THE DEFENDERS: VALKYRIE’S QUEST AND MORE (1974-1975)

This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post looks at the Defenders from where my previous post about them left off.

DEFENDERS Vol 1 #17 (Nov 1974)

Title: Power Play

Villains: The Wrecking Crew

Defenders Roster: Dr Strange, Hulk, Valkyrie, Nighthawk and Power Man (Luke Cage)

Synopsis: This story opens up an undetermined amount of time after the previous story, in which the newest Defender Son of Satan (Daimon Hellstrom) helped the team rescue the Hulk from Hell and Asmodeus.

Kyle Richmond (Nighthawk) has used some of his massive wealth to convert the Richmond Riding Academy on Long Island into a secret high-tech headquarters for the Defenders, so that they don’t have to keep using Dr Strange’s Greenwich Village home for such purposes.

The stables at the riding academy will make a better home for Aragorn (til now I guess Doc was just making Wong clean up after him). Nighthawk also shows them the meeting room he had built, complete with a massive chair for the Hulk made out of priceless adamantium to ensure he couldn’t break it.

Eventually, things take a sadder note as Valkyrie takes a leave of absence from the team in order to find out what she can about her host body Barbara Norriss and let her loved ones know the fate of the missing woman. Kyle has his chauffer drive Valkyrie to the airport after Dr Strange casts his spell which lets Val switch from her street-clothes to her Valkyrie costume just by drawing her sword Dragonfang.

NOTE: For newbies, Barbara Norriss was the insane mortal woman whose body is being used as the host for the Asgardian heroine Valkyrie of the Defenders because of the Enchantress, an old Marvel villainess. More below. 

Hulk leaves in a pout because he misses Valkyrie already. Nighthawk continues entertaining Dr Strange until Kyle’s financial manager Pennysworth calls and tells him to switch on a news broadcast. That news broadcast details how villains calling themselves the Wrecking Crew have been demanding millions from New York City to stop destroying buildings overnight. The mayor has refused. The two most recent buildings demolished were owned by Richmond Enterprises.

Pennysworth tells him not to worry, he has taken extra security measures to protect the last of the three buildings that Richmond Enterprises owns in New York City itself. Kyle decides he will stake out the place as Nighthawk just for good measure and Dr Strange decides to join him.

NOTE: The Wrecking Crew (FIRST APPEARANCE) are led by Thor’s old villain the Wrecker, who was granted Thor-level strength and other powers by Karnilla the Norn Queen long ago. Recently, the Wrecker and three fellow convicts escaped from prison and dug up the Wrecker’s crowbar, which Karnilla had made the villain’s equivalent of Thor’s hammer.

In a ritualistic way, the four men held the crowbar up to the skies during an electrical storm and, when the crowbar was struck by lightning it restored the Wrecker’s superpowers AND granted superpowers to the other three men. The other three also donned costumes and called themselves Piledriver, Thunderball and Bulldozer. Naming their team the Wrecking Crew, they set off on this extortion scheme against New York City.

Back to the story, that night, when Nighthawk and Dr Strange are staking out the Richmond Enterprises building, they get jumped by Luke Cage, the superhero-for-hire called Power Man. After a typical battle of misunderstanding, the three realize they are on the same side and come face to face with the real villains – the Wrecking Crew. Those villains bring down the entire building. NOTE: Hiring Luke Cage was the “extra security precautions” that Pennysworth made an enigmatic reference to.

DEFENDERS Vol 1 #18 (Dec 1974)

Title: Rampage

Villains: The Wrecking Crew

Synopsis: Dr. Strange, Nighthawk and Power Man clash with the Wrecking Crew amid the wreckage of the demolished skyscraper. While emergency services arrive on the scene to care for the injured bystanders and put out the raging fires, the battle begins turning against our heroes. (Should have brought Clea along, too.)

Meanwhile, a taxi from the airport drops Valkyrie (in civilian clothing) off in Barbara Denton-Norriss’ hometown of Cobbler’s Roost, Vermont.

She begins asking questions around town, hoping for leads to Barbara’s family or friends since it was here that Barbara joined the cult which worshipped the Defenders’ interdimensional foe the Nameless One.

