The setup is simple: Something Bad Happens. Something that is so bad, Dr. Strange heeds an impulse he normally ignores: to call in backup.
Now, his instincts say “call in the Defenders.” The Hulk, the Silver Surfer and the Sub-Mariner aren’t his friends, not really. And they’re barely even a team. So he heeds his better judgement as well, and relies upon the visions provided to him by Hoary Hoggoth himself to pierce the mists of time. Time is, after all, only an illusion sentient beings create in order to keep from experiencing everything at once, and possibly exploding in the process. Magic is quite useful at navigating time. At least to a certain extent.
Unfortunately, Dr. Strange is a bit rushed in his casting of the spell, because, you know, Something Bad Is Happening (Right Now). So he doesn’t try to determine specific outcomes, because that would take multiple castings of a very complex temporal rite and he doesn’t have that kind of time. (Plus casting the spell needs a tincture of Skryian chmrr-venom, and he doesn’t have a lot of that lying around.) All he really has time to ask is one question:
“Which of the Defenders will I need assisting me in order to prevent this devastation?”
Of course, he asks the question because he wants to make sure that calling in the Defenders is the right thing to do – and yes, he probably should have considered asking about the Avengers or the X-Men or the Initiative or the Guardians of the Galaxy or whoever while he was at it, but come on, he’s not perfect and sometimes when you’re in a hurry you get a tiny bit sloppy. And in fairness, he at least knows now that calling in the Defenders will work. Somehow, there is the potential for it to work.
But here’s the thing. There have been a lot of Defenders. And although he was probably thinking of the Hulk, Namor and Surfer…
…maybe he gets Deadpool, Gargoyle, Sleepwalker and Tagak the Leopard Lord.
…maybe he gets Deadpool, Blazing Skull, Charlie-27 and Captain Ultra.
…maybe he gets all villains, from the shortlived villainous incarnation of the Defenders: Batroc, Blob, Whirlwind and Electro. (And Deadpool.)
…maybe he gets Devil-Slayer and Daimon Hellstrom, who immediately try to kill each other while Deadpool provides commentary.
…maybe he gets a team that’s entirely dead: Thunderstrike, Porcupine, Torpedo and Jack of Hearts. And I mean “dead,” not “reanimated to come save the world.” He casts the spell and finds out everybody he needs to save the world is deader than Elvis. Also he gets Deadpool, who is not dead, although after about ten minutes Dr. Strange will probably wish Deadpool was dead.
…maybe he gets Luke Cage, Spider-Man, Iron Fist and Hawkeye (Clint Barton, not Bullseye), and has to explain what he’s actually doing when he’s not supposed to be the Sorcerer Supreme any more. Which is harder than it looks when you’ve got Deadpool hanging around asking all sorts of inappropriate questions.
…maybe he gets Daredevil, Hellcat, Paladin and Nighthawk (and Deadpool), and has to figure out how a bunch of people who don’t have any powers are going to help him save the world. Well, sure, you can shoot Deadpool a lot and he’ll live, but that’s not exactly proactive, you know?
Really, it could be anybody. The only certainty is you know that Deadpool will be involved somehow, because that’s just too good a chance to pass up. And maybe, just possibly, at some point the Hulk, Namor and Silver Surfer will show up anyway. (“Seriously, Strange. What possessed you to go fetch Joe the Gorilla but ignore the Avenging Son? Not that I don’t appreciate you respecting my privacy, but surely you must have gone insane at some – SOMEBODY SILENCE THIS NATTERING IDIOT IN THE BODY-STOCKING!”)
Top comment: A bunch of awesome-but-underused characters join forces to kick ass while their conflicting personalities provide humorous dialog? THIS IS SUCH A NOVEL IDEA! — NCallahan
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You had me at Deadpool.
Why do I see a “Why I should write Deadpool” month upcoming?
Also, the New Avengers bit would be hilarious.
Defenders only eh? Saves us from a team of Wolverines then I guess.
“Hey bub.”
“Hey bub.”
“Hey bub.”
“Hey bub.”
“Hey bub.”
“Crap.”
Deadpool is love.
Or a entire team of Deadpools!
The Deadpools would crowd out each of the comic panels by narrating what each of the other Deadpools was thinking.
Claremont style.
And this would be a problem…how exactly?
Deadpool will meta us to victory!
Has Strange ever MET Deadpool? If he had Deadpool revealed to him through the MISTS OF TIME ™ would he think he’s Spider-Man… with guns? I can imagine Strange asking Spidey for help and trying to not let him go down the path of gunishment. Spidey would torture himself with guilt-ridden angst over how, one day, he’d be shooting people and laughing. And Strange would say, “Yes. You even change your name to ‘Deadpool’.”
Spidey exploding would be a great thing to see.
As Sorcerer Supreme, wouldn’t the Friendly Yellow Boxes of Narrative Insight appear to him as well?
Michael Paciocco: We did ‘team of Deadpools’ already, and it was as awesome as you’d think. See Deadpool during the Secret Invasion, and the Super-Deadpool-Skrull mayhem wrought therein.
Issue number escapes me, though…
I can not see a team-up between Deadpool and Dr Strange except to see Dr Strange use magic to pull out his eyeballs and actually wash them before putting them back into his head.
However, and I’ve said this before on other boards, that Marvel needs to make their own version of World’s Finest starring Fight-Man and Deadpool.
Has there ever been a Lobo/Deadpool crossover?
Doc Strange met Deadpool at least once at the end of the “Cable and Deadpool” series.
Actually, though, the most insane Defenders line-up?
-Deadpool, Blazing Skull, Rocket Raccoon, and Slapstick
I love that Daredevil, Hellcat, Paladin and Nighthawk combo – with Deadpool and Strange, that would be old-school Defenders fun.
Remember Doc’s little fling with Night Nurse? (Whatever happened with that?) How about her, Squirrel Girl, and Millie the Model in this Charlie’s Angels-esque scenario with Strange as Charlie and Deadpool as Bosley? Now that, I’d read.
Bendis had Strange and Night Nurse break up because..er..I don’t know. Because Strange was being all emo-dick head I guess. Anyway I want to throw out an idea for you MGK. Rather than Deadpool. ZOMBIE DISEMBODIED HEAD OF DEADPOOL. All the chatter none of the guns!
Man, Blazing Skull and Rocket Raccoon *alone* would be worth the price of admission. My version would include Deathlok, just because, and Ultimate Valkyrie, because the cover art would sell.
Maybe he does gather all villains and they draw together heroes currently on their tails. It turns out he didn’t need them to directly save the world but to gather an appropriately bizarre group of heroes together to do so.
The mention of Silver Surfer made me think of only one thing: Deadpool vs. Galactus. I assume by the end that G has consumed himself to get away from the ‘mouth.
This is a tangential question, but reading this reminds me of something I’ve wondered about for a while — why isn’t Valkyrie considered a core Defender in the way that the Hulk, Namor, and the Silver Surfer are? I mainly know the team from the Essential Defenders collections, and she seems at least as integral as the Surfer. Nighthawk and so on, okay, I see how they’re replacements, but Val was in from pretty early on. But this is hardly the first place I’ve read the “core Defenders” defined as Hulk, Namor, Strange, and Surfer, so there must be something I’m overlooking. Maybe some definitive run that came later than the Essential Defenders?
You had me at “Defenders reunion” because even though I’ve only read about four issues of the Defenders I like the idea. That being said: Deadpool? Fuck yeah! I’ll buy just about anything with DP in it. That means breaking my No X-Men rule to get Messiah War (which Wade has been amazing in). He’s going to pop in in Ms. Marvel in a couple months and I’m going to be stupid enough to buy it.
I also agree that the “Daredevil, Hellcat, Paladin and Nighthawk (and Deadpool)” line up sounds the most fun. Though Namor and Deadpool? I’m salivating at the very idea. Classic Defenders + Deadpool = awesome.
This would be my chosen team of Defenders: Deadpool (natch), Hellcat, Valkyrie, Hercules and Darkhawk (assuming the stuff from Ascension gets reversed, otherwise Iron Fist).
I think its because Hulk, Strange, Namor and Surfer best define the non-team teamness of the Defenders. Some of the various other incarnations actually are groups of people who want to be a group outside of the emergency of the moment…
Then again, my main familiarity with the Defenders comes from the group with Beast, Angel, Iceman, Valkryie, Cloud, Moondragon and Gargoyle as the core members…
Jeffwik, i’ll be as clear as possible about this: Valkyrie is a female character, and this is comics.
