “double standard” as regards Barbara Norris, mike. After all, just a couple of years earlier (in the Avengers/Defenders War storyline) the group had gone to great lengths to rescue the soul of the Black Knight. It might be different if Barb’s psyche had actually been destroyed, but we know that she’s still “in there”, and who’s to say her sanity could never be restored?
Of course, in context, Chondu voluntarily took over Kyle’s body, but the Valkyrie persona was grafted onto Barbara’s by the Enchantress’s magic which even Dr. Strange was helpless to undo, nor could any of the Defenders restore Barbara’s sanity. Up to this point, Valkyrie’s persona seemed to have been created ex nihilo by Amora (the Enchantress), and at any rate it wasn’t a choice made by Val or any of the other Defenders. So I don’t see it as truly hypocritical that they came to accept something that none of them had the capacity to change. Or that the writers didn’t do story after story of Dr. Strange trying and repeatedly failing to restore Barbara to her body — and, as far as he knew, doing so would have effectively killed the Valkyrie persona — where was that supposed to go, as based on the status quo in 1975? I know that in later years, other writers would create a back story to Valkyrie’s persona to show that she had existed prior to the events of Defenders #4, but that hadn’t even been hinted at yet as of Defenders #31.
Speaking of headgames, there was the Hulk himself, a separate personality grafted onto a mutated form of Bruce Banner’s body. Up to this point, even in the times when it seemed Banner had been cured, some quirk in his personality ensure that he would somehow undo it (as mandated by the natural laws of the Marvel Universe that any highly popular character with powers gained due to some curse or accident would never be permanently cured of that affliction).
It was a thing that so many comics superheroes, from Superman & Batman to a great many Marvel characters, were borne out of some sort of deep personal tragedy. Valkyrie certainly fit the mode, inhabiting the body of a woman driven mad by a coupling with a demon, as arranged by her own mother and enabled by her husband. Strangely, Gerber never really dealt with that aspect of Jack’s own culpability in what happened to Barbara. I have no idea if any other writer ever did.
Yes, as Alan and multiple commenters have pointed out, you wouldn’t know Jack had been part of the Nameless Ones’ cult.
Yeah, but…
“the Enchantress’s magic which even Dr. Strange was helpless to undo, nor could any of the Defenders restore Barbara’s sanity”… Lover-boy Dane was turned to stone also by the Enchantress’s magic, and Doc vowed to do everything in his power to undo it. Barbara? Nah, can’t help with that. Possibly at the conclusion of the Avengers/Defenders war, Doc might have asked Thor if he (or his Dad, that All-Father guy) could do anything to help. Nope: It was written as though nobody gave a thought to the possibility. Even if Barbara could not be cured of her insanity, didn’t she have the right to life in her own body, if any solution could even have been considered?
I’ve just gone back and refreshed my memory of the whole Babs Norris /Norriss story, and it has to be said that good ol’ Dr Stephen Strange comes off looking like a bit of a d*ck. She sacrifices herself to free him from the ‘poles of ethereal force’ in the whatever-it-was dimension in that Hulk story, and his reaction is what, exactly? Do everything possible to save her, or escape, save himself and decide to quit magic altogether and live a little? He even spouts platitudes to Doc Banner at story’s end about how he’d never abandon a fellow human being in need, while he’s apparently doing exactly that.
Then he wanders back to the dimension she’s trapped in (by accident, not design) many months later, and dives in and drives her insane. Pretty much not entirely his fault, given a human perspective, but still down to him. Then Barbara’s self is dispossessed by the Valkyrie’s (at the time) invented persona, and nobody seems to mind. His only reaction to her joining the team is a massively chauvinistic (as Alan noted back when he reviewed Defenders #4): ‘we’re three of the toughest dudes around, what do we need you for?’ No mention of how she’s living in someone else’s body, or any thought to a solution.