NOTE: Membership in that evil cult indirectly led to Barbara going insane and her body being used by the ruthless Enchantress to host the Valkyrie Brunhilde’s consciousness and powers in Defenders #4.

Back with the Defenders vs the Wrecking Crew battle, through a comic book coincidence the Hulk has returned to New York City just in time to join his teammates against the villains.

COMMENT: I consider this a missed opportunity to temporarily have Thundra (at left) join the Defenders, since her initial storyline had just finished up over at the Fantastic Four series. She could have happened by instead of the Hulk and helped our heroes against the Wrecking Crew.

At any rate, the fighting continues and the villains reveal that their building by building extortion demands have been the excuse to cover their real goal – finding a stolen and now missing gamma bomb so they can threaten to blow up all of New York City unless their monetary demands are met.

Amid the destructive battle, the container for that gamma bomb is found, but someone has already stolen it. Radiation levels indicate the bomb will go off within the next hour.

DEFENDERS Vol 1 #19 (Jan 1975)

Title: Doomball

Villains: The Wrecking Crew 

Synopsis: Picking up from the previous issue, the Defenders continue their battle with the Wrecking Crew. Our heroes are short-handed with Valkyrie off looking for her host body Barbara Denton-Norriss’ family to let them know Barbara’s fate.  

Dr. Strange, Hulk (Thundra if I had my way), Nighthawk and the newest Defender, Power Man, defeat the villains and recover & neutralize the deadly gamma radiation bomb they planned to use to blackmail billions from New York City. As always, the Defenders go their individual ways at the end of the mission.

NOTE: For fans who may argue that Hulk’s alter ego Bruce Banner was needed to disarm the gamma bomb to save NYC and that’s why Thundra wouldn’t have worked, let me point out that Dr. Strange could have easily teleported the bomb into another dimension, just like he did with the Wrecker’s crowbar in this issue.

MARVEL TWO-IN ONE Vol 1 #6 (Nov 1974)

NOTE: This is part of Valkyrie’s investigation into Barbara Denton-Norriss’ past and, since Marvel Two-in-One was published bimonthly, the next issue catches up to the January 1975 cover date of Defenders #19 above.

Title: Death-Song of Destiny

Villain: Celestia

Defenders Roster: Dr. Strange, Clea (below right), Valkyrie and the Thing (Clea was played by Charlize Theron in the Marvel Movies.)

Synopsis: In Cobbler’s Roost, Vermont Valkyrie continues trying to find Barbara Denton-Norriss’ parents. She doesn’t realize that her inquiries have brought her under the covert surveillance of Celestia Denton, who is revealed to be Barbara’s mother.

Celestia’s thoughts reveal that she was responsible for Barbara first becoming part of the Cult of the Undying Ones, Lovecraftian entities in Marvel Comics who are ruled over by the Nameless One and are foes of the Defenders.

For sinister reasons, Celestia draws our heroes into a battle over possession of a mystic object called “the Harmonica of Destiny” (eye-roll), yet ANOTHER Marvel Comics object which can bestow incredible power on whoever uses it. In this issue the good guys face a kaiju-sized rat stronger than the Thing.

That Harmonica-created creature is overcome, but the old foe of the Avengers and Defenders – the Enchantress – disguised as her old foe Valkyrie succeeds in stealing the Harmonica from the Defenders. 

MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE Vol 1 #7 (Jan 1975)

Title: Name That Doom

Villains: The Enchantress and the Executioner

Synopsis: With our heroes a few steps behind, the Enchantress and her partner in villainy the Executioner (Skurge) abduct Barbara Denton’s long-lost father, Alvin Denton. He is used to lure the good guys into a trap.

We at last learn that Alvin was once a lawyer living in Cobbler’s Roost, VT but when his wife Celestia seemed to die in a car accident he became a grief-stricken, washed-up drunk. His and Celestia’s daughter Barbara raised him over the years more than he raised her.

Years later, Barbara married Jack Norriss, member of the cult which worshipped the Defenders’ foe the Nameless One and his subordinate entities. Alvin never saw them again. NOTE: So Alvin does not know how Barbara was eventually offered to the Nameless One nor does he know that Celestia is still alive.

