4 Issue Test #42 - The Defenders

Note: At the point of typing the Defenders series hadn’t come out yet.

Luke Cage, Daredevil, Iron Fist and Jessica Jones, together they are the Defenders, a street level Superhero team that deal with things below the pay-grade of people like the Avengers. I’ve reviewed a lot of their individual outings with all but Jessica Jones not meeting the standard I look for in comics.

So, in the writer’s seat we have Brian Michael Bendis. If you ever want the definition of a hit-and-miss writer, look up Bendis. I literally did an editorial on why Civil War II was a piece of sh*t. But Bendis also wrote Jessica Jones which I enjoy and was responsible for all the Miles Morales Spider-man issues, which have mostly been good, so maybe something’s here to enjoy. Let’s find out.

What are Jessica, Luke and Danny standing on, anyway?

#1 opens with a guy beating up on someone selling Laundry detergent claiming it to be I.G.H. Luke Cage is wondering the street when someone fires a rocket at him, naturally it doesn’t do much good and he finds the remote launcher and some diamonds. His phone rings and it turns out Jessica Jones wasn’t so lucky and has ended up in the hospital.

Cage isn’t the only one there though, Daredevil was attacked as well, and so was Iron Fist. Cage is angry and wants payback, saying it’s on them, they try and come up with suspects but Jessica wakes up and tells them it was Willis Stryker aka Diamondback, back from the grave because that’s always a thing, especially for villains.

Black Cat, who if you’ve been reading Spider-man, you’d know is a major player in New York’s underground scene, tracks down Diamondback, he has an offer and tells her she can’t refuse it. She tells him targeting Luke Cage and his wife is fundamentally stupid as now they’re all hunting him down, and we see Jessica Jones using her PI skills and the others using more brutal methods to do exactly that.

Luke Cage finds Diamondback first and they begin to fight whilst the others meet up in a bar. Daredevil says they need to up their game, as we see that Diamond back is using some kind of poison smoke to defeat Cage whilst Black Cat is… I’m not even sure.

Backgrounds? What are those? 

#2 opens with Jones swearing her way into Linda Carter’s medical centre. Black Cat dragged him here but they don’t have the antidote to the poison, it’s a S.H.I.E.L.D. grade military compound. Fortunately Blade shows up for a gratuitous cameo and just happens to have said antidote and Luke is beginning to recover. Linda won’t reveal any information about Diamondback to protect the Clinic but that’s hardly gonna stop Jessica. Daredevil asks Ben Urich about it but he knows sh*t so this is filler.

Danny Rand, Iron Fist, is in a gala hosted by Wilson Fisk, he asks Wilson about Diamondback, saying it would benefit him to not have Diamondback go after him, less he either die or expose himself as the piece of sh*t that he really is. Diamondback is angry that no word of Cage’s death has reached him. He left Cage to die, because it would be badass, yes really.

Speaking of badass Jessica Jones arrives and beats the snot out of him, when his guards try to help they’re knocked down by Daredevil and Iron Fist. Diamondback manages to get the upper hand on Jessica and makes his escape, when the trio try to follow him they’re stopped by a few gunshots, the Punisher.

#3 opens with everyone waking up in hospital and I’m beginning to see a pattern here. The bullets were designed not to kill them. Oh but before that we see Diamondback confront Black Cat, she says if Luke Cage died as Dimaondback intended it’d bring the Superheroes of New York to their doorstep. She shows her force by taking out the 4 guards with guns to her. He warns her if this is how she’s acting, it won’t end well. She tells him to bring it on.

For some bizarre reason we get clips of random people telling us about Diamondback and his origin and history with Luke Cage. He and Luke were best friends and were part of a gang, Diamondback is the one who planted diamonds on Luke that lead to his arrest and his unbreakable skin, some revenge plot after a girl called Reya Connors chose Luke over him. But there’s still questions about how he survived. You’d think this’d be framed as Ben Urich trying to find something out but nope.