It just reads to me as though it wasn’t something that ‘none of them had the capacity to change’, it was something that none of them was terribly bothered about.
When I first read that story in which Barbara took Stephen’s place in that dimensional doorway and then, Strange, essentially, breathes a sigh of relief and claims he’s done with magic and will be retiring from the super-hero biz (in a reprint of an issue of the Hulk in Marvel Super-Heroes, IIRC, in the late ’70s), I thought that seemed so entirely out of character I was surprised that it was Roy Thomas himself who wrote that story. It just seemed utterly bizarre that Dr. Strange would behave in such a way and leave Barbara to that horrid fate. And I don’t recall any later bit wherein the Master of the Mystic Arts felt any shame about that or that maybe the time that he himself was trapped in that doorway somehow warped his mind. Thomas or later writers should have indicated that Stephen himself was psychically traumatized by the experience (maybe someone did but I missed it). So, yeah, Dr. Strange doesn’t come off all that well in regard to the issue of Barbara either. And it might have worked better if somehow Barbara’s and Val’s personas could have been integrated, with Barbara’s sanity restored, retaining the power of the Valkyrie, and telling Jack to shove off. But it seemed for the most part the writers opted to maintain the status quo created by Englehart in Defenders # 4.
The whole idea of “I’ll just hang up my amulet” is weird, even given he’s just defeated the Nameless Ones. Being Sorcerer Supreme isn’t the sort of thing you step down from, let alone not consulting with the Ancient One. It’s true Stephen’s series was dead but so?
Yep. It would have made more sense if Stephen had been shown to have been shaken to his core and unable to think or function normally. But, no, nothing of the sort. He just left a poor woman in a horrible situation and with no thought whatsoever of concern for her just nonchalantly opts to hang up his cape, with an attitude of, “hey, it’s not my problem.” What the hell was Roy thinking or for that matter Lee in not saying, “hey, Roy, this ending just won’t do. It makes Dr. Strange look too much like an uncaring jerk.”
Steve Englehart also appears to have been at least slightly vexed by the way Dr. Strange’s brief “retirement” was handled by Roy Thomas, as he offered an explanation (of sorts) for the hero’s behavior in Doctor Strange #12 — as we’ll be covering in a post about that book next month. 😉
I dunno…it’s almost as if Roy (and by extension, Stan) were simply tired of Barbara and didn’t care about her any more and just wanted to get rid of her in any way possible. Much like most of the rest of us had felt about her for months.
Just a minor point of clarification, Don — Roy Thomas wrote the first appearance of Barbara (in Hulk) that ended with her sacrificing herself to save Dr. Strange, only to have him suddenly decide to retire, seemingly forgetting about her in the process. Steve Englehart wrote the follow-up (in Defenders) where Barb was first driven mad and then had the Valkyrie persona imposed upon her body by the Enchantress.
See? This is why I’m always hesitant to reply to some of this stuff. I don’t hold on to the minutae of this stuff like some of you do. Got it turned around. Mea culpa.
I’d agree with all of the above about Doc being (at the very least) ‘psychically traumatized’ at the end of the Hulk story, and I might go further with a head canon retcon no-prize attempt:
In Defenders #4, when the Enchantress transforms Barbara into the Valkyrie, she claims to be at the peak of her powers and says something to the effect that the transformation will be permanent and “the mortal wench shall be totally submerged and forgotten!” Well, Amora’s main magical ability is the control of men, so even without any active lip-locking (and faced with such strong-willed men), possibly enough of her will still got through that they believed that Babs was ‘totally submerged permanently’ and ‘forgot’ to try and cure her? Maybe the effects of the spell spread out to later team-mates like Kyle and Luke (or they just accepted Doc’s opinion), and even to all the subsequent writers of the series that they never questioned the status quo?