Valkyrie and Alvin have a sorrowful reunion because she only has a few scattered memories of this man. Just to be cruel, the Enchantress strips away the Valkyrie powers and persona which she bestowed upon Barbara in Defenders #4. This makes Barbara Denton-Norriss herself again, but unfortunately that self is still insane from having mated with the Nameless One and then uncoupled from him in Defenders #3.

The plight of his insane daughter pains Alvin even more, to the delight of the Enchantress. She restores the Valkyrie’s powers and persona to Barbara so that she can gloat about her and the Executioner’s victory to her oldest foe, the Valkyrie Brunhilde. (She long ago had defeated the Valkyrie and stole her powers and persona from her, bestowing them on various women over the years to do her bidding against the Avengers, the Hulk, etc.)   

The Enchantress now uses the Harmonica, planning to destroy the Earth and then conquer Asgard alongside the Executioner. A despairing Alvin Denton interferes, which temporarily reduces the world to floating fragments of debris. Before that change can become permanent, the Thing gets the Harmonica back from the villainess and uses it to restore Earth to normal.

The Defenders then defeat the Enchantress and the Executioner. Alvin Denton dies of a heart attack from the strain of all this and Valkyrie mourns this man she never got to know. 

DEFENDERS Vol 1 #20 (Feb 1975)

Title: The Woman She Was

Defenders Roster: Dr. Strange, Valkyrie, Nighthawk and the Thing

Villains: Celestia, the Cult of the Undying Ones and the Nameless One

Synopsis: Valkyrie’s grief continues. The Enchantress and the Executioner regain consciousness and attack our heroes again but eventually decide to simply escape by teleporting away. Dr. Strange summons Nighthawk to Cobbler’s Roost but the Hulk is still unavailable.

Nighthawk welcomes the Thing to the Defenders, clarifying that they are an ad hoc, secret team and anyone who fights at their side is considered a member who might be summoned again in the future. Valkyrie returns to civilian garb and carries the late Alvin Denton to the Cobbler’s Roost sheriff’s office.

Val is assumed to be Barbara Denton-Norriss, and various people who knew Alvin and her long ago offer their condolences while Val bluffs her way through the encounters hoping for Alvin to get a funeral and burial.   

At the former home of Alvin, Celestia and their daughter Barbara, Celestia leads the Cult of the Undying Ones into attacking and capturing the Defenders via their mystic powers. We learn that Celestia survived the car accident which Alvin thought had killed her, but she was hideously disfigured.

Celestia joined the cult and contacted the Nameless One with them. That entity promised to restore Celestia’s beauty and youth once he and the Undying Ones were freed from their interdimensional prison and returned to rule the Earth once more. 

Selfishly, Celestia offered her own daughter Barbara as a mate for the Nameless One as soon as possible. To that end, she manipulated Barbara’s husband Jack Norriss into joining the cult, which led to her being offered to the Nameless One a few years back.

Using mystical weaponry, Celestia and cult co-leader Brother Nyborg lead a ritual to slay Valkyrie and Dr. Strange on their altar so that the Nameless One and his fellows can at last return to ravage the world. 

Nighthawk and the Thing escape from their mystical cell and save Doc and Valkyrie just in time. The Defenders then defeat the entire cult and the Harmonica is destroyed forever, destroying Celestia, too. The Nameless One is once again furious at having to remain in exile because of the Defenders and the Cult of the Undying Ones is disbanded for good. 

GIANT-SIZE DEFENDERS Vol 1 #3 (Jan 1975)

Title: Games Godlings Play

Defenders Roster: Dr. Strange, Sub-Mariner, Hulk, Valkyrie, Nighthawk and Daredevil

Villains: The Grandmaster and the Prime Mover

NOTE: These Giant-Sized issues were quarterly publications that Marvel briefly experimented with in the 1970s, but only the Avengers rotated them into their ongoing storylines effectively.

Synopsis: The Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum in the movies), one of the Elders of the Universe like the Collector, has returned to Earth to play another game for ownership of our planet. He originally sought to recruit his former creations the Squadron Sinister but got no further than their member Nighthawk.

The Grandmaster learned that Nighthawk had since gone straight and joined the Defenders, so the Elder adjusted his plans and abducted other Defenders to play for his side. With Nighthawk, Dr. Strange, Sub-Mariner, Hulk and Valkyrie assembled, one more “player” was needed to match the six being used by the Grandmaster’s opponent – the Prime Mover, Dr. Doom’s former Artificial Intelligence opponent at chess games.

