19: In With The New Defenders

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.M. DeMatteis
Art: Alan Kupperberg

Peter Gillis' first task was to dialogue an already completed fill in issue, a knockabout comedy featuring a favourite DeMatteis creation, Frog-Man. The whole story revolves around new hopeless wannabe bad guy the Walrus crashing a Uni lecture by the Beast. Just the three original X-Men in the spotlight here, which seemed to be DeMatteis' main focus in the group. Gillis does his best with what there is to work with and provides some amusing moments, including an obligatory Beatles joke. Regular fill in artist Kupperberg proves solid and dependable, especially inking his own work.

Iceman's 'joke' didn't age well.

The New Defenders #132 (1984)

Pencils: Don Perlin
Inks: Kim DeMulder

Peter Gillis made good on his promise of "different types of stories" by kicking off with an old school monster movie. The spartan splash page of Gillis' first full issue is a real statement of intent. For the duration of Gillis' run, Don Perlin suggested incorporating the Defenders logo into the splash pages, Will Eisner style. Perlin had briefly worked for Eisner on The Spirit newspaper strip in the early 1950's. The man crawling across the desert is a dying low life who unwittingly ingests gamma irradiated lichen. Soon the dead man is shambling towards Defenders mansion, and before you can say chestburster, they're under siege by a tentacled muck monster. Like some malevolent Swamp Thing, it bleeds flowers and its spores multiply exponentially. With Beast away on campus, Iceman steps up as the unlikely hero with a semi plausible scientific solution. Following years of Bobby being portrayed as the immature class joker, it's nice to see Gillis trying to add a little depth. A promising start, and the innocuous seeming plant menace would return to haunt them soon enough.

The New Defenders #133 (1984)

Pencils: Alan Kupperberg
Inks: Kim DeMulder

The gang take a trip to San Francisco while their place is being fumigated. There they get caught up in a purposely convoluted noir mystery played for laughs. Oliver Cutlass and his wife Kwan Tai Fung (aka Typhoon) are a more hardboiled Dashiell Hammett style take on Nick and Nora from The Thin Man movies. The main joke is that the The New Defenders follow the volatile duo around from frying pan to fire like bemused lackeys. Gillis possessed a keen sense of the absurd, and this certainly is, although you have to be fully aboard to appreciate screwball comedy, which isn't a train I often ride. It doesn't help that the stars of the book are utterly superfluous to the story. As much as I love film noir, maybe Cutlass and Typhoon would've worked better flying solo, without the capes distractions.

The New Defenders #134 (1984)

Pencils: Don Perlin
Inks: Kim DeMulder

One repercussion of the previous issue is the drug lord that Cutlass and entourage crossed hires an assassin to take out the Defenders. If that sounds a bit tenuous, it certainly is, but it provides a decent excuse for this slasher themed tale. The disarmingly gawky looking Manslaughter stalks Defenders mansion, threatening them one by one with imminent death. Manslaughter's low level psionic powers make him impossible to sense, unless you're looking directly at him. To draw him out, our heroes fake their own demises at his hands. It's a twist I enjoyed when first reading, but just seems worn and obvious now. The good guys also do a particularly poor job of implementing the ruse, as Angel and Valkyrie are both poisoned trying to capture this maniac. Although a very minor threat, Manslaughter makes for a compelling one in a rather cool issue. Something to note is Gargoyle mysteriously vanishes in the midst of all this...

Manslaughter referencing Monty Python.

The New Defenders #135 (1984)

Pencils: Don Perlin
Inks: Kim DeMulder

This is a peculiar issue. The team take Manslaughter to the nearest town Elijah for processing. The local sheriff points out they can't arrest someone without reason. Luckily Candy pulls some strings with the government. Meanwhile, Moondragon and Cloud have a run in with a redneck arsonist with minor fire controlling ability, Blowtorch Brand. A few days later, they return to find Brand burning down a sweatshop with immigrant workers inside. In minor social commentary, the owner has paid Brand to kill all his illegal workers before Immigration Services find out. As bad guys go, Brand is barely a credible threat and is dispatched inside a couple of pages. The end rankles me as well; Valkyrie lets the sheriff sacrifice himself saving civilians, knowing that she will then guide him to Valhalla. It seems a heavy handed way to reinforce Val's otherness, and contrary to the hero code of saving lives wherever possible. Some good character moments in this issue, but plotwise rather messy.

With the setup largely complete, the series begins to kick into high gear...