Defenders (Marvel)

The Defenders in Defenders v6 #1.

The Defenders are a superhero team that features in Marvel Comics.

History

Origin

The Defenders

The teams formation came about as a result of Doctor Strange facing a renewed threat from his old foe the Scientist Supreme Yandroth from the world of Yann. The villain had placed his doomsday weapon the Omegatron on Earth where it would bring about a nuclear holocaust that would destroy the planet. Unable to stop it alone, Strange decided to seek allies from his prior encounters and looked to recruit them to aid him. The first was Namor the Sub-Mariner after which Strange had tried to enlist the Silver Surfer but the former Herald had been rendered unconscious in a recent battle. Thus, he went in search for the Hulk who at first refused as the Green Goliath simply wanted to be left alone but said he would help those he considered his friend. This led to Strange deciding to befriend the gamma mutate who agreed to help the Sorcerer Supreme. The three then went in search for the Omegatron where Strange managed to trace its position to a coastal village in New England called Point Promontory. The device itself was located within a lighthouse where both Namor and Hulk looked to break the structure using their respective strength. Meanwhile, Strange used his astral form to encounter the Omegatron itself which revealed that the entire incident was a trap. Yandroth had set the Omegatron and warned Strange about it so that his allies in their destructive rampage to destroy the machine would instead trigger the bombing mechanism. Doctor Strange then had to stop his allies by using his magic to cause them to attack one another. He then cast a spell to slow down the timing mechanism of the Omegatron thus stopping it moments before detonation. With the threat ended, the group then disbanded where they seemingly had no intention of becoming a superhero team. (Marvel Feature v1 #1)

New Defenders

Avenger and geneticist Beast attempted to institute an official operational doctrine, inviting his former X-Men teammates Angel and Iceman, alongside the cosmic champion Moondragon, the Asgardian Valkyrie, and the mutated Gargoyle to establish a permanent collective. The squad bypassed their predecessor’s disorganized blueprint to establish a unified training regimen, immediately deploying their combined tactical reserves when a sudden, hostile ambush targeted the wedding of Hellcat and the Son of Satan. Within this volatile domestic landscape, the collective launched a swift counter-offensive against the terrorist operatives of Mutant Force and the vengeful cyborg Mad-Dog, neutralizing the threat to safeguard the civilians in attendance. The group ultimately verified their operational synergy during the firefight, combining their unique physical, psychic, and mystical disciplines to commit to a shared defensive alliance and officially establish a new heroic era. (Defenders v1 #125)

Following their orbital mission, the team faced sudden, localized warfare when a mysterious, sentient cosmic entity named Cloud sought immediate political asylum at their New York brownstone headquarters. This defensive crisis originally escalated when the subterranean subversive network known as the Secret Empire tracked the runaway to the facility, deploying a massive, heavily armed vanguard of automated killer robots to execute a recapture protocol. The squad was caught severely fragmented during the opening salvo, as the mutant operatives Beast, Angel, and Iceman were away navigating a tense domestic dinner with Iceman's parents when they witnessed the aerial mechanized strike over Manhattan. This separation forced the remaining residents, including the Asgardian Valkyrie and the mutated Gargoyle, to mount a desperate holding action against the overwhelming technological onslaught. Within this burning, compromised urban landscape, the collective launched a fierce counter-offensive to protect their guests, utilizing their mystic blades and energy projection to dismantle successive waves of enemy armor. The group ultimately suffered a crushing tactical defeat when the facility was completely leveled by the bombardment, leaving the defenders buried in the rubble while the empire's forces successfully extracted Cloud back into captivity. (Defenders v1 #127)

Last Defenders

The Defenders name came to be revived under the banner of the 50-State Initiative after Kyle Richmond petitioned for Director Tony Stark to enlist them as a state super-team. Stark came to accept the request where Richmond had initially intended to bring in old Defender members but Tony believed that there was a formula needed when choosing team members. Thus, he had already made the list of heroes to join the new Defenders team with these being Colossus, Blazing Skull and She-Hulk. However, She-Hulk was on bad terms with Stark and Nighthawk had to work at convincing her to join the new Defenders who were going to be a powerhouse team allocated to New Jersey. (Last Defenders v1 #1)

Fearless Defenders

An incarnation of the Defenders came to be formed afterwards when the Doom Maidens were awakened from their endless slumber. This came in response to the demise of the Valkyrior with the All-Mother of Asgardia believing that new such champions be assembled. They came to assign Brunnhilde the task of gathering these female warriors that became a new team of Defenders. (Fearless Defenders v1 #2)

The All-Mother teleported Valkyrie, Misty, Annabelle, and Hippolyta to Harrowpoint Island, Washington, where Caroline le Fey had taken Dani Moonstar to use her in a ritual to summon the Doom Maidens. Once inside le Fey's chamber, the heroes discovered that the Doom Maidens had already arrived. During the subsequent battle, Annabelle managed to free Dani before the Doom Maidens halted their fighting, recognizing Valkyrie as their 'sister'. (Fearless Defenders v1 #3) The heroes retreated to Misty's safe house in New York City as the Doommaidens gave chase. There, Valkyrie had a vision from long ago of herself leading an attack on Odin. Valkyrie decided to take Dani and Hippolyta and lead the Doommaidens away from the city, while Misty and Annabelle called Heroes for Hire for help. (Fearless Defenders v1 #4)

Manhattan Defenders

Later on, a street-based team of vigilantes in New York came to take the name Defenders when they began to interfere in the operations of the recently resurrected crime lord Willis Stryker. Among these heroes were Daredevil, Iron Fist, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones where they looked to stop Diamondback's operations. As they were looking for leads on Diamondback together with Luke's wife Jessica Jones, Daredevil noticed it could help people know that they actively worked together. (Defenders v5 #4)

With Stryker taken care of, the Defenders turned their attention to The Hood, who had seized Diamondback's operations following his defeat. Thanks to intel provided by the Black Cat, the Defenders attacked The Hood in his own penthouse, but he managed to fend them off before escaping. In preparation for their next encounter against Robbins, the Defenders gathered numerous allies, and attacked him while he was holding a meeting with other supervillains he wanted to draw into an alliance. (Defenders v5 #10)

Beyond

The Defenders were reassembled by Doctor Strange after the mysterious Masked Raider sought his help to find former Enclave scientist Carlo Zota, who had fled into the past using magic. Using magic to pick the team, these Defenders consisted of the Silver Surfer, the Red Harpy, and Cloud. In order to give Cloud a human form, Strange submitted himself to the will of magic, and the spell pulled the Defenders back to the Sixth Cosmos on the planet Taa. (Defenders v6 #1) The team helped the locals fend off against this cosmos' equivalent of Galactus, Omnimax, whose herald was the cosmically-empowered Zota. In the process, the Defenders were joined by Galactus' own mother, the Scienceer Taaia. Strange's use of magic to deal the final blow against Omnimax pulled the team and Zota further back in time to the Fifth Cosmos, save for the Silver Surfer, who was returned to the future after his fight against Zota purged Strange's spell from his body. (Defenders v6 #2) In the Fifth Cosmos, a realm of pure magic, the Defenders came to blows against Omnimax's past self, the mage Moridun, who had enslaved Zota. After defeating him, the Defenders and Zota were sucked into the Fourth Cosmos. (Defenders v6 #3) This was populated by the primal avatars of abstract heroic Archetypes locked in an unending and recurring conflict. Zota allied himself with Galactus' archetypal precursor, What-Must-Be, in hopes to become the ultimate power during the transition between cosmos. Taking a new shape for themself, Cloud rallied the Archetypes against What-Must-Be, prompting Zota to escape to the Third Cosmos. Except for Cloud, who decided to stay among the Archetypes, the Defenders were brought to Zota by the sentience of the Fourth Cosmos, The Pilgrim. (Defenders v6 #4)

After the death of Doctor Strange, a spell cast by him became active which looked to assemble a new version of the team to handle a great threat to the cosmos. The spell appeared before Blue Adam in an attempt to force him to use the magical tarot to summon the defenders for this task. Against his will, the team were gathered where they were dispatched by Eternity to beyond reality itself to combat the threat to all existence. (Defenders: Beyond v1 #1)

Overview

In appearance, the Defenders were a team of superheroes originally made a temporary alliance between Doctor Strange, Namor and the Hulk. Their name was incidentally coined by the Sub-Mariner who remarked that the had served as valiant defenders of Earth after stopping its destruction. Strange had found this to be a fitting name though the three initially had no intentions of joining together as a team. (Marvel Feature v1 #1)

The Defenders was an organization that naturally lacked any shared, uniform biological traits due to the stark genetic, mystical, and cosmic differences between its diverse founding personnel. They utilized their collective histories as seasoned crimefighters and elite tactical operators to execute highly synchronized rescue maneuvers, handle high-risk liability protection, and launch devastating team-based shock assaults against extra-planar entities. They did not possess a single shared, uniform superpower or collective physical invulnerability, relying instead on a highly diverse array of separate biological mutations, ancient sorceries, and cosmic energy matrices. Their specialized capabilities allowed separate units to craft absolute streams of raw mysticism to rewrite localized rules of physics via Doctor Strange, harness extreme physical strength and amphibious hydro-kinetic cells via Namor, and manipulate cosmic plasma via the Silver Surfer. When active field operations commenced, the team relied on the Hulk's unmatched, rage-fueled physical power to shatter advanced military armors and withstand devastating kinetic impacts. Their primary capabilities allowed them to override standard civilian police jurisdictions during cosmic emergencies, traverse the boundaries of alternative dimensions completely undetected, and maintain an unbroken, highly disciplined global defense barrier capable of repelling extra-terrestrial invasions. (Defenders v1 #2)

Members

• Doctor Strange :
• Namor :
• Hulk :
• Silver Surfer :
• Valkyrie :
• Beast :
• Moondragon :
• Doctor Druid :
• Red She-Hulk :
• Masked Raider :
• Taaia :
• Loki :

Notes

• The Defenders were created by Roy Thomas where they made their first appearance in Marvel Feature #1 (December, 1971).
• In Back Issue! v1 #65 (2013), Thomas speculated on the origin of the team's name, "The 'Defenders' is far too passive a name for my taste. I prefer more aggressive-sounding names like the 'Avengers' or the 'Invaders,' so Stan probably came up with that one."

Alternate Versions

• In Age of Ultron v1 #8 (2013), an alternate version of the Defenders were shown to exist in the reality of Earth-26111. This splinter timeline emerged when during the Age of Ultron Wolverine went back in time to eliminate Ultron before he could conquer the world. To accomplish this, he went into the past where he murdered Hank Pym thus preventing the A.I.'s creation but this resulted in a new reality suffering where the Avengers disbanded. The Defenders formed as the world's premiere superhero team where their line-up consisted of Doctor Strange, Captain America, Wolverine, Janet Van Dyne as Captain Marvel, Thing, Scott Summers as Cable, Hulk, and Star-Lord. The group operated as a resistance against Morgan le Fay who had conquered half of Earth.
• In Iron Man: Fatal Frontier v1 (2014), an alternate version of the Defenders were shown to exist in the reality of Earth-10429. On this world, Ho Yinsen became the superhero Rescue with Tony Stark having died after the creation of the Iron Man Armor. He would encounter the world's version of the Defenders consisting of Captain America, the Hulk, and Thor who after an initial misunderstanding would end up inviting him into their ranks.

In other media

Television

• In The Defenders, a team of street vigilantes appeared in the setting of the live-action Netflix television series with this consisting of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Danny Rand.

Video games

• In Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, a reference to the Defenders appeared in the setting of the video game.
• In Marvel Future Fight, the Manhattan Defenders incarnation of the team appeared in the setting of the mobile video game.

Appearances

• Marvel Feature v1: (1971)
• Defenders v1:
• Secret Defenders v1:
• Last Defenders v1:
• Fearless Defenders:
• Defenders v5:
• Defenders v6:
• Defenders: Beyond v1: (2022)

External Links

• Marvel Database Entry
• Wikipedia Entry

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