Defenders Epic Collection: World Gone Sane

I reviewed the previous Epic trade here.

Collecting The Defenders #26-41, Giant-Size Defender #5 & Annual #1 and Marvel Treasury Edition #12.

The Headmen return in this collection although their name was in the last collection’s title. This collection helped to cement the ongoing story together for me since I had a bunch of these issues, but I was often getting only every-other issue when I was a kid. There’s a lot of brain-swapping and mind-swapping that goes on in these stories. A particularly nutty part is when Dr. Strange places Chondu the Mystic’s consciousness into a fawn that Hulk brought in (calling her “Bambi”). In deer-form, Strange thought that Chondu would be unable to utter incantations or gestures, but the little possessed deer could still summon some mystical mayhem. Later, the Headmen transplant Chondu’s brain into a one-horned winged creature with eight lampreys for arms, bird-feet, and a forked tongue:

We also get to meet Ruby Thursday:

As the effort to restore minds and brains continues, Strange seeks the help of a Russian brain surgeon who turns out to be the new Red Guardian:

She was pretty cool. No powers to speak of but quite athletic, expert combatant, and very resourceful. I think I like that character better now than I did back then.

We also get to endure more of the killer elf and we get to see the attempts of Nebulon the Celestial Man try to get mankind to rid themselves of the “bozo” portion of their psyche. Valkyrie found herself in a women’s prison where the Enchantress’ magic that gives her super-strength refuses to cooperate if she fights women.

We also have to deal with a bit of Jack Norriss trying to convince Valkyrie that she’s still his wife, Barbara. And, we get to see Nighthawk’s secret origin. Remember, he was the “Batman” pastiche used in the first appearance of the Squadron Sinister (later the Squadron Supreme.) His upbringing isn’t quite like Bruce Wayne’s. I like the departure from the Batman-clone that led to Nighthawk being a bit of a different superhero. I wasn’t terribly happy when they augmented his costume with a lot of Iron Man-like stuff … but we don’t see that yet in this volume.

There’s a Bill Mantlo story in the set that doesn’t really fit very well.

Reading this all together … man … Gerber really used Dr. Strange as a device to change the narrative any way he wanted. In some stories, Doc could teleport a starship (belonging to the Guardians) into space and across time. He did a lot of teleporting, in fact. I wasn’t crazy about the movie version focusing on that ability but he used it a lot in these pages. And at other times, Doc was hard-pressed to use his powers as it would pretty much prematurely end the story and ruin the plot.

I have to say that I was very happy that the volume ends with the Howard the Duck crossover from Marvel Treasury Edition #12, which I also had as a kid. A group of would-be “mundane” supervillains take on Howard, Beverly, and the Defenders. My favorite of these Gerber-esque villains was The Black Hole. His power was the ability to open this black portal in his chest that drew everything into it. He would open this portal as the narration read “The Black Hole sucks!”

Beverly stuck BH’s own arm into the portal and The Black Hole was drawn into his own void. Doc Strange brought him back at the end with a wave of his hand, …natch

Recommendation: This was good stuff (mostly) with a mix of mediocre/blah stuff. I enjoyed the trip down memory lane and the fill-in issues.