Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!

For those of you who may be new to our game, here in the studio audience -- or maybe you're just tuning in at homme for the very first time, ever -- the baseline premise involved is:

1.) I bend my awesome, god-like talents towards the cobbling up of what seems (to me) the crazynuttycool ne plus ultra mack daddy of all DEFENDERS line-ups, bar none;

2.) You, in turn, read said selections; marvel, anew, at my studied inability to cogitate my way out of a public pay toilet, sans a pocketful of quarters; and send me bitter, biting e-mail to the effect that "... it's plainly God's will that you'll never lay your grubby, heathen paws on these characters. Filth."

In other words: the same ol' same ol', really.

Okay. Here's the rundown on the unimaginably arbitrary (and grossly self-serving) baseline "rules" I imposed upon myself, for this little exercise:

1.) The Defenders -- UNlike the Justice League of America; UNlike the Avengers; UNlike Josie and the Pussycats -- always worked best, in my humble opinion, as a fractious and loose-knit assemblage of stubbornly self-defined and self-motivated i-n-d-i-v-i-d-u-a-l-s; all of whom just happened, mind, to (temporarily) share a common goal or agenda, at any given moment.

That being said, then: my "dream team," on this page and the following, is broken down into two sub-groupings:

a.) A "core" team of no more than four characters, around whom every other (quasi-)member, camp follower and spandexed passerby would (of necessity) orbit; and --

b.) A "secondary" roster of semi-regulars; far more than mere "guest stars," certainly... but decidedly less than (by choice) full-time, hard core converts-to-the-DEFENDERS cause and credo.

This approach (it seems to me) best honors and exemplifies the approach taken, in turn, by team creator Roy Thomas; definitive DEFENDERS scripter Steve Gerber; AND eye-poppingly idiosyncratic Marvel Comics maverick J.M. DeMatteis (whose lengthy latter-day tenure on the series was the only one, in Unca Cheeks' curmudgeonly opinion, to show a similar level of understanding, re: What This Here Comic Was All About, Really).

One final caveat, before we launch ourselves headlong into merry contention:

I didn't end up picking Doctor Strange; the Sub-Mariner; OR the Incredible Hulk.

There. Fine. Lovely. Let's get all of the screaming and epithets and brandishing of pitchforks out of our systems now, then.

Lookit, people: if the DEFENDERS comic, in its storytelling heyday of the '70s, was about anyfrickinthing at all... it was this, certainly:

Comic Book Super-Team Conventions Be Damned.

That was pretty much what made the whole cheerfully cock-eyed notion "work" in the first place, so far as I can see: a swaggering (maybe even insolent, at times) disregard for whatever had come before; be it via gleefully demented plot elements (gun-toting, homicidal elves; deranged killer fawns; etc., etc.)...

... or else "team chemistry" admixtures so lunatic and berserk, they all but re-defined the four-color participants thereof.

Bottom line, then: I think we'd end up better honoring what's always made the DEFENDERS concept so marvelous and magical and endlessly fascinating to its most devoted adherents (of which number your unabashed Unca Cheeks most decidedly counts his own self, you darn betcha) by NOT resolutely trudging the same old trail as was blazed the last time out.

Which is not to say, of course, that there wouldn't be a few familiar faces in the bunch, push come to shove.

To wit:

1.) THE SON OF SATAN -- Quite frankly: I do very much like the notion of a "magickal" type ramrodding this team... and (thereby) assigning it its (kindasorta) commission.

Given, then, that I've already stated my case, earlier, for Doctor Strange's ongoing presence within the august ranks of "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" (i.e., the Avengers)... the next most likely (and logical) candidate for the position of First Among Equals, team-wise, must be none other than the driven (and wildly unpredictable) "Daimon Hellstrom"...

... a.k.a., the Son of Satan.

Anyone even considering manning the helm of such a wildly disparate collection of loners and iconoclasts as has (typically) defined your "normal" line-up of Defenders had better be able to throw his (or her) weight around, at some point; either by means of sheer, brute power... or else one great, whopping buttload of plain, old-fashioned charisma.

As it just so happens: Mama Hellstrom's boy, here, is packing considerable heat in both of the aforementioned respects.

Too: the DEFENDERS comic was always -- even at its most gleefully giddy and anarchistic -- rather a "dark" super-hero team title, as these things go...

... so: who better to serve as its titular figurehead, then, than the only begotten son of the Prince of Darkness?

WHAT HE BRINGS TO THE PARTY: the proven ability to get people to Do What He Bloody Tells Them To Do, for one thing.

Besides: he always was -- hands down; no arguments; case closed -- the coolest of all the Defenders.

2.) NIGHTHAWK -- Another member of the team's "old guard"; and (in many respects) as vital an element, team chemistry-wise, as any who've ever joined the ranks.

Disillusioned and disaffected Former Spoiled Rich Kid "Kyle Richmond" started out his costumed career as a card-carrying super- villain, you see; a not-so-clever career move which (once dutifully taken into account) is all but essential in making clear and cogent sense of all the myriad changes he was later to undergo as one of the non-team's two most significant "mainstay" characters.

