Comic Book / Defenders (2021)

The universe's defenders.^note Clockwise: Doctor Strange, Cloud, the Masked Raider, Silver Surfer, and the Red Harpy.

Sometimes, messages from the cosmos are carried on the slightest of breezes in whispers only the true ear may hear. Sometimes. Sometimes the Cosmos just points a gun at your head.

— Doctor Strange

Defenders (subtitled There Are No Rules for the collected edition) is 2021 limited series from Marvel Comics. It's written by Al Ewing, with art by Javier Rodriguez.

Set in the shared Marvel Universe, the series introduces the latest incarnation of Marvel's long-running team The Defenders, sending them on a mission into the past, back to a point before the current multiverse was born.

Doctor Strange is visited in his Sanctum Sanctorum by the mysterious Masked Raider, wearer of the Eternity Mask. The Masked Raider has a problem that only Strange can help him with: after hunting down Carlo Zota, the last member of the mad scientist organization the Enclave, the Masked Raider saw him vanish using a book of spells...and the spell he was using was a time travel spell, particularly powerful and particularly dangerous.

So Strange decides to summon the Defenders to help, using the Tarot of the Secret Flame: and the tarot brings the Silver Surfer, the Red Harpy, and Cloud. This summoning immediately thrusts them into action as they are pulled back in time...

...to the previous multiverse, the Sixth Cosmos, and to Taa, the homeworld of Galactus himself. And it's under attack by a completely different world eater.

The series received a spiritual followup by the same creative team, Defenders: Beyond, in 2022 (though the only character they have in common is Taaia).

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Tropes in Defenders (2021):

