Peter B. Gillis Big Comics Readthrough

Cancellation of The New Defenders was officially announced in Spring of 1985, with 7 issues still to print. So Peter Gillis had time to ensure the title went out with a real bang.  The New Defenders #149-150 (1985) Pencils: Don Perlin Inks: Art Nichols, Dell Barras, Alan Kupperberg, Randy Emberlin Cloud's origin is finally revealed, with a little help from Seraph. Cloud turns out to be a sentient nebula, befriended by the star roaming Cosmic Cube from Gillis' early stories . Surrounding stars begin disappearing, so Captain America groupie the Cube sends Cloud to Earth to find help. Once on Earth, Cloud witnesses teenage couple Carol and Danny crash their car. She decides to take their forms to blend in, but the shock renders her amnesiac. Which is the state the Secret Empire later found her in, implanting false memories of a life on Earth. If this all sounds overly convoluted, that's because it is.  Visiting Carol and Danny in a coma proves enough to restore Cloud's mem...

The New Defenders #145 (1985) Pencils: Don Perlin Inks: Art Nichols The remains of the New Defs take a moment to feel sorry for themselves post battle in Five Women , the flipside of the earlier Three Women. On a side note, this team had an impressively gender balanced lineup by 80's standards. With Moondragon fled, Cloud injured and Angel blinded, the remaining Defenders find themselves at a low ebb and consider calling it a day. Luckily old Champions teammate Johnny Blaze rides in to cheer up the ex-X-Men contingent. It's a quiet, talky issue for reflection and setting up future plotlines, with Seraph returning and the mystery of Andromeda. Departing inker DeMulder is replaced with the mismatched Art Nichols, who rather swamps Perlin in an ugly ink heavy style. The New Defenders #146-7 (1985) Pencils: Luke McDonnell, Don Perlin Inks: Art Nichols The battered Defenders take refuge at Doctor Strange's sanctum, searching for a cure for Warren's blindness. Brunnhilde'...

The New Defenders #140 (1985) Pencils: Don Perlin Inks: Kim DeMulder The Heartbreak Kid is a very odd story, even by PBG's standards. Half the team investigate a disturbance on the small town of Abbotsford. Danny Shepard, an unrepentant teenage boy is awaiting trial, accused of raping his black teacher. The Defenders arrive to find rifle wielding racists in unsubtle Nazi outfits attacking the crowd gathered outside. In the ensuing court case, Danny comes clean and admits what happened; his (presumably mutant) power had kicked in to absorb bad memories, or heartbreak, from people. Danny had taken the pain of a forced adoption from his teacher, which left her confused and feeling defiled. He then walks out of court, taking everyone's secret emotional pain with him, like some revered faith healer. The Defenders play a mostly passive role again, with newly reformed Moondragon taking the lead, worryingly gung ho with her mental control. She sports a fetching new costume in black an...

What can be difficult to get across on capsule reviews is the nuance of character interaction that makes New Defenders special. Peter Gillis rarely wasted a line of dialogue without revealing some aspect of a personality or how they interplay with others. The early focus on their personal lives was on the unusual love triangle between Iceman, Cloud and Moondragon. To understand that, we need to first delve into some complex backstories. Cloud is a new DeMatteis character, first appearing in #123 as a brainwashed agent of the Secret Empire, alongside Seraph and Harridan. Once freed from their control, she joined the New Defenders, although her past and origin remained a mystery. Maiden, Mother & Crone Moondragon has a much more complex and morally ambiguous history. Heather Douglas first appeared in an early Iron Man as a bathing suited mad scientist with a submarine, calling herself Madame MacEvil. Which as supervillain names go, is right up there with Boaty McBoatface. Steve Ger...

Not only had Peter Gillis inherited a team of little known oddballs for his Defenders run, he also had to contend with their lack of agency. Beast had transformed them from a 'non-team' who banded together when required, to a more traditional outfit living together in a hero headquarters. Bizarrely, just before the end of his run, J.M. DeMatteis had relocated them to Angel's holiday home on a clifftop in New Mexico. Although this made for a unique setting, there are a whole lot less supervillains (roughly zero) in New Mexico than New York. Gillis got around this flaw by making them a passive team, where trouble came to them every issue, the majority of it self inflicted. This had the knock on effect of making the team seem aimless and redundant. Their enemies were largely supernatural in nature, and certainly on the weirder end of the spectrum. I'll look at the first few setup issues individually, until it becomes more interwoven.. The New Defenders #131 (1984) Plot: J...