Next week: why are all marvel redheads hot?
Al, you just an unnecessary word there. All redheds are hot. =P
Which reminds me… can reason number 32 (’cause we WILL demand more, rest assured) be ‘a red hot redhead with repeated initials’?
@Madscientist: so, so true
I’ve been checking out the Defenders wiki page and there are a couple of interesting points in it.
1)”As of issue #125, Defenders was retitled to New Defenders as the “big four” (Doctor Strange, The Silver Surfer, The Hulk and Namor) were forced to leave the team. This was the result of an alien prophecy that stated that these four, operating as a group, would be responsible for destroying the world.”
It goes on to say that the prophecy was a lie to break up the team, but what if THAT was the lie to keep them together to fullfil the prophecy?
2)Motherfucking Dracula was a Defender!
The Defenders: Where “awesome” team-up ideas go to die.
I love Deadpool. I love Namor. This is a fantastically awesome idea.
So, just to clarify: there might be some involvement of Deadpool at some point, right?
I wouldn’t want to misinterpret things.
>I’ll buy just about anything with DP in it.
My mind just went to the bad place, Lister Sage.
That out of the way…I like the existential angst of the all-dead team:
“You could save the world with these men.”
“Uh, those guys aren’t even alive.”
“That is *your* problem.”
More Deadpool is always good.
@NotMike: Second issue of current series.
Everybody Loves Deadpool, which may actually be the title of one of his upcoming spin-off/one-shot/limiteds.
A semi-unrelated question: have you covered what Strange is doing to continue the Sorcerer Supreme tradition? It never seems like he’s really apprenticing anyone, and even then, the apprentices don’t seem to turn out, either.
In the 2099 books and the 90’s Guardians of the Galaxy, there were future Stranges or Sorceror Supremes; but it also seems like there are a lot of Marvel futures with no Supreme. It’s hard to imagine there’s one in Days of Future Past, for instance. As a joke, I had a strip where Cable mentions he was Sorcerer Supreme briefly in the year 3856, but they had almost no magic then. Strange needs to get on the stick, and one little Mordo isn’t going to be enough!
Needs more Deadpool.
No, of course not.
That’s what Creaky is for.
Never read -Deadpool-, but what I’ve read of the series lately has interested me. Especially the meta aspect. I often like meta, and I’m working on a novel with meta elements. So the other day, I was doing some research on meta and came to Deadpool’s Wikipedia page, which mentioned the theory that Deadpool’s meta nature might be connected to his insanity.
Which I think is totally cool. And makes a lot of sense. Everyone thinks he’s insane, but he’s the sanest one of the lot, because he knows he’s in a comic book. Like when Bullseye asked where he’d last seen Deadpool and Deadpool responded “Issue 16.”
So my question then is: given that the Sorcerer Supreme can see through time and has magical invocations and etc., can he realize he’s a comic book character, too? Have Deadpool and Strange ever met? Would Strange dismiss Deadpool’s “insanity,” or would he realize it’s the reality of perception it actually is?
Could Doctor Strange go full-meta? I mean, he can see through time; why not a page? “You know, Stevie, bad thing happening? Not actually happening. Just a comic book. Pretty neat-o, eh?”
I don’t know if you’ve had this idea already, MGK, but man, it strikes me as batshit insane in a ridiculously awesome way.
Oh, and anyone suggest any good Deadpool collections to begin with for a guy interested in checking them out?
Actually, I was just readin one issue of Englehart’s Dr. Strange had him team up with the reader of the comic.
Not entirely the same thing, but an interesting point.
Can we retcon all the members of Nextwave into having all actually been Defenders as well? Because Strange + Nextwave + Deadpool = 100% WIN.
Will Entrekin: Strange and Deadpool meet recently in Cable and Deadpool #47-49. Which happens after his stint in Secret Defenders, though I don’t believe it’s mentioned in C&DP.
Marvel is just truly beginning to realize how popular Deadpool is with readers. I’d suggest the Classic Deadpool trade, volume 2 of which is supposed to be out in a few months. Cable and Deadpool which is all in trade form (if you can find them all, volume 1 is especially hard) and his new series is just getting it’s first trade which is tied into Secret Invasion.
There’s also a torrent out there which collects all of Deadpool’s comics from The Circle Chase all the way through at least the end of his first solo book. It may contain Agent X, which is necessary Deadpool reading, and if it doesn’t you’ll need to find the torrent for that too.
In summary:
Trades (already out):
Classic Deadpool Vol 1
Cable and Deadpool Vol 1-9 (maybe 10?)
Trades (coming soon):
Classic Deadpool Vol 2
Deadpool Vol 1
Torrents
Complete Deadpool (don’t know if that’s the actual name or not, you’ll have to Google it)
My interpretation of Dr Strange going Meta:
Dr Stange casts a spell that cause the next issue to be delivered crumpled up in a ball. When the ball is uncrumpled, the only page that isn’t blank shows Dr Strange working on some arcane mathematical formula and a word bubble that simply says “Sorry folks, I’ll have this worked out by the next issue.”
Tell me that wouldn’t be an instant collector’s item.
Nextwave needs to appear, at the very least.
Maybe Doctor Strange asks his spell what Defenders he needs and gets back the answer: “Wrong team.”. And he’s out of X ingredient and can’t ask anything else…
MGK, are you planning on seeing X-Men Origins: Wolverine next week? If you were, were you going to blog about it?
supergp: We’re going to have to see how Messiah War turns out first. Otherwise they’re going to be short a member.
Actually, I figure Nextwave ties in better with the earlier giant monster bit.
I mean, one of their members has been trained her whole life for monster hunting, and the whole group has an idea how to deal with giant monsters. Of course, said idea is “Kill it until it dies, preferably with explosions and kicking”, but it’s a method.
Also: Messiah war is part of continuity. The members of the Nextwave squad laugh in the face of continuity, then kick it until it explodes.
Bret: That is an excellent point. Just pull an Ellis and let everyone else figure out how she survived.
What I love about Deadpool is you don’t so much do teamups as you just inflict him on your characters.
A bunch of awesome-but-underused characters join forces to kick ass while their conflicting personalities provide humorous dialog? THIS IS SUCH A NOVEL IDEA!
But, I mean, seriously, looking at the angst feast most combo teams turn into these days, it’s kind of a novel idea….
I’m sure I’ll lose all my important nerd street cred here, but why is Namor just Black Adam with swim trunks and funny ankles?
Any appearance by Hellstrom is a win in my book.
Plus Angel, The Beast, Iceman, Gargoyle and Valkyrie (either one).
I’m so old.
I hate to quibble, but MGK reiterated one of my personal pet-peeves here – in reference to the Defenders being a team of people who don’t like each other. I think the supreme irony of the concept – something Peter David played up during their first big reunion in the pages of Hulk – is that, left to their own devices, the four characters really do have a lot in common, and make for fast friends. If it’s just sitting around for tea, you’re unlikely to find four super-characters with as much in common as Dr. Strange, Namor, Bruce Banner and the Surfer. But because they’re so unsuited to teamwork, the very moment they *have* to do something together – well, Strange gets imperious, the Surfer gets ominous, Namor starts tripping over the Hulk and then they hate each other. So, it’s funny but not because the characters hate each other, but because for all they have in common they have the collective teamwork skills of an angry digger wasp.
Incidentally, isn’t this the same set-up as Secret Defenders?
So you’re counting the Secret Defenders as regular Defenders? Well, by that measure, muther-frakkin’ Thanos is a Defender.
Strange and Deadpool meet recently in Cable and Deadpool #47-49. Which happens after his stint in Secret Defenders, though I don’t believe it’s mentioned in C&DP.
To be clear, Deadpool was a part of the Dr. Druid-led Secret Defenders (along with Luke Cage), and I don’t think Strange had any interaction with him.
Yes, I own the entire run of Secret Defenders. It actually isn’t as bad as its reputation.
I’m sure I’ll lose all my important nerd street cred here, but why is Namor just Black Adam with swim trunks and funny ankles?
DUDE!!! NOT COOL!!!