2 guys eating noodles are discussing Diamondback and how he may have a backer the amount of money he’s peddling. They’re interrupted by the Punisher, who kills one of them and threatens the other, he doesn’t know anything. The Punisher is about to shoot but is interrupted by Daredevil and Luke Cage. Turns out the Punisher shot at them because he distrusts people in masks. OK, so basically this is a over-long cameo that has nothing to do with the plot at all. Luke chokes him into unconsciousness.

Jessica and Danny have found Diamondback’s car but it doesn’t have a registration, Jessica is spotted, and her car is rolled over. Iron Fist and Diamondback fight but somehow Diamondback is strong enough to block Iron Fist’s iron fist, the issue ends with Danny getting a knee to the back.

We flash back a bit, Diamondback receives a shipment of the super-drug he’s peddling, a potency of 94% which is unheard of. It’s shown to Black Cat who keeps a sample to test. He tells Hammerhead, her right hand, to find someone who can give her an accurate report on the drug. He finds a guy named Roman and gives him the drug. Soon after this we see Spider-man as it crosses over to events in his own title.

Roman heads home with his wife and they agree to each take one of the pills. Apparently it makes your eyes and mouth glow blue you’re so high. It’s a very good drug, but there’s a problem, it doesn’t mix well with other drugs, Roman’s wife is dead. Urich sees the wrapping for the pills and manages to steal it, his boss at the Bugle is happy and asks him about the Defenders, he has an idea.

Jessica gets out of the car and tries to beat up Diamondback again, she is thrown through a window but it turns out Danny isn’t down to the count and uses his chi attacks to bring Diamondback down. The police soon arrive and thanks to a bunch of witnesses, they should have evidence to bring him down. Iron Fist wants to leave as he is in excruciating pain.

Luke is walking with his child in the stroller (where has she been anyway?) and gets a call from Jessica, Elektra is watching him in the shadows. Diamondback is being transferred to a super-max prison and just a lucky co-incidence, he’s sharing a van with the Punisher.

So that was the Defenders #1-4, what are my thoughts, let’s take a look

Brian Michael Bendis is currently writing stories for a lot of street level heroes, Spider-man, Jessica Jones and the Defenders are all, by and large, focusing on street-level events. It’s good to see cross-continuity between them, with the inclusion of Black Cat and Hammerhead, who have been prominent in the Miles Morales' Spider-man titles.

I also like that they didn’t waste multiple issues getting the team together and relied on the fact the 4 knew each other anyway. I know it may take time in the Defenders TV series, but it’s nice that this thread is out of the way in the first issue. I generally like the dialogue too, Bendis can be known for bad character writing but I don’t think that’s the case here.

The stories are surprisingly well-paced with enough action and plot development to satisfy. What I’m not fond of is the cameos. OK, the Punisher is another street-level hero but Blade? What the f*ck was he doing? It’s night time, aren’t you supposed to be hunting vampires or something? There seems to be an indication that he and Luke have history but there’s little mention of it here, it just felt like a cheap way to end the Luke poisoned subplot.

Diamondback is probably the biggest issue with this series. The incredibly contrived way they shoehorn in his backstory in the third issue is bad enough, but I’m still left with lingering questions as somehow who is completely oblivious to Diamondback other than within the TV series so that’s so good I don’t remember it. He’s dead but he came back to life unexpectedly. Also, as a villain, he’s not that threatening, repeatedly getting his ass handed to him by members of the team, OK, he fights back and eventually wins but usually by some cheap move.

The artwork is good, I didn’t find myself hating it the way I did with Power Man and Iron Fist, it’s fine and I don’t have a lot to say, although some of the faces did look a bit weird, especially the two the Punisher interrogated.

Ratings

#1 7.5/10

#2 7/10

#3 6/10

#4 8/10

Overall – 7.125/10

I’m going to continue reading this comic series happily, but I have some reservations regarding the current story-line I hope they’ll resolve sooner than later.