Nighthawk was sent to find a sixth player and recruited Daredevil, one of the heroes he had fought during his years as a villain. Daredevil thus became a Defender and competed with the rest of the team against the Prime Mover’s “players”, including villains like Korvac (his FIRST EVER appearance) and others.

The Defenders won, but as the Grandmaster prepared to assume possession of the Earth, Daredevil improvised a new strategy that thwarted the villain’s plans. The Grandmaster returned the Defenders, the Prime Mover and all the other figures to their proper times and places, then departed the Earth.

DEFENDERS Vol 1 #21 (Mar 1975)

Title: Enter: The Headmen

Defenders Roster: Dr. Strange, Hulk, Valkyrie and Nighthawk

Villains: The Headmen (Nagan, Ruby, Chondu the Mystic and Morgan)

Synopsis: An unknown amount of time has passed since the previous issue. Kyle Richmond (Nighthawk) encounters one of his previous girlfriends – supermodel Trish Starr – and the couple resume their love affair. (Trish is the niece of the Wasp and Yellowjacket’s archenemy Egghead.)

One day, the fugitive Bruce Banner’s travels find him back in New York City, so he visits Dr. Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum for a few days. Meanwhile, in Westbury, CT a new group of supervillains calling themselves the Headmen due to their unusual, even grotesque, heads have made their hideout.

Our heroes all happen to be on hand when the Headmen launch a massive robbery in New York’s Diamond District to finance the start of their plans for world conquest. Chondu the Mystic uses his sorcery to cause a Black Rain which causes a riot among the people it falls upon.

The Defenders try to subdue the crazed crowd without seriously hurting them since Dr. Strange can tell the Black Rain is being caused by the evil Chondu. With the rioting and fighting as a diversion, literal tons of diamonds are robbed by Nagan, whose human head he had transplanted onto the body of a gorilla that mad scientist Nagan made as strong as the Thing.

Nagan’s strength and agility lets him escape each of our heroes, then his fellow Headman Morgan uses his version of Pym Particles to temporarily shrink the massive haul of diamonds to small enough size to go unnoticed while they flee back to Westbury. 

The Black Rain stops after the Headmen are safely away.

NOTE: The Headmen will face the Defenders again in the future, at which point readers get to see Ruby’s powers in action, too.

GIANT SIZE DEFENDERS Vol 1 #4 (Apr 1975) 

Title: Too Cold a Night for Dying

Defenders Roster: Dr. Strange, Hulk, Valkyrie, Nighthawk and Yellowjacket

Villains: The Squadron Sinister (Hyperion, Whizzer, Dr. Spectrum and Egghead)

Synopsis: This tale picks up a few weeks later. We readers learn that Kyle Richmond and Trish Starr have been inseparable, and their renewed romance is the top subject in all the celebrity news and gossip columns. One night when Kyle is driving himself and Trish home after attending the opera his car explodes upon turning the ignition key.

They’re both near death in the hospital when the civilian clothed Dr. Strange and Valkyrie show up, worried about Kyle. He survives only because of his doubled strength at night (though the medical staff know nothing about that). Trish Starr loses an arm.

Yellowjacket (Hank Pym, PhD) shows up at the hospital, worried about Trish Starr, who helped him defeat her uncle Elihas Starr aka Egghead a while back. Kyle lets Yellowjacket in on his Nighthawk identity. Our heroes realize Egghead would want revenge on his niece Trish for helping his archenemy, while Hyperion, Dr. Spectrum and the Whizzer would want revenge on Kyle, whom they know is Nighthawk, their former member who helped the Defenders defeat them.

Dr. Strange, Hulk, Valkyrie and new Defender Yellowjacket leave the hospital to find and take on the villains over the car-bomb. We learn that the Squadron Sinister and their ally Nebulon weren’t killed when Nebulon’s machine exploded at the North Pole. Instead, his dimension-spanning powers teleported them all to the planet Zaar.

Nebulon stayed there to study the philosophy of the planet’s inhabitants but agreed to teleport the Squadron Sinister back to Earth. As for Egghead (at right), he escaped Hank Pym’s and Trish Starr’s destruction of his lab.