If I wanted to see “Some character is forced to put up with Deadpool for an entire story,” couldn’t I just read any of the zillion existing Deadpool projects playing off of the Wolverine movie? At last count, in 2009 Deadpool is co-starring in stories with the Thunderbolts, Hawkeye/Bullseye, Spider-Man, and the Punisher. I’m pretty sure he’s appearing in that Cable/X-Force crossover too. How is Deadpool/Strange more appealing than Deadpool/anybody else?
He doesn’t have enough of an illusion? Then he should just hallucinate some more. Get some LSD or something.
Ok, fine. Black Adam with swim trunks, funny ankles, and the extremely enviable ability to breathe underwater. Or, I guess why is Black Adam just a dryback Namor, if that makes you feel better?
Grant Morrison pulled the ‘Zatanna kinda knows she’s in a comic book’ really well in Seven Soldiers of Victory… doing something like that might be cool
Real Defenders fans know it’s all about the second-stringers who end up hanging out after the Big Four disperse, not the Big Four themselves.
Every revival attempt that insists on the primacy of the Big Four has sucked, except for the Giffen-Dematteis one, but that was only due to the comedy approach.
(Busiek-Larson rocked, incidentally; I know a number of people hated it, but they were stupid and wrong. That one totally captured the essence of what made the Defenders a great book in its heyday.)
Right. Looks like I got a job to do.
First: Namor came before Black Adam. By a fair deal. And if you mean Black Adam as anti-hero rather than mustache twirling one off villain, he came decades before him. Black Adam is the rip off.
Secondly: Namor has an awesome catchphrase. “Imperious Rex!”.
Thirdly: Namor being an asshole tends to be played for fun and humor, rather than drama.
Fine. But they both need a better hairstyle, and the ankle thing is just dumb, AND I’ve never seen any legitimate reason why Black Adam needs pointy ears (I could maybe believe that pointy ears help Namor swim very slightly better, but I feel that he owes me for that suspension of disbelief).
Huge, HUGE Defenders fan. Big, BIG Deadpool fan. Everything about this is perfection.
Also, have you considered tackling a Deadpool book (or at least a mini)? Theoretically speaking, of course.
Why is Namor a Defender anyway? I mean Strange, Hulk and Silver are all in a power league of their own on their respective axes. But Namor? Why?
(reads wikipedia) Really? Author fiat? What a downer.
Why do I get the feeling that one day, Stephen Strange goes to a very nice restaurant, sits down to enjoy a very nice meal, looks up and sees Deadpool.
He looks to his left and all the people sitting there are wearing Deadpool mask, to his right more Deadpool’s. Each speaking in various wacky, cancer laden tones one single word over and over again.
“Chimichanga”
I just had this image of Dr. Strange summoning those he need to save the world from across space and time and getting a Deadpool from the past, present, and future and them all trying to kill each other. Of course, the PAST dead pool would be from BEFORE he got into the Weapon X program…
Oh, and since the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie has come up; judging by the tone of the comments toward Deadpool and so in his favor, I have a feeling that, unless major re-cuts were done (and by major re-cut, I pretty much mean reshooting the entire third act), a lot of people are going to really, really pissed next weekend. I mentioned I don’t know much of Deadpool, and even I was dissatisfied by what they did with and to the character.
And thanks, Lister Sage, for the pointers. I’m rather looking forward to exploring this.
Namor actually can successfully hold his own with the Hulk in a punch-out, especially underwater.
Combine that with flight, resilience, and an assortment of ridiculous one or two time powers a la Silver Age Superman, and he’s in a higher weight class than most of the MU. Maybe even barely in rest of the original Defender’s range.
Which makes it EVEN BETTER.
“You were never a Defender!”
“Sure I was! There was this fat guy in red spandex, said I was a Defender…”
“Doctor Druid is dead!”
“Well, I didn’t kill him. Maybe he had a heart attack. Because he was a fatty. Did I mention the belly?”
Yeah… good times. Technically, Druid hired him (mercenary, remember, and this was well before DP’s ‘trying-to-be-a-hero’ phase) and Luke Cage (back when he was, you know, a hero for hire) to buy time until the REAL Secret Defenders showed up.
But if ‘Pool can claim to be an X-Man (with old school Marvel Girl outfit), then surely he has a stake on being a Defender.
Boy, Druid. How did he die anyway? Didn’t Ellis do something nasty to him?
