TreasuryCast #33 – The Defenders

TREASURYCAST #33 - THE DEFENDERS

Rob welcomes musician Dallan Baumgarten to discuss MARVEL TREASURY EDITION #16, starring The Defenders!

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9 responses to “TreasuryCast #33 – The Defenders

  1. First, I have to say that what Dallan said near the end of the show bears repeating, i.e., that Rob is doing “God’s work” with his comics podcasting. Indeed he is, and so is every other comics podcaster – my hats off to you all (even that guy from the Titan Up the Defense promo who seems to have a disturbing fixation with beaver butts…).

    Otherwise, it’s always nice to see a Marvel Treasury getting a little love (as it seems to me, without going back and counting, that the DC books get more coverage here), and it’s even nicer to see my favorite non-team, the Defenders, getting covered.
    Never had this treasury, but I have read all of the stories contained therein in one form or another, and I have to say it’s a good selection of stories to introduce the team: their first appearance and origin story, and the introduction of two major team members who pretty much exclusively appeared in the ongoing title, Valkyrie and Nighthawk. Speaking of Nighthawk – yes, that original mask he wore looks downright comical, but I think that may have been the point when he was first introduced in the Avengers years before as an evil analog for Batman.
    By the way, I think when Valkyrie referring to herself as the team’s liberator was, besides being a reference to the women’s lib movement of the early 1970s, also a callback to the character’s first appearance in Avengers #83, where she was just the Enchantress in disguise, who led a group of female heroines called the ‘Lady Liberators.’

    1. Edo-

      Your comment made me go back and check. The current tally is:

      DC–20
      Marvel–12
      Other Companies–1

      So, yeah, we lean a little heavy on DC. If that troubles you, you, uh, might not like the next few episodes…

  2. Okay, Rob, I did a little research at Mike’s Amazing (praise be his site). Here’s the breakdown. DC published 51 Treasury sized comics. Of those, 23 did NOT have Superman or Batman on the cover. 5 others did, but as part of a larger group, and those did not include their logos.
    Marvel published 30 Treasury sized comics. Of those, 15 featured Spider-Man and/or The Hulk on the cover.
    So, Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and the Hulk accounted for half of each companies Treasury comics.

  3. I enjoyed the show, as always. As for why The Defenders got a treasury, I figure it was due to the Hulk’s status as a TV star. This was the second Marvel treasury I got and I’m sure the Hulk’s prominence on the cover led the six or seven year old Gothosmansion to ask for it. By releasing the Defenders, Marvel could release a Hulk treasury without trying to coordinate the contents with what would soon be reprinted in Marvel Super Heroes. I figured the reason so many of the Spider-Man treasuries were from Marvel Team-Up is because MTU issues weren’t reprinted every month and Amazing Spider-Man was reprinted every month in Marvel Tales.

    On the cover, I do like it, but I agree with Dallan that Gil Kane isn’t my favorite Hulk artist. Kane’s work is full of fluidity and movement and I always saw Hulk as a fairly lumbering character. Plus, Kane always drew the Hulk with such a huge @$$. Go back and check Kane’s Tales to Astonish issues, and Hulk’s butt seems to take up over half his body. Kane is one of my favorite Spider-Man artists.

    As for the treasury itself, the origin was a good story to include just to show how such an odd assortment of characters got together.

    As a kid, the Valkyrie story was my least favorite, due to the fact that I was in my “all girls but mom have cooties” period and Valkyrie’s man-hating speech. Glad Englehart toned that down from Valkyrie’s first two appearances, which I hadn’t read when I first got the treasury.

    My favorite story then, as now, was the two-part Len Wein Squadron Sinister two-parter. Wein was one of the rare talents that seemed to “get” every character that he wrote. I recently bought his entire Defenders run just because I love his Hulk run so much. Wein stated several times that Batman was his favorite character, so I wonder if he included Nighthawk in the Defenders so he would have a Batman clone to write.

    Finally, Sal Buscema drew the first issue of the Hulk I ever got (Len Wein wrote it, too), so Buscema has always been my #1 Hulk artist. I love having so many pages of a treasury drawn by him. Those Buscema punches look even more awesome at the expanded treasury size. Buscema also drew some of my early Spider-Man and Captain America purchases, and I’ve always thought he was terribly underrated.

  4. Impressive pod cast. Most Impressive. I always liked the Defenders. Night Hawk being my fav. Valkyrie being my second. This looks like it was a cool Treasury. Well, the Liberator thing comes from the Avengers story Val was in…sort of. It was the Valkye’s powers in Barbra’s body. Used by the Enchantress. She lead a group called the Lady Liberators. And they weren’t the good guys. Mostly Enchantress using them to get her way. Thus why Val calls her. Her mistress. Er master. Any way She becomes a great character later. And Barba Monroe Does disconnected from the Valkyrie Brunhild. When the Defenders once again fight with Enchantress. Oh and in the issue Dr. Strange teams up with the O.G. Defenders including Namor. Huh, that didn’t last long.

    Was cool to see Night Hawk joining the group. Though the Squadron Sinister are not the Squadron Supreme. The Squadron Supreme are the JLA ware the Squadron Sinister are the Crime Syndicate of America. So yeah this version of Night Hawk is Owl Man. Ware the member in the Squadron Supreme is Bat Man. So yeah Owl Man sort of joined the defenders. They played the Bat Man angel up a lot. Which was cool. To ware he even had his own Lucius Fox…. but, that got really twisted. Though every thing about Kyle Richmond was warped. His Dad didn’t die. His Mom did. He becomes way messed up. But he does get super human strength and can fly…sort of. he has a jet pack I think.

    Any way before I put his whole Bio. I’ll just say cool pod cast and was awesome seeing the Defenders in a treasury.

  5. Bill Everett was a turd for willfully misinterpreting what an inker is supposed to do, and being a lousy inker in general. Either Andru only provided breakdowns that Everett was venting against, or he didn’t faithfully recreate every line. Andru was a much better artist than this chickscratch, which look more like Everett besides. My contemporaneous exposure to this team was almost exclusively The New Defenders, which had its merits, but I always struggled with Don Perlin’s art. I still want to dig into this run in a more substantial way, which is not something I can say for many Marvel team books these days.

  6. Everything about the Defenders is weird up to an including the spotty distribution where I grew up. You could never find it on the newstands, but there were always random copies at the flea market. Where did they come from ?!

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