(Actually -- come to think of it just now, I mean -- much the same might be said, as well, of the Sub-Mariner; the Hulk; the Valkyrie; Moondragon; and any number of other former Defenders, to boot. It's something of a proud tradition with this team, then: this Paying-My-Debt-To-Society business. I'm just sayin', here, is all.)

More so than any of these others, however: the Defender known as Nighthawk -- with his sardonic (and self-depreciating) sense of the absurd; and his ready willingness to give non-stop utterance to same -- made him a sort of "everyman" character (if you will), within a team assemblage largely given over to smug and/or surly way-past-human powerhouses...

... and: the constant thorn that was his awareness of his inglorious origins meant, in turn, that Nighthawk was always the one Defender least likely to stand in judgement of any other; and was always the one best suited, temperamentally, to serve as Chief Spear Carrier and Assistant Commander-In-Chief.

He's the reader's presence within the team: plain and simple.

WHAT HE BRINGS TO THE PARTY: the emotional "anchor." The bellwether. The linchpin. The one guy on the team equally comfortable with (and able to carry on a conversation with) both Luke Cage AND the Silver Surfer.

3.) THE VALKYRIE -- Correspondent Thomas Deja -- who, almost of a certainty, never expected to find himself referenced in the course of one of these silly things (Hi, Thomas!) -- recently opined, in the context of an e-mail discussion concerning the old DEFENDERS series, that: "The Valkyrie is as identifiable with the Defenders as the Vision is with the Avengers."

Right smart, sensible fellah, that Thomas.

For those of you (possibly) unaware of the fact: the irascible (and massively conflicted) Norse warrior woman known as Valkyrie has appeared in more issues of the old DEFENDERS series than any other character in the history of same.

Put that in your collective corncob pipes and smoke it, Hulk fans.

On a more (comparatively) sane and rational note, however: the Valkyrie really and truly does serve the same thematic purpose within this title as does the Vision in his longer-lived own.

She is, quite simply, The Perpetual Outsider who has -- now and forever -- made the team her life.

Every super-hero team worth its putative salt (to my way o' thinkin', in any event) just plain ol' needs one of these, where the tires meet the meta-fictive tarmac...

... the hero (or heroine, in this particular) who would lay down their very life for the good of the team.

Too: the Valkyrie is (roughly) in Benjamin J. Grimm's weight class, strength-wise; making her an invaluable ally and mainstay, in terms of sheerest practicality...

... and: she's one holy heck of a lot easier on the eyes than Prince Namor, even on his best day.

WHAT SHE BRINGS TO THE PARTY: Raw power... and glamour, baby.

4.) LUKE CAGE -- Oh, good golly... where do I even begin with this big, lovable lug...?

The problem inherent in most super-team rosters (and one as mind- bogglingly powerful as your standard DEFENDERS line-up tends to be, in particular) is that -- sooner or later -- you run the real and ever-present risk of having to deal with the My-Gawd-But-We're- Bloody-Wonderful factor.

This was, in fact, one of the vanishingly few (but no less omnipresent) problems with the earliest incarnation of Marvel's DEFENDERS: start out with a Dr. Strange; a Hulk; a Sub-Mariner; and a Silver Surfer at the top of your batting order... and it becomes exponentially more difficult to come up with any menace(s) NOT bearing the deadly, stultifying scent of Jim Starlin's cosmic cast-offs, sooner or later.

Once you've reached the storytelling point where one of your main characters is shrieking: "It's the Infinity Concept, you fools! The very fabric of reality needs to be steam-pressed... NOW! NOW!" to their similarly how-like-unto-a-very-god teammates...

... well: Jack Kirby could get away with that sort of thing, I grant you.

He was pretty much the only one, though.

I like to think it was a similarly productive train of thought which initially inspired writer Len Wein to insert Marvel Comics' most stubbornly "ground level" heroic protagonist (and, likewise, later impelled Steve Gerber to pick up where his immediate predecessor left off) into the four-color Chex Mix that is and was "the Defendersverse."

I've already covered the whys and the wherefores of Brother Lucas' DEFENDERS years at more than ample length, on Page Three of this site's LUKE CAGE: Hero For Hire retrospective... so: I'm not going to rehash all of that here, for pity's sake. (That's what God made hypertext links for, you know.)

Just trust your nodding and genial Unca Cheeks on this one.

WHAT HE BRINGS TO THE PARTY: A conscience. A sense of humor... and an even greater (and more invaluable) sense of proportion.

Best of all, however: someone who will never -- no, never -- end up screaming: "It's the Infinity Concept, you fools -- !"

There, now. We have our "core" four, then...

... and they've all been nice, familiar faces, to boot.

Hie thee hence, however, to Page Two of If I Ran the Defenders, for a gander at who I'd tap for the remaining eight slots...

... and -- believe you me -- things get way different in a great galumphing hurry.

In actual point of fact: they get downright weeeeeiiirrrrrd.

You know...

... just like the Defenders oughtta be.

"If I Ran the Defenders...": PAGE TWO

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