• Air Quotes: Taaia, the woman who first wakes up the Defenders on Taa, occasionally uses these.
• Ambiguous Situation: After the defeat of Anti-All, Stephen starts speculating if it's the progenitor for all the other void and dragon-related monstrosities in Marvel's cosmology. Betty points out he's just using the word "perhaps" a lot.
  Betty: Just say you don't know. It makes you sound smarter.
• Anti-Magic: By saying the "cantrips of the Onyx King," nobody can do magic (or use powers not contained in their own bodies) for the next 30 seconds.
• Bait-and-Switch: Seeing a baby Galactus, the Surfer stands over him, musing on all the things Galactus will one day unleash. His hand begins to glow, as the Masked Raider comes in... turns out Norrin's just playing with the baby.
• Berserk Button: Mor-i-Dun really doesn't like being told what things are. He does the telling, and people who try doing it the other way around get a face full of glass.
• Best Served Cold: Blind Justice, the previous bearer of the Eternity Mask, knows ahead of time he'll die at the hands of his former friends in the Enclave, but is okay because he knows they'll get theirs eventually.
• Bilingual Bonus: When Carlos Zota casts the spell, he says, "Ventis Di Tempore... Audi Vocem Meam..." If you know Latin (or Google Translate), it reads, "Winds of time...hear my voice..." So you know he's casting a time travel spell before the Masked Raider tells us.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Taaia, scienteer of the Sixth Cosmos, owner of a BFS and lover of scraps.
  Betty Ross: There's a warmth in Taaia. She's boisterous - but never arrogant, never condescending. Not like Strange.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Cloud returns after a long while away.
  • At the end of issue 2, Mor-i-Dun, the sorcerer of the Fifth Cosmos who briefly menaced the A.I.M.vengers team, makes a return.
• Call-Back:
  • The Masked Raider explains his general history, his war with the Enclave, and the resurrection of Korvac, as was seen in Marvel Comics #1000
  • In his introduction in issue 3, Mor-i-Dun notes how prophecy says he, or his ghost, will one day see the world-to-come (i.e., the regular Marvel universe), which happened in New Avengers vol 4.
  • Issue 4 has many to the final issue of Ewing's run of Ultimates. That story revealed the Fourth Eternity is, in the present day, on a "journey into mystery". At the end of issue 4, she makes an appearance, explaining her reasoning to the Defenders. The whole issue borrows that series' Arc Words of "everything lives, nothing dies".
  • The team being assembled very inconveniently by magic to resolve a crisis is something the first iteration had to deal with. They were cursed by Gaia to forcibly assemble anytime a crisis threatened the world.
  • The Anti-All heavily resembles a one-time depiction of the Dragon of the Moon, a similar Beast of the Apocalypse, as a serpentine mass of darkness covered in spines.
• *Click* Hello: This is how the Masked Raider shows up at Doctor Strange's Sanctum. Strange doesn't like it when people point guns at him, so an ass-kicking ensues.
• Comically Missing the Point: In issue 2, as the team enters Taaia's house, Betty comments something smells. Stephen thinks she's talking metaphorically, and starts waxing about the situation until Betty clarifies she means literally, something smells - there's a baby in the other room and he's soiled himself.
• Continuity Nod:
  • When Strange learns that Zota used time magic, he brings up Sise-Neg, who previously used time magic to travel to the very beginning of the universe and become the spark of creation. Strange points out that while Sise-Neg was smart enough to realize he shouldn't change anything, Zota might not be, so they need to stop him quickly.
  • Strange, just like Doom in S.W.O.R.D. (2020), calls magic "the secret fire."
  • All of the people that Strange summoned were in previous versions of the Defenders: Silver Surfer was one of the original Defenders alongside Strange, Namor, and the Hulk; Betty Banner was a member of the 2012 Defenders in her Red She-Hulk form (a fact Stephen remembers but she does not, thanks to time-travel being involved); and Cloud was a member of the New Defenders alongside Angel and Iceman.
  • During issue 2, the Surfer brings up how thanks to one thing and another thing, he's actually twice as old as the universe (due in part to events in Dan Slott's run on Silver Surfer).
  • In his angry ranting, Mor-i-Dun declares the Ace of Blades is "the psychic knife! The focused totality!", the old catchphrase Psylocke of X-Men fame tended to use whenever she used her powers under Chris Claremont's pen. Mor-i-Dun's is, like her's, a glowing pink sword, just a bit bigger and nastier.
  • Introducing himself to the Defenders, Mor-i-Dun recites "all life is horror", something he repeated back in New Avengers.
  • When the Anti-All is shattered and its essence scattered across the Multiverse, one of its fragments resembles Knull's dragon emblem — with Doctor Strange speculating that Anti-All is the source of all the dark entities who seek to destroy the universe.
• Continuity Overlap: For Betty Ross. The mini-series kicks off concurrently with the tail end of Ewing's Immortal Hulk, picking up Betty's storyline from when she exited the run at the end of Immortal Hulk #48.
• Crossover: The Masked Raider tells Strange that when he found the Enclave's lab, Adam-IV (also known as Korvac) had already been awakened and was escaping. However, the Raider had to let him escape to go after the last Enclave member... and Korvac then showed up as the Big Bad of Iron Man (2020, Ongoing).
• The Dividual: The Fantastic Four archetypes in the Fourth Cosmos are a quartet of beings known as the Four-Who-Are-One.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Stephen isn't quite sure what name to call Betty in her Red Harpy form, initially trying for "Doctor Ross-Banner". She says "Harpy" will be fine (also making it the first time the matter has been addressed in-fiction as to what she prefers in that form).
• Draconic Abomination: Anti-All is a possibly star-sized draconic entity made of living darkness that purportedly emerged from the Below-Place and attempted to destroy the Third Cosmos — itself an Eldritch Location where the laws of time and space are meaningless. Embodying primordial chaos, darkness, and destruction, Anti-All tried to devour Lifebringer One — the primordial avatar of order, light, and creation — and when it was slain its essence was scattered across the nascent Multiverse, with Dr. Strange speculating it's the progenitor of all other primordial dark entities — chiefly Knull.
• Eldritch Location: The Fifth, Dark Cosmos. It's a world of raw, untamed magic, where there's no sun. The Third Cosmos is even more eldritch, being a place where time is nascent and space has no meaning. The Fourth Cosmos is less bad, but time and space are still looser here. It's also less a multