Defenders #1: Do You Believe in Magic in a Young Girl’s Heart?

And lo, there shall come a day like no other, where something, something, blah, blah and the DEFENDERS!!! will form to save the Earth from a threat like no other. The wait is finally over kids, and it’s the big one. Al Ewing has been planting the seeds for this story for years, and I’m so excited to see it finally come full circle. This issue is definitely a set up issue, and a big getting the team together story is involved. All in search for a mad scientist who’s willing to risk everything to get what he wants. The team created here is a hodgepodge of characters that come from all corners of the Marvel Universe’s firmament, in classic Defenders fashion, and what a team it is. Besides Strange and the Masked Raider, we get the Silver Surfer (the Defenders first recruit after their formation), the Red Harpy (a gamma irradiated Betty Banner, a character Ewing has been developing in his Immortal Hulk run), and Cloud. Cloud is a living nebula, who took on a mortal identity to join the original Defenders. They’re one of the first trans characters in comics history, and I’m so excited to see them back. 

We get some more info on the mysterious Masked Raider (the Masked Raider is a legacy character that traces back to comics’ Golden Age), that was retconned into having a mask made from a piece of Eternity itself. It imbues its wearer with the ability to have the power to anyone equal it’s facing. Depending on who you’re facing, that could be a massive power upgrade. The current bearer’s identity is unknown, but if I know Ewing, the reveal is going to be a deep cut to Marvel’s immense history. 

Ewing delves deep for this one, bringing in Sise-Neg, a powerful magician who was eating up all of the magic in the universe, and continued to do so all the way to the beginning of our universe, only to sacrifice himself to create the current 616. It was a very big deal when it was originally published, and stirred up a lot of controversy, that the creators (Steve Englehart & Frank Bruner) wrote a letter from a fictional preacher from Texas praising the idea, and how it could impact critical thinking when dealing with the concept of creationism. I have read the story multiple times, and if you’re a fan of Strange, it’s definitely one to pick up. 

Javier Rodriguez is Ewing’s co-pilot for this, and from interviews, Ewing said that he went old school Marvel method with this story, giving Javier a very big hand in creating this, and it might be his best work yet. The characters all sing with life, and have an almost timelessness to their designs here. Rodriguez’s classical stylings worked amazingly well here, making it feel just at home in the late 1970s, as it does now. Every character is distinct here, and recognizable, even his updated design for Cloud. The imagery here works in a world of magic or of science fiction flawlessly. If I have anything negative to say about it, it’s that I only wish the comic lasted a little bit longer.