To your point about Gerber being more interested in social commentary than in plotting, I’d take it one step further and argue that Gerber was more interested in social commentary than he was in superheroes, and one wonders why he even wrote superhero comics at all. To me, Man-Thing and Howard the Duck offered Gerber better vehicles to write about the things he was really interested in, and Man-Thing in particular was a sort of bystander character who gave Gerber latitude to write issues like the one where the hippie and the Vietnam veteran argue about the war, or whatever. That’s not to say that Gerber’s Defenders run isn’t interesting in its own strange way, even if the Elf with a Gun stuff seems like it would have been more at home in an indie comic. On the other hand, it’s amazing Gerber got away with smuggling some of the stuff he did smuggle into the Defenders, and, as I’ve said before, overall this mid-‘70s period of Marvel before Jim Shooter was brought in to make the trains run on time has its own bonkers charm.
Mantlo’s “Tapping Tommy” story put me (permanently) off The Defenders.
It is too bad this is some of Gerber’s best work by all accounts.
Gerber as clearly a troubled man. But he was a huge talent.
I liked Howard the Duck (if less than Man-Thing) and thought his three issues of Mister Miracle might have been the best single continuation of Kirby’s Fourth World (taking it in an Existentialist direction was logical for Gerber but both unexpected and strangely fitting for Kirby).
Marvel probably reached its commercial heights under shooter but probably reachedits creative heights when Englehart, Gerber and MacGregor ruled the roost . . . .
That carney in the far right panel looks a lot like Dick Giordano.
“Gerber’s script for this sequence is admirably subtle; while the disembodied arm clutching at Nighthawk’s ankle here (and that, giant-sized, was grasping his whole body on the opening splash page) is clearly Trish’s missing limb, the text never specifically says so… probably because Nighthawk himself never makes that connection.”
It’s a pretty common comic art error but the disembodied arm changes from a left arm to a right arm in the next panel.
Sometimes they aren’t dismembered. Take a look at this page from Detective Comics no. 369, cover dated November 1967. This was Neal Adams’ first super-hero story, just before his run on Deadman. In the large panel Neal drew a left hand on the right arm of the Elongated Man. Didn’t know he was so “ambidextrous.” 😉
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Well, my early teen old self probably had some inkling that Valkyrie was not unappealing in some feminine way but my older self just now is somewhat surprised at the explicitness of her conical metallic bra, a decade or so before Madonna’s Jean Paul Gaultier inspired stage outerwear.
I commented on this some months ago—-she looks like a Code-approved dominatrix in S&M gear. Amazed they got away with that, when you consider that only seven years earlier Steranko couldn’t have highlights on the leather clad posterior of Nick Fury’s contessa girlfriend. Stan Lee ordered the production department to reduce her posterior to a black silhouette.
https://legionofandy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/twin-vals-01.jpg
Phew, that was close. That unshadowed posterior might have warped my developing brain back in the day. Thanks for protecting me, Stan!
I’ve always had a fondness for Nighthawk. Maybe it’s because he was intended to be a Batman knock-off or maybe it was just because he tried so damned hard to be an A-lister and could never quite get there. I was excited when I saw the cover of this one and thought, maybe ol’ Kyle “Wannabe” Richmond would finally get his day in the sun. Imagine my disappointment that the only part of Nightwing getting the spotlight was his body and not his mind.
Poor Kyle. Still, I like him a lot better than Jack Norris. I am so tired of his storyline vis-à-vis his estranged wife Barbara and the Asgardian warrior spirit currently inhabiting her body. I also noticed the disparity between trying to get Kyle’s body back and Val living in Barbara rent-free, but, as we’ve discussed many times, Barbara isn’t in the best place mental-health-wise right now, and where is Val going to go if Barbara’s body isn’t available to her? To her credit, Val never said she wouldn’t give up Barbara’s body if there was a way her madness could be cured, but I can certainly understand her not wanting to be constantly reminded that she isn’t entirely who she says she is. And what’s Jack’s deal, anyway? If he’d been half as devoted to Barbara when they were married as he is when she’s someone else completely, maybe she’d have never lost her mind in the first place. Still, you do sort of get the idea that the rest of the Defenders had sort of written Babs off and wished Jack would do the same, so he could get out of the way and stop being a nuisance.
