THIS GREEN MILK TASTES FUNNY

Good day, waifs and weasels, and welcome once again to the fragrant catacombs of my BARGAIN BASEMENT OF DOOOOOM. What with all the revelling in Martianness, it’s been a long, long time since this irregular celebration of discounted dregs has turned its attention away from the DC universe, so let’s voyage across the ultramenstruum to the House of Ideas. Specifically, 1983 and THE NEW DEFENDERS. 

Launched in 1972 by Roy Thomas, the original Defenders title featured Dr Strange, Namor and the Hulk (and later, the Silver Surfer) as a highly dysfunctional assemblage of lone-wolf powerhouses, brought together reluctantly and in an ad-hoc fashion. Described as a ‘non-team’, over the next decade the Defenders had a series of fairly bizarre cosmic, occult and superheroic adventures (including a run-in with Howard the Duck) and a rotating lineup of second-tier characters, including Hellcat, Nighthawk and the Son of Satan. Just over a decade after its inception, and now with J.M. DeMatteis at the helm, it was time to kick over some bins and hurl insults at applecarts.

In issue #125, after being convinced of a prophecy that foretold the destruction of the Earth should they remain together, the original Defenders decided to disband – assuming, that is, that a team that was never really a team can disband at all. Waiting in the wings (and with wings, in several cases) were some secondary members, brought together by the Beast, clearly desperate for any gig he could get after leaving the Avengers a couple of years earlier. Along for the ride were his former X-Men teammates Iceman and the Angel, both somewhat adrift and seeking a new purpose; another ex-Avenger, the troubled, arrogant psychic Moondragon; and Defenders hangers-on Valkyrie (steel-boobed Asgardian angel of death and rider of the winged horse Aragorn) and the Gargoyle (a septuagenarian mystically trapped in the hideous tangerine-coloured body of a… well, you can probably guess).

If this seems like a motley collection, well, it is. In fact, it has echoes of the Champions, the ill-fated mid-1970s super-team that also featured Iceman and Angel, alongside Hercules, Ghost Rider and Black Widow. However, the Champions were an entirely random congregation of stray characters who had absolutely nothing in common and no reason at all to be together beyond lazy marketing strategies. The New Defenders, on the other hand, may also have featured a handful of founding X-Men, a mythical being and an occult monster, but they had somewhat stronger interpersonal connections. Indeed, the book went on to develop something of a bickering-and-learning extended family vibe, with Beast and Candy Southern (Angel’s girlfriend, who ended up leading the team) in relatively responsible parental roles, Gargoyle as a snaggle-toothed grandpa, Valkyrie as a cool, ass-kicking aunt, and Angel and Iceman as horny teenage boys lusting after disruptive hairless outsider Moondragon. No longer a non-team, this lot also lived together, first occupying a New York brownstone in a super-powered facsimile of The Cosby Show, before moving to Angel’s mountaintop aerie. Compounding the domestic vibe even further, the Beast even picked up a dog along the way, Sassafras –who simply vanished from Marvel continuity at the end of the series, seemingly abandoned by a neglectful Hank McCoy. Surely she’s due a vengeful comeback? The campaign for a Dark Sassafras limited series starts here. 

The revamped title got off to a relatively inauspicious start, with the New Defenders going up against the boilerplate villainy of the Secret Empire, led by Professor Power (kind of a tenth-rate Doctor Doom-lite clad in armour made of Lego, only crappier). There are some entertaining issues here though, with the team fighting sad-sack mercenaries Mad Dog and the Mutant Force, a gigantic baby-man called Leviathan and a virtual-reality version of the New Mutants. They also gain a new recruit, in the form of a former adversary Cloud, a teenage girl who turns into, well… you can probably guess. Her presence on the team leads to some remarkably awkward scenes that have not aged well. Cloud (like everyone else on the team) develops a crush on Moondragon, one that at first appears to be reciprocated. However, before this has a chance to develop into the first same-sex relationship in mainstream comics, Cloud undergoes a spontaneous gender swap, Moondragon loses interest, Iceman displays some regrettable transphobia and the whole romantic subplot is quickly forgotten.

After J.M. DeMatteis left the book with #131, Peter Gillis took over writing duties and steered the title into strange new waters. Where DeMatteis’s run essentially consisted of standard super-hero fare made interesting by a focus on character interaction, Gillis’s run was much darker, more mysterious, at times verging on a horror title. Indeed, One of the stand-out issues of his run, #134, is particularly creepy ­– essentially a slasher film masquerading as a superhero title. The team are being hunted by the assassin Manslaughter, who is somehow able to move unseen and unheard through their home. After monstrously taunting them for a while, he kills almost the entire team, one by one, in imaginative and grisly ways (though all is not quite as it seems, of course…).

Gillis’s run is notable not only for its weirdness and horror vibes, but for its sense of completeness and closure. His first issue (#132) relates the story of Ephraim Soles, a man mutated by gamma radiation into a vegetation-based creature. Though seemingly destroyed at the end of this first encounter, he/it survives as a cloud of spores. Much later, these spores infect some grass and are eaten by a cow, which becomes pregnant and gives birth to a horrific grassy man-cow thing. READ THAT SENTENCE AGAIN. In the meantime, it’s revealed that Moondragon’s irascible personality was due to her constant struggle to keep in check the ancient evil that dwells within, known as the Dragon of the Moon. She eventually finds inner peace only to be immediately and ironically infected by the spores of Ephraim Soles’ horrible grass-man-cow-baby-monster, and finally succumbs to the Dragon’s influence.

This leads to an extended multi-issue climax for the series, in which the team’s greatest threat comes from within. In 1986, the book was cancelled, but Gillis goes out in style in #152, concluding the Moondragon saga with an epic battle in which most of the team – and a few new members, including murderous former foe Manslaughter – are killed. This was, of course, a particular drag for Beast and Angel, having been through the exact same situation (telepath achieves ultimate power, turns evil, much death and horror ensues) with Jean Grey a few years previously. It’s a wonder that they ever agreed to work with a psychic ever again.

While the New Defenders is hardly among the greatest comics ever written, it’s definitely an interesting and worthwhile curiosity, strong on character, big on atmosphere, ambitious in its long-form storytelling and unafraid of exploring fairly out-there ideas (like, say, nightmarish cow-man-grass-type-things). Alas, its biggest weakness is its art. Most of the issues were pencilled by Don Perlin, whose work here is at best competent but perfunctory (and at worst, simplistic and lazy), never quite conveying the atmosphere, imagination and eccentric flair that some of the stories demanded. 

On the other hand, the series had some really spectacular, eye-catching and eerie covers by the likes of Kevin Nowlan, Bill Sienkiewicz, Butch Guice, Mike Mignola and Frank Cirocco. Had this series’ interiors been handled by any of that bunch – but especially Sienkiewicz or Mignola – it might well be considered a cult classic. As is, it seems all but forgotten.


Mind you, that could be because of the cow-man-grass-babychild-devil-creature from beyond hell. Which I wish I could forget.

(originally published on The Big Glasgow Comic Page)