Defenders The Best Defense #1
John Jack
Recap
A careening cosmic train is revealed to be under the control of a weird space octopus that's also a ghost who made a deal with Mephisto for enough power to control the conductor's mind. This boils down to so much convenient plot device action it hurts to type it. Silver Surfer is his own board, Hulk eats a demon, Strange ghosts up the joint, Namor betrays his own people to save them somehow.
Review
Hijinks in space ensue when four unrelated stories are intertwined one overarching narrative, what actually happened this issue? Nothing that resolves anything from the previous four stories, that’s for sure! Not since Armageddon 2001 was an events parts so much GREATER than the event itself. Did we find out what the deal with the ghost guy is? No. What we did get is another loose thread in form of the ghost of future Stephen Strange in Mephisto’s realm, which will be either be central to a future arc then promptly forgotten, or likely just promptly forgotten. Likewise, the Queen of the Vodani sacrifices herself for some reason, maybe to charge up Silver Surfer? He seemed pretty upset, now lets never speak of the Vodani again. We got a random Mcguffin villain and random McGuffin consequences that only matter within the context of this story and maybe the two ongoing series affected, but even that is pretty doubtful.
The art by Joe Bennett is excellent, if not a little busy, there are points where I have trouble discerning what’s happening even after multiple readings. I liked the cosmic setting a lot and felt like the large scale scenes looked really good.
Final Thoughts
I feel like this issue fell short of the other 4, and far short of 3 of those. Read parts 1-3 and pretend the second 2 don't exist, you'll be happier that way.
Defenders The Best Defense #1: A Convenient End
- Writing - 5/105/10
- Storyline - 7/107/10
- Art - 7/107/10
- Color - 8/108/10
- Cover Art - 8/108/10