One thing Gerber did here that I like is point out that just because WE know who all the Marvel heroes and villains are, doesn’t mean everyone does. The couple in the park not knowing who Nighthawk is, the Headmen not knowing who made up the Defenders other than Nighthawk and Hulk and Chondu having no idea who Doctor Strange was and that he was so much more powerful a sorcerer were nice little touches that didn’t necessarily impact upon the story in any significant way, but were fun to ready anyway. Still, I can’t believe a magic-user of Chondu’s power not knowing the freakin’ Sorcerer Supreme. Can’t wait to see what Nighthawk has to do to get his brain back. Whatever it is, it surely won’t do his self-confidence any good at all! Thanks, Alan!
Stephen’s run in Strange Tales established he is indeed known to the magical world at large.
It would be simple to assert that Val’s soul can’t be separated from Barbara’s body but no, that didn’t occur to anyone.
I wonder if the “Nilrac” referenced in Defenders 31 was actually intended to be the comedian George Carlin? If so it’s an interesting coincidence that George Carlin hosted the very first episode of Saturday Night this very month, October 1975.
I enjoyed your review of this issue, Alan. As usual, you pointed out or exposed things that I am sure I never thought about when I first read this issue, especially when the Hulk pummeled those hunters. This is, after all, the same Hulk who cuts loose on characters like Thor, Iron Man and the Abomination with no restraints. He was clearly furious, and yes I never thought about it, but those two hunters should be dead or in severe comas. One of them was left with a gun wrapped around his head! How would that be removed? Interestingly enough, it was revealed in some interviews years later that Len Wein (the current writer of the Hulk in 1975) was less than pleased (actually very unhappy) with Gerber’s characterization of the Hulk in the Defenders and especially in this very issue (“Men killed Bambi’s mother!”). Len’s Hulk was fairly child-like, so I was surprised to learn this as I did not see much difference between Len’s Hulk and Gerber’s Hulk.
Regarding Jack Norris, even though he had finally accepted the Defenders, I still found him to be an incredibly annoying and grating character. However, Gerber seemed to really like him and he actually stayed around until the end of Gerber’s run (and unfortunately beyond that). It’s possible Gerber considered him a character who could provide a different viewpoint for the Defenders, and of course he did use him for different reasons over the next few issues. But also based on some comments by Val in this issue, it may be that Gerber actually considered Norris to be a viable love interest for Val, although of course that never came to fruition.
It should also be remembered that this is the beginning of a storyline that would wind its way through Defenders 31-40 and conclude in Defenders Annual 1. Unfortunately Defenders 41 would be Gerber’s final issue. He would be abruptly removed, allegedly to give Gerry Conway an additional writing assignment although that lasted just 2 issues and then suddenly he was gone too.
Personally I consider this period (Defenders 31-40 and Annual 1) to be a real peak for the series and some of Gerber’s best work, although I have a vague memory that issue 39 was a little off so will be interested to review that issue when you get to it.
As to the elf, at the time I assumed that Gerber had some sort of plan, but having read various interviews with Gerber where he admitted he was a fairly loose plotter and wasn’t really sure where he was going with the elf, that page seems so strange and random, I couldn’t even try to guess what he was up to there.
Thanks for another great review!
Three words: “Omega the Unknown.”
Mary Skrenes has never said where she an Gerber were going with that character . . . . Possibly, it was subject to change,
I used to shake my head over the writers who’d start a plotline with no idea where it was going. But given all the stories of “X had a big reveal for Diabolical Villain but got taken off the book too soon” I feel more forgiving.