Say MGK, do you prefer the Deadpool who’s a mile-a-minute talker with a skewed outlook on life, or the one who’s literally too insane to know what reality is? In other words, the Kelly version, the Way version, or something in between (Nicezia)?
Something in between. The Way version makes the Kelly version more tragic.
Random thoughts:
So I guess this shows where you stand on the Secret Defenders being “real” defenders. Maybe that means we’ll get Nomad back (even if it’s only as part of the dead team.
It’d be kind of fun to play with expectations even more by getting incarnations of the characters that aren’t usually associated with the Defenders. You know, you expect Angel and you get Archangel. You expect Ghost Rider and you get 90s Blaze with the hellfire gun. You expect Kid Nova and you get Annihilation Nova. You expect the 70s Son of Satan and you get current Hellstorm as a demon lord.
Incidentally, the inclusion of Hellstorm in your lists reminds me of how disappointed I am that no one ever followed up on the Last Defenders. How is it that PAD could embrace that Lady Liberators nonsense while completely ignoring that She-Hulk is supposed to be on a team with an ex SHIELD agent and warlords of both the underwater and underworld variety?
Blazing Skull and Deadpool on the same team may actually cause the universe to implode from awesomeness.
At least two of the evil Defenders (Beetle and Plantman) have since become heroes so the villain summoning might actually work. Plus there’s always the “Earth is where we keep our stuff” motivation. Also I don’t think the Looter or Toad get enough props.
Rocket Raccoon was a Defender? Awesome.
Mmm, Deadpool, Blazing Skull, the Looter, and Rocket Raccoon. What does it say about the team when RR is the serious character? Then again, that’s pretty much how GoG plays him too.
(I’d suggest the Prowler but I suspect that I’m the only one that wants him back)
Does Richard Rory count as a Defender? I know he has some ties to them and he seems like enough of a “weird shit” magnet that I could see him getting drawn into a huge cosmic battle.
Also, didn’t the Great Lakes Initiative (then the Great Lakes X-Men) briefly consider becoming the Great Lakes Defenders before being discouraged from taking that name and settling on the Great Lakes Champions for all of five minutes? Wouldn’t it be great if the cosmos decided it still counted and the spell sends Flatman, Big Bertha, or Grasshopper to help Strange? Naturally I’m redefining “great” as “horrible” since Squirrel Girl and Doorman (and maybe Mr Immortal) are the only ones that are ever useful. Y’know what? They should just send Tippy Toe by herself so she can provide fourth-wall-shattering commentary alongside Deadpool while everyone else wonders why Nightmare or whoever is so afraid of the small rodent.
I’m glad someone brought up The Last Defenders. That no one else touches on She-Hulk being part of that group is just annoying…
This thread has convinced me to read more Defenders….course I still want to get my hands on Gerber’s run.
Beacon: I wish I had thought of this. Squirrel Girl and Deadpool always bring the funny. Plus the fact that Wade is terrified of her.
marvinmartian: Likewise. Did you know there’s only one Marvel Masterworks Defenders? And from what I can find it out of print. What the fuck Marvel?
LurkerWithout: I know it’s really petty but I’m hoping the new Savage She-Hulk is a big enough flop that they’re forced to do something interesting with Jen again. Then again, Marvel seems to have a history of claiming critical and commercial failures as successes so we’ll probably just see more denial.
marvinmartian: There are several Essentials out there if you don’t mind black and white.
Lister Sage: I’m not sure SG is the greatest idea. It’s pretty obvious that MGK wants to play with Deadpool and SG’s presence undermines his effectiveness as a character. Humiliating Wade Wilson works better in his own book than it does when you’re featuring him as a guest star. Of course I also kinda want to see Dormammu or someone similar wet themselves at the sight of just Tippy Toe or Monkey Joe* so I guess that makes me a total hypocrite.
*I imagine it’d be like looking in the sky, seeing the Silver Surfer, and knowing Galactus wasn’t far behind.
Question about Deadpool in the upcoming movie…
Is he going to think he’s in a comic book or a movie?
Or is this “pre-crazy” wade?
Bluejacket: someone on another forum I go to saw a sneak/downloaded the illegal torrent and described the movie Deadpool. It sounded very disappointing indeed. Link here; big fat spoilers, as you might expect.
In general, the reason Valkyrie isn’t counted as a “core Defender” is because people use “core” when they mean “founding”, and so to those people, the Defenders should be Strange, Hulk, Namor, and the Silver Surfer, even though that team is absolutely the worst team dynamic and the hardest to write for of any of the various Defenders permutations over the years. (Giffen’s whole schtick was to poke fun at just how unworkable a team it was, which is great for a limited series but wouldn’t work for a regular series.)
The “core” Defenders team, IMHO, is really Strange, Hulk, Hellcat, Valkyrie, and Nighthawk. I don’t think I’d go back to that for a Defenders revival, necessarily, but I think that starting with Strange and working outwards is the right idea. Strange is the pro-active one, he’s the most sociable of the lot, and he has the base. (Incidentally, I’ve been saying for a while now that the post-Civil War “New Avengers” was actually the New New Defenders, and I Am Right.)
I have the sudden urge to steal MGK’s format and do fifty reasons Why I Should Write the Defenders. 🙂
Well, the Silver Surfer isn’t a “founding member” of the Defenders. It’s just Strange, Namor, and the Hulk. Not that they got together for any other reason than Strange hassling them.
New Rule:
“Big Four-ism” is a guaranteed sign that someone is “Defenders ignorant.”
Any interview with a creator assigned to a new Defenders project that shows this bias is reason to worry.
Random points. Nighthawk and Hellcat have powers.
Nighthawk was gifted with… something… by Gaea after that horrible horrible The Order series, and Hellcat, besides her costume-gaining abilities from her resurrection, seems to have some dawning magical abilities, from her wonderful, glorious, Kathy Immonen-penned miniseries.
It was something like “the ability to call the Defenders together”, wasn’t it?
But anyway, Nighthawk already had powers: his strength etc. doubles at night, courtesy of the Grandmaster.
Patsy, as always, has the power of being the greatest girlfriend you never had.
Z typed
“Why is Namor a Defender anyway? I mean Strange, Hulk and Silver are all in a power league of their own on their respective axes. But Namor? Why?”
Because he rules 75% of the planet, he’s one of the few people on Earth who can get into a fight with the Hulk and walk away from the experience (make a list, it’s essentially Thor, Juggernaut, Sentry and Namor, and Namor’s had the most practice. Note that I didn’t mention the Thing.), and (prior to his anti-hero/anti-villian turn) he’d made a career of smacking around superhero teams like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four without outside help. It’s part of the Defenders _former_ mystique (until Wizard decided to milk the Defenders=pathetic meme) that the weakest member of the founding team was a guy who could and had conquered an entire city in 10 minutes.
Namor only starts to seem like “weakest member” if you toss in the Surfer, really…since Surfy pretty much handily outclasses all the other three.
And people complain about Doc being a deus ex machina!
Plus, what other Defender has the nerve to walk around with little wussie wings on his ankles? That is the a sign that a bad-ass of epic proportions lurks within.
I am in full favor of this, but only because I want to see Deadpool vs Creeky.
“Ur, Strangey buddy? Is it alright if I bail for awhile? Creepycrawl is giving me the heebies.”
(from the other room) “But if your skull sounds like a chimichanga when it knits back together, just imagine what that could mean! I’ll only break it once, I promise!”
“Yeah, I’m gonna be hiding somewhere until the next plot point. Toodles.”
I could never understand why people always want to bring back the Strange-Namor-Hulk-Surfer version of the Defenders. It was probably the worst version of the ‘team’ ever. None of these guys works well on a team (except for Strange, and he does best as a part-timer). The best Defenders was Beast,Angel, Iceman, Gargoyle, Valkyrie, Moondragon, Cloud, but some of the earlier people like Hellstrom, Hellcat, and Dr Strange also work well. Any future version of the Defenders should be based around these people, with maybe a few changes depending on who’s available. Deadpool might work– I’m not sure. I’ve still never read any story with Deadpool except for X-Force #2, and he wasn’t very Deadpoolish yet back then. I keep hearing lots of great stuff about him, so I need to check him out sometime. (I don’t usually like the really violent characters, though. So I hope the humour and stuff would be enough to make up for that.)