“The Marvel Treasury Edition of the Defenders”

MARVEL TREASURY EDITION — Issue no. 16, February 1978

Book: Marvel Treasury Edition

Issue No.: 16

Published: February 14, 1978

Title: “The Marvel Treasury Edition of the Defenders” (reprints of three Defenders stories)

Cover Price: $1.50

I’ve written about a few reprint comics already. In fact, my previous Marvel Time Warp post was about the Spider-Man reprint book Marvel Tales. Marvel Treasury Edition is another reprint book, but this one is special — it’s squarebound, contains more pages than the standard comic book of the time, and those pages are larger (10" by 14") than standard comic book pages (approx. 7" by 10"). I used to love these books when I was a kid. And what’s not to love? The bigger pages make it easier to appreciate the artwork, and more pages means more reading fun.

As I recall, the Defenders were a loose-knit Marvel superhero group. And the table of contents on the inside front cover of this Treasury Edition backs that up, stating the book features “classic issues of everybody’s favorite non-team super-heroes!” (Should there should be another “of” in there?)

The first story, “Day of the Defenders,” features artwork by my man Ross Andru, who drew a lot of Amazing Spider-Man books from this era. A sorcerer/scientist madman named Yandroth has created a doomsday device (“the Omegatron”) that will explode every nuclear stockpile on earth when he dies. And wouldn’t you know it he was recently hit by a truck and is now in a coma. Yandroth dramatically declares, “Every man wants the world to end when he dies — but only I shall fulfill that dream!”

Dr. Strange recruits Namor AKA the Sub-Mariner and the Hulk to help him save the world. The three find the location of the doomsday machine, but of course it’s booby-trapped (reminding me a bit of the evil super-computer Thor and Iron Man dealt with in this month’s Thor book). The twist here is that the whole scheme was a setup to get Namor and Hulk to the Omegatron so it could harness the powers of the two heroes to destroy the world. Pretty sneaky, Yandroth, but Strange, Namor, and Hulk manage to stop the Omegatron anyway. They decide a good name for their supergroup would be “the Defenders” and then immediately decide they should never team up again. So it’s the perfect ending for the first Defenders story.

Next story is “The New Defender!” Wait a minute... does Namor always wear an earring?! OK, I checked the previous story and no earring. So I guess the earring is left up to the artist. Remember when I mentioned how I like that a lot of Marvel comics from this era just start by dropping you in after whatever cliffhanger wrapped up the previous issue? This story does that, and it still made the cut for a Treasury. This one starts with the Hulk, Namor, and Dr. Strange arriving at an old castle fresh off their previous adventure where they rescued Barbara, a young woman who is now catatonic. Soon the four are whisked away to another realm, captured, and trapped in a dungeon with the Black Knight and the Enchantress. Which leads to a lot more backstory. After it’s all said and done, Barbara becomes the Asgardian superhero Valkyrie (thanks to the machinations of the Enchantress) and the Black Knight is turned to stone (also thanks to Enchantress). But the Defenders do make it back to their own realm. Valkyrie offers to join the team which, of course, has all the Defenders protesting “it’s not a team!”

And finally we get our third story, “For Sale: One Planet — Slightly Used!”

Even though the Defenders are definitely not a team, Hulk and Valkyrie are hanging out at Dr. Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum when this guy Nighthawk literally busts in, leading to one of the classic Marvel tropes of heroes fighting each other for a few pages because, even though they’re all good guys, sometimes they do something silly like breaking down a door instead of just knocking. For convenient-if-convoluted reasons, Nighthawk can’t recruit the Avengers to help him save the world from Nebulon and the Squadron Sinister (they’re the bad guys of this tale), so he came calling on the Defenders.

Nighthawk used to be in the Squadron Sinister, which is Marvel’s evil riff on rival publisher DC Comics’ Justice League. There’s Hyperion (a super-strong Superman type), Doctor Spectrum (like Green Lantern with a “power prism” instead of a ring), and the unfortunately-named Whizzer (he’s fast like the Flash). Before he turned over a new leaf and became a good guy, Nighthawk was the Batman of the group.

Nebulon is a super-powered alien who wants to melt the polar ice caps and flood the world. This would of course destroy most of civilization, after which Nebulon could easily take over. Not sure what the Squadron is getting out of this, except getting to watch the world burn — well, drown in this case. And as Alfred told us in that Batman movie, that’s enough for some men. After many pages of fighting in the snow, the earth is saved, and Nighthawk joins the non-team.

This story was originally a two-parter, presented in The Defenders issues 13 and 14. But editor Jim Salicrup made some minor changes to a couple of panels, dropped a recap page from issue 14, and voilà, it’s now one super-sized Treasury story.

On top of all that story content, there are a couple of fun pin-ups, like this one.

Whew! That’s a lot of comic book — 80 big pages!

Next time — A regular-sized comic book from February 1978!