The Defenders defeat all four villains, with the Hulk shattering Dr. Spectrum’s Power Prism. In the epilogue, Trish breaks up with Kyle because she needs to rediscover herself now that she can no longer model or play any musical instruments or paint.

NOTE: This was the first time Yellowjacket used his new Disruptor Pistol. Nebulon will return with a new plan for Earthly conquest in the future. Personally, I’d have used Nebulon as the Grandmaster’s opposing “player” in that story instead of the Prime Mover.   

DEFENDERS Vol 1 #22 (Apr 1975)

Title: Fangs of Fire and Blood

Defenders Roster: Dr. Strange, Hulk, Clea, Valkyrie and Nighthawk

Villains: The Sons of the Serpent

Synopsis: The Defenders come to the aid of poor white people and minorities in slums that are owned by an evil tycoon who meets Kyle Richmond at a high society party. It turns out the tycoon and others of his kind are working with the racist hate group the Sons of the Serpent to burn down the ghettos to drive out the low-income inhabitants.

The Sons of the Serpent clashed with the Avengers twice during the 1960s. They’re a vile army of costumed hatemongers who wield advanced weaponry like Hydra and A.I.M. do. Our heroes are too late to stop them from burning down another tenement building this night, but they fight it out with the Sons in a massive battle before the villains manage to escape.

DEFENDERS Vol 1 #23 (May 1975)

Title: And the Snakes Shall Inherit the Earth

Defenders Roster: Dr. Strange, Hulk, Valkyrie, Nighthawk and Yellowjacket

Villains: The Sons of the Serpent

Synopsis: Yellowjacket, whose black scientist colleague Bill Foster (now Black Goliath) was targeted by the Sons of the Serpent during the first Avengers clash with the villains, has unearthed leads to their new plans. Rather than go to the Avengers he goes to the Defenders instead since he prefers how their group keeps a low profile and only gets together when there’s a mission.

Yellowjacket warns the Defenders about the Sons’ plan to take over a television station to issue new threats following their battle with our heroes the previous night. The Sons’ raid successfully takes over the station and they broadcast a simultaneous call for new recruits and mention new targets.

The Defenders show up at the firebombed target that night and engage in an even larger battle with the Sons of the Serpent. This time, the Sons have such high-tech weaponry that they are able to capture Dr. Strange, Valkyrie, Nighthawk and Yellowjacket.

Hulk inadvertently turned back into Bruce Banner during the fighting and hid. He now runs toward Dr. Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum to let Clea know what happened to the other Defenders.

DEFENDERS Vol 1 #24 (Jun 1975)

Title: In the Jaws of the Serpent

Defenders Roster: Dr. Strange, Hulk, Clea, Valkyrie, Nighthawk, Son of Satan, Power Man, Daredevil and Yellowjacket

Villains: The Sons of the Serpent

Synopsis: Informed by Bruce Banner of the fate of the others, by morning Clea has summoned Son of Satan, Power Man and Daredevil to the Sanctum Sanctorum to plan a rescue mission. (In my revision Thundra would also have been summoned since she would have been in the Wrecking Crew story.)

Clea and the others have no luck locating the HQ of the Sons of the Serpent all day long. That night, a live news report shows the Sons in another tenement area about to publicly execute Valkyrie as a traitor to the white race and announcing they will kill the other captives over the next consecutive nights.

Clea teleports Son of Satan and Power Man to the Sons’ underwater base to try freeing Doc, Nighthawk and Yellowjacket. She, Daredevil and Hulk go to stop the villains from executing Valkyrie. Both battles are going against our heroes as this issue comes to a close.

DEFENDERS Vol 1 #25 (Jul 1975)

Title: The Serpent Sheds its Skin

Villains: The Sons of the Serpent

Synopsis: The separate groupings of Defenders manage to turn things around. The team in the ghetto defeat the Sons of the Serpent, save Valkyrie and prevent the Sons from razing those tenement buildings. The team in the underwater HQ win out and free the captive Defenders.

They then fight their way up through a stairway leading above the sea level to an office occupied by Kyle Richmond’s Chief Financial Officer, the frequently mentioned J.C. Pennysworth. The man has been embezzling millions from Richmond Enterprises to fund the Sons of the Serpent.  Kyle was always partying and being a playboy so he never paid attention to his own company’s finances.

