The Defenders #10

Recently I read all the issues of The Defenders, Vol. 4, which kicked off at the end of 2011 and then was cancelled at the beginning of 2013 with issue #12. Matt Fraction authored the comic book throughout its run, and I'm sorry to say that for the most part -- and by this I mean something like three out of every four issues -- were tired, distracted, emotionless loops around the superhero comic carousel. Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of Matt Fraction. I loyally read his Hawkeye, Vol. 4, a brilliant, refreshing, cutting-edge book. And I said before on this page that his Invincible Iron Man will go down in the history books as synonymous with the period of hope and change (it turned out to be delusional) that Obama's 2008 campaign and first years in the White House ushered in. But what I have also noticed is that Fraction is willing to pimp himself out to the point of overextension. His work then tends to the overly sarcastic and thin. I'm thinking here of his run on The Mighty Thor.

The Defenders when it first appeared in the early 1970s was unique in spotlighting a team of outcasts. This was Marvel's answer to the recently spawned "One Nation Underground." The social upheaval of the late 1960s might have been checkmated politically by Nixonland, the "Silent Majority," but at the end of the day in the United States you still had an enormous counter culture, a massified bohemia that had its own newspapers, grocery stores, film and music -- and those tastes were coming to dominate the mainstream majority.

Roy Thomas, like so much that he did for Marvel in the early '70s, was just being a shrewd businessman when he stuck a Greenwich Village beatnik (Doctor Strange), with a Gamma-powered Frankstein monster (Hulk), a cosmically-juiced master of the spaceways (Silver Surfer) and last but not least, Marvel's founding anti-hero, the underwater Tecumseh, Namor the Sub-Mariner. This was a group that could speak to the Hippies.

Below you'll find five scans from Fraction's The Defenders #10. The cover, by Joe Quinones, is a wonderful homage to the early Bronze Age. The four stunning interior pages are by Jamie McKelvie with Mike Norton; Jordie Bellaire provides the color. The final page pictures Red She-Hulk wiping out a crow.

Where Monsters Dwell #17

The resumption of the Cold War that began in February with the fascist putsch of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has tossed me off my game here. Normally on Friday I post on "Hippies vs. Punks." That hasn't happened since Valentine's Day. Last we heard from "Hippies vs. Punks," the Boulder, CO band Zephyr had recorded their debut LP in Los Angeles, a remarkable album that was nonetheless botched by producer and recording legend Bill Halvorsen. In part two, we were going to explore the victimization of Zephyr by another record industry giant, producer Eddie Kramer. For more than a month then we have been suspended between the summer of 1969 and the late summer/early fall of 1970, when Zephyr's second album, Going Back to Colorado (1971), was recorded at Jimi Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios during the time of his death.

Another regular feature of this page that has been put on the back burner because of the new Cold War is the project of working through issues of the Marvel Comics Bronze Age reprint series, Where Monsters Dwell.

Currently we are at Where Monsters Dwell #17 (September 1972). A thoroughly unremarkable collection of four stories -- though Steve Ditko's "The World Beyond" (scans three and four below), which is reprinted from Strange Tales #82 (March 1961), is worth checking out; Ditko captures the last gasps of the early 1960s post-war High Modernism better than anyone -- Where Monsters Dwell #17 is noteworthy for a nice Gil Kane original cover; also, two of the four stories -- "If the Coat Fits" and "The Hidden Vampires," both reprinted from Journey Into Mystery #11 (August 1953) -- are examples of pre-Comics Code Authority Marvel horror.

Below are scans of the cover and all the splash pages (as well as one beautiful interior page from Ditko's "The World Beyond'). All the stories in Where Monsters Dwell #17, probably compiled by Editor-in-Chief Roy Thomas, deal with disappearance.

Captain Marvel #11

Below are four scanned pages from the beginning of Captain Marvel #11, written by Kelly Sue DeConnick with art by the incomparable Filipe Andrade. This series has been an unexpected pleasure. I've always enjoyed DeConnick's lively writing, and Andrade, who succeeded Dexter Soy, is one of the best. I say unexpected because I've never been a fan of Ms. Marvel, a character that always seemed like a gimmick turned into an anachronism -- the ghost of '70s feminism haunting the Marvel Universe. One thing you can say about Carol Danvers, she goes all the way back to first Captain Marvel story arc written by Stan Lee and Roy Thomas with art by the great Gene Colan. Then she was an Air Force bureaucrat in Florida hot on the heels of the Kree-born Mar-Vell impersonating a deceased Dr. Walter Lawson.