I totally agree with the vast majority of you who felt that Jack Norriss was an obnoxious character who seemed resistant to accepting the Valkyrie like her fellow Defenders. However, I feel that he does deserve some sympathy, as a man who had lost the love of his life only to discover that she was back in form if not identity. Regardless of the continuing reminders by Val and the other Defenders to explain to him that she was no longer his beloved Barbara, his heart was telling him that she was still in there, just dormant within Val’s psyche. A person that deeply in love will not readily give up hope, so he’ll stick around with the hope that his love will be reciprocated. That being said, I found it out of character for Val to tell him “I find myself attracted to you of late, Jack.”, and even more preposterous for this warrior-woman to have chosen to take stuffed animals with her from Coney Island, as if she and Jack had been on a date.
Dr. Strange’s description of Chondu as a “Third-Rate Sorceror” sounded oddly familiar to me, so I followed a hunch by skimming Justice League of America # 83 to find a parallel sentiment. In this JLA-JSA team-up from 1970, the omnipotent antagonist Creator-2 has mopped the floor with most of the JSA, leaving only Dr. Fate and the Thunderbolt to keep him at bay. The Thunderbolt’s magic proves entirely ineffective, prompting Dr. Fate to muse to himself “The Thunderbolt is, alas, a Grade-Three Sorceror … through no fault of his, unable to cope”.
While I had bought Defenders # 21 the year before and was familiar with the first three Headmen, I had missed issue # 31, which clearly was full of major plot development especially around Nighthawk’s internal odyssey. I did wind up the next month buying issue # 32, which I still remember as being phenomenally difficult to understand, so it helps reading this review to fill in a lot of the missing pieces.
Looking forward to your follow-up review next month, Alan.
That has me reflecting that in many ways, a flesh-and-blood Val (as opposed to on the printed page) probably would seem very un-Barbara — body language, posture, as much as personality. Might not deter him but the sense she’s almost Barbara but not quite might freak Jack out some.
Besides, she wasn’t the love of Jack’s life. He went along with sacrificing her to the Nameless Ones, didn’t he?
Might be that was exactly what was needed to get the enchantment to work , , , ,
This was the beginning of the end for me with *The Defenders*: I read #31-36 as they came out, and then stopped reading comics that summer with *Captain America* #201. I didn’t read the rest of the arc until much, much later, when I bought the *Essential* volume covering the series from #31-60.
In reviewing the situation (as Fagin would sing), I’m caught between two possibilities.
One is that I’ll see the arc as Gerber throwing out a lot of stuff at the reader, hoping that something will connect and being perfectly willing to abandon things en route (the fate of the fawn, what happens to Chondu’s brain after the surgery in #36, etc.)…and finding that enough did, even if it was the vindication of a letter in *Avengers* #82 about bringing back the Red Guardian as a hero..
The other is that it’ll come down to the demented logic of “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream”:
“Ah, me I busted out/don’t even ask me how…”
Or this:
Well, by this time, I was fed up at tryin’ to make a stab
At bringing back any help for my friends and Captain Arab
I decided to flip a coin, like either heads or tails
Would let me know if I should go back to ship or back to jail
So I hocked my sailor suit and I got a coin to flip
It came up tails, it rhymed with sails, so I made it back to the ship
“Jail” also rhymes with “tails.”
My friend Kevin feels that Gerber was the Grant Morrison of the 1970s. That isn’t completely a compliment to my mind.
Recommended: the two-part “Suspense” adaptation of *Donovan’s Brain* with Orson Welles as Dr. Patrick Cory.
“Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.”
Were we really so tolerant of the gratuitous violence shown by the Hulk 50 years ago? Len Wein took issue with how simplistic Gerber portrayed the Hulk, but not, it would seem, that the man-monster had either killed or made a vegetable one of the hunters. Or indeed of the plight of Barbara. Were we then just like the bystanders, not wanting to get involved? Were we really so morally apathetic, or were we just blind and too accepting? Great insight Alan, great comments all, but will I ever look at this comic in the same way again