Pennysworth is black, but was fine with siccing the Sons on his own people because he shared in the profits of the “drive out the poor and construct luxury apartments on the ruins” scheme. Power Man is so furious at such a betrayal that he has to be restrained from killing Pennysworth. The remaining Sons are mopped up by all 9 of the Defenders on hand and Pennysworth is arrested, too.

MARVEL TEAM-UP Vol 1 #35 (Jul 1975)

Title: Blood Church

Defenders Roster: Dr. Strange, Clea, Valkyrie and the Human Torch 

Villains: Jeremiah and the Innocents of God

NOTE: The last 2 issues, cult leader Jeremiah and his congregation the Innocents of God were a recurring subplot but never interacted with Spider-Man or the other characters. Jeremiah preached his own gospel and his worship centered around a demon called Oruthu. Rock music and the murders of police officers were part of his rituals, held in abandoned churches. 

Synopsis: Following her publicity in recent months, Jeremiah targets the Valkyrie, considering her a “pagan insult” to his “true god Oruthu.” Jeremiah is a mutant whose power lets him draw psychic energies from his followers and convert those into mystic energies like the kind Dr. Strange and others must call upon through spells.

Jeremiah attacks and manages to abduct the Valkyrie while Dr. Strange and Clea try to catch up with the villain and his cult before they harm or kill Val. Before Doc can summon Nighthawk, Hulk or any other Defenders to help, the Human Torch happens upon the scene. 

The Torch knows about the Defenders from his Fantastic Four teammate the Thing, so he is happy to join them. Our heroes eventually locate the latest abandoned church being used by Jeremiah.

His part-rock concert, part occult ritual “mass” is set to conclude with Valkyrie being the villain’s latest offering to Oruthu through a mystic portal that Jeremiah will conjure up.

The good guys outfight Jeremiah and he – NOT Valkyrie – winds up getting sent through the portal to be torn apart over and over again by Oruthu and his subordinate demons. The minds of the Innocents of God are set free from Jeremiah’s influence and our heroes call it a night.

NOTE: Believe it or not, Marvel has NEVER used Jeremiah ever since this 1975 story. Not even in the X-Men, where his combination of mutant powers and sorcery could have made him a great villain.

GIANT SIZE DEFENDERS Vol 1 #5 (Jul 1975)

Title: Eelar Moves in Mysterious Ways

Defenders Roster: Dr. Strange, Hulk, Valkyrie and Nighthawk (I’d have added Thundra again.)

Villains: Eelar and the alien Badoon Race

Synopsis: Dr. Strange detects a disruption in the time stream that has the potential of destroying the Earth. He summons Hulk and Valkyrie to his side but fails to make contact with Nighthawk. Unknown to his fellow Defenders, Kyle is in upstate New York flying around to distract himself from Pennysworth stealing from him for years and Trish Starr leaving him.

Doc, Hulk and Val (plus Thundra if I had my way) clash with one of the sources of the temporal disruption – a large, mutated, humanoid eel calling itself Eelar. It is stronger than the Hulk and can generate electrical energy powerful enough to withstand Dr. Strange’s magic and electrocute whatever it pleases.

Through a comic book coincidence, the other source of the temporal disruption is spotted by Nighthawk as it streaks across the upstate New York sky. It’s a spaceship which crashes in the heavy forests of the area. Nighthawk races to investigate the crash and meets the vessel’s inhabitants – the Guardians of the Galaxy.

NOTE: These are the original 1969 Guardians of the Galaxy, who were superpowered freedom fighters from the 31st Century. They were rebels fighting to free Earth from the genocidal tyranny of the humanoid lizard aliens called the Brotherhood of Badoon.

        Their members were Vance Astro, a 20th Century astronaut who was put in chryosleep and sent toward the Alpha Centauri star system in 1999 (LOL). He didn’t arrive until around 3007 A.D. shortly before the Badoon race conquered Earth and its colonies in our solar system and Alpha Centauri. The rebellion was still being fought in 3015 A.D. 

Other members were Yondu (left), a blue skinned warrior of the planet Centauri IV; Charlie-27, sole survivor of Earth’s Jupiter colony; and Martinex, sole survivor of Earth’s Pluto colony.

