The Original DEFENDERS : Strange Days and Stranger Nights

The Defenders were a bronze age book created by Roy Thomas for Marvel Comics that featured Dr. Strange, The Hulk, Silver Surfer, and Submariner. As a superhero team, The early Defenders were pure power, second to none.

They  were designed to be the ultimate team of non-grouped super beings. As opposed to the Avengers, The Defenders were a loose knit group of people who handled some major threats from some of most powerful and insidious villains ever dreamed up at Marvel....

Their existance was a secret at first, and covert for the most part, as Dr. Strange could make you forget the Defender's existance as easily as he could make you forget where you parked your car at the local mall. This was not the de-powered Dr.Strange from recent years. 

This was the original Sorcerer Supreme.

The Defenders fought a now-legendary cross-over battle with the Avengers, wherein the real baddies were revealed as Dormammu and Loki. It was an epic storyline, well worth the time reading and collecting, in both original form or reprint volume.

The Defenders book would frequently lose members, as the individual characters would often drift in and out of the book, depending on the storyline. This meant the addition of Valkyrie and Nighthawk to the regular book, as Submariner and the Surfer popped in as needed. 

This instability lead to a core roster, at least for a long time, of Dr.Strange, Nighthawk, Valkyrie, and The Hulk; but guest-stars had a habit of becoming Defenders, and often showed up in later stories. It was a chaotic, wonderful time to be a fan.

The original series hit its stride during the Steve Gerber run on the book. Steve, the Man-Thing scribe and Howard The Duck creator, brought in a touch of controversy and quirkiness that set The Defenders apart from every other team book published at the time.

Considering that the original run of the Defenders is only about 152 issues, plus the three Marvel Feature appearance , 5 Annuals, a Giant-Size comic, and a story in the Howard The Duck Treasury Edition, means that the Defenders is an attainable, collectible series to enjoy.

   The Defenders is an enjoyable read. After cancellation, I discovered that there were a legion of Defenders fans out there that still loved the old book. I count myself lucky to be among those legion of fans who discovered the joys of this book the first time around.

So, in the end, The Defenders were lightning in a bottle; a non-team that ended up being re-organized into a team, which killed the entire concept. The so-called New Defenders , starting with issue 125, is readable, but is the closeout era in the book's history. I really do not think that younger writers really ever got the concept of the group. The Defenders is not about decorum and having a head quarters or voting in a new members; the book was about a bunch of folks who banded together with a purpose, and who could hang out with each other, when not beating the daylights out of evil doers. The Defenders were not the Avengers, the F.F., or even the Champions.

The Defenders were unique. They were friends.