Defenders Epic Collection - Enter: The Headmen

With quite the list of contributing creators :

Collecting DEFENDERS (1972) #12-25, GIANT-SIZE DEFENDERS #1-4 and MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE (1974) #6-7 - plus material from MYSTERY TALES #21, WORLD OF FANTASY #11 and TALES OF SUSPENSE (1959) #9.

I originally sought out this tome as I was going to do a write-up about the weird super-villain group known as The Headmen who appeared in several of Gerber’s trippy Defenders comics in the 70’s. I found this volume, but in looking at it … there were really only a couple of stories with The Headmen. The issues I was more familiar with happen about a year later.

However, I had quite a number of these issues as a kid with some missing issues. I decided to pick up the collection to fill in some of those old storylines ( and to get copies of some of my favorites. ) There’s a rotating cast of villains, Xemnu the living titan, the wrecking crew, Magneto and the Evil Mutants, The Grandmaster, Nebulon the Celestial Man, The Headmen (of course), The Squadron Sinister, and many others. There are also quite a few guest-appearances of heroes like Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Yellowjacket.

The continuity of the stories was a bit wonky. The stories penned by Len Wein were pretty good. Gerber’s stuff was still pretty trippy.

The tome also included excerpts from three older Marvel horror comics. These comics introduce Arthur Nagan, Jerold Morgan, and Chondu the Mystic. That’s right … the original Headmen had all appeared previously in horror / SF short stories in Marvel’s (or maybe Timely’s) catalog. Again, I thought this was weird since there were only a couple of Headmen stories in the collection.

I’m not sure that this would be a must for any of you, but I enjoyed a good portion of the stories. I didn’t enjoy all of them, though.

Recommendation: Your mileage may vary.

I have the next Epic Collection in the series. I’ll review that one in a future blog post.