Ever since Steve Gerber's classic 70's run, The Defenders  have been known as the oddball team of the Marvel U; the gang you hang out with when you don't fit in anywhere else. J.M. DeMatteis played up the supernatural aspect in his lengthy early 80's spell on the title. Towards the end of his run he wrote out the big hitters and turned this 'non-team' into a more conventional outfit. The lineup was anything but conventional though: three of the original X-Men, Defenders stalwarts Valkyrie and Gargoyle, former Avenger and villain Moondragon, and a teenager who turns into a Cloud. Peter Gillis' series for First were attracting attention over at Marvel, in a "why is our guy working for someone else? Let's give him more work" way. Around the end of '83, Gillis heard DeMatteis was leaving after only half a dozen issues of the re-christened New Defenders, so threw his hat in the writing ring. As PBG put it: "I was pleased that they asked me ...

The Black Flame - Starslayer #20-33 (1984-1985) Pencils: Tom Sutton, Don Lomax Inks: Don Lomax "Who is The Black Flame?" , the story arc title of the next chapters, reveals The Flame to be an 18th century German lad named Heinrich Von Ofterdingen, born to well to do parents. Ofterdingen is a town in southern Germany, so I wonder if Gillis chose it at random, or if there was some family connection. Heinrich was taken at a young age by the Nightmare Lord and reshaped into a boogeyman. It's a slight origin, yet weaving it into this middle storyline provides an effective introduction for many no doubt confused Starslayer readers. Archenemy and fellow boogey person Hellequin captures The Black Flame in her giant bosom (hey, it was the 80's) and drags him back to the Nightmare Lord for re-indoctrination. This spell is eventually broken by the Flame's trio of friends, who traverse the twisted nightmare realms to rescue him.  The writing seems a lot sharper on the Starsla...

The Black Flame , according to Peter Gillis, arose from two impulses: he wanted to work again with one of his all time favourite artists, Tom Sutton; and Bruce Patterson suggested creating a Lovecraft inspired series. Gillis pointed out that Lovecraftian heroes tend to not survive for very long. However, his solution to this problem was simple: make the monster the hero. Mars #2-8 (1984) - The Black Flame Pencils: Tom Sutton, Don Lomax Inks & Colours: Bruce Patterson Imagine the realm of nightmares is real (not hard for Doctor Strange fans), where the Nightmare Lord trains and despatches boogeymen to torment children (not hard for, er, Monsters Inc. fans). One of these fear spreading boogeymen, The Black Flame, rebels and escapes to the mortal world to save children and romantics alike from the clutches of their nightmares. The Flame cuts an imposing figure, wielding a lance and riding a black nightmare steed, which can conveniently disguise itself as a motorcycle. This isn't...

Black Panther #1-4 (1988) Pencils: Denys Cowan Inks: Sam De La Rosa You may be wondering why we've skipped half the 80's, but Gillis and Cowan's Black Panther miniseries actually originated back in 1983. Chicago based Peter Gillis was still paying frequent visits to the New York Marvel offices looking for work. Bob Budiansky pointed him in the direction of Denys Cowan, who really wanted to draw the Panther, and was in need of a writer. Gillis made the controversial suggestion of the Panther fighting apartheid. This wasn't entirely without precedence for the character, as Gillis' mentor Don McGregor had tackled thorny racial and political subjects in his Jungle Action run, even pitting T'Challa against the Klan. 3 of the 4 issues of this new miniseries were finished and it was solicited in 1984, even garnering a preview in Marvel Age . However, according to Cowan, Editor in Chief Jim Shooter had concerns about the racial violence intrinsic to the storyline. Gill...

In addition to the regular Warp series, there were 3 standalone specials, plus 4 back up strips. The first 2 backups ( Faceless Ones and Sargon ) had no Peter Gillis involvement, so I'll round up the rest here. Warp Special #1 (1983) Pencils: Howard Chaykin Inks: George Freeman The origin of Warp's most charming character, Prince Chaos , is basically a Superman parody. It still fails to explain why Chaos and Cumulus are related, as they appear to be born in different centuries on different planets to different parents. Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe it's just cosmic reasons. Although I never really got how Sargon and Valaria are meant to be estranged sisters either.  Anyhow, this special features the original heroic Cumulus, rather than his whiny rebirth David. It's the tale of how Chaos and Valaria got together and how Chaos killed the first Cumulus. It's also notable for introducing First's nexus of worlds Cynosure, which became the backdrop for Gr...