The Guardians explain all this to Nighthawk and state that they traveled to the past to obtain an old Badoon info recorder to show how Earth drove off the Badoon when they invaded in the 1960s. (The Silver Surfer defeated them, but that never became public knowledge.)

The Guardians’ spaceship was christened the Captain America by Vance Astro in 3007. The vessel crashed when some of its systems failed from the strain of time travel from 3015 to 1975. Martinex, the Science Officer for the Guardians of the Galaxy, gets the ship’s transporters working. He stays behind to do more repairs but teleports Nighthawk, Vance Astro, Yondu and Charlie-27 to the site where Doc, Hulk and Val are fighting Eelar and his rampage. 

After both teams become acquainted, the Defenders and the Guardians fight together to defeat Eelar and transform it back into the normal eel it once was. It turns out the Badoon info recorder the G of the G came back in time for was activated by the sudden presence of their spaceship here in 1975. Radiation from the device erased all the information it contained and mutated a nearby eel into Eelar.

The Defenders and Guardians then relocate to the Richmond Riding Academy HQ of the Defenders so Vance Astro (right), Yondu and Charlie-27 can explain themselves to Doc, Hulk and Val. The Defenders are so appalled by the way the Badoon enslaved humans and reduced Earth’s population to just 53 million people that they volunteer to go back to the future with the Guardians to help in the rebellion.

Back in upstate New York, Martinex faces even more temporal danger when an adventurous little boy comes across the crashed spaceship. The little boy introduces himself as Vance Astro, who was a child in 1975. 

DEFENDERS Vol 1 #26 (Aug 1975)

Title: Savage Time

Villains: The Brotherhood of Badoon

Synopsis: At Long Island’s Richmond Riding Academy, the secret HQ of the Defenders, our assembled heroes are using the site’s high-tech equipment to monitor sudden small-scale earthquakes around the world in places that have never had them before.

Dr. Strange states that the phenomena are the world-threatening temporal disruption he sensed before Eelar’s rampage.

Vance Astro, Yondu and Charlie-27 insist they can’t be the cause, since their Science Officer Martinex’s calculations indicated no danger from their spaceship making the leap back in time. Dr. Strange points out that the danger they didn’t take into account is the fact that Vance Astro already exists as a child here in 1975, so his simultaneous presence here as an adult is the cause of the problem.

Doc further states that that state of affairs is causing so much damage to the time-space continuum that the Earth is slowly grinding to a halt on its axis and will stop revolving before too long. They must get the G of the G back to their own time as soon as possible to avoid that catastrophe.

NOTE: Marvel Comics called this fictional “scientific principle” the Vance Astro Effect. They used it to explain why Vance had to stay off the surface of the Earth in subsequent visits to the late 20th Century. It was also used as a retcon explanation for why Kang the Conqueror could only have 5 of his future selves at his side in Giant Size Avengers #4 – any more would have caused immediate cessation of our planet’s revolution on its axis.

A televised news report interrupts further deliberation by our heroes. The military has surrounded the crashed spaceship Captain America in upstate New York – and even worse, cameras are picking up footage of Martinex standing alongside the child Vance Astro. It looks to the typically panicky reporters as if a hostile alien has abducted a human child.

Dr. Strange quickly conjures up a spell that makes Martinex, Young Vance and the spaceship disappear from its current location. The duo and the ship are teleported to the vast grounds of the Defenders HQ/ Riding Academy. Doc also teleports the child Vance Astro back to his home with his memory wiped of his interactions with Martinex.

The Guardians make hurried repairs to the Captain America over the next few hours. Next, Dr. Strange, Hulk, Valkyrie and Nighthawk board the vessel with the G of the G. (Needless to say I’d have kept Thundra with them.)

Dr. Strange’s magic then transports the spaceship not only back into Earth orbit but back to the point in 3015 A.D. when it left for the past. The Guardians use their vessel’s viewscreens to show the Defenders some of the slave labor camps and death camps, strengthening the team’s resolve to liberate Earth from the Badoon race.  

*** In the next three issues of The Defenders, our heroes helped get human rebels to the point where the war against the Badoon occupiers was within sight of victory. The war then concluded with the defeat of the Badoon in the Guardians of the Galaxy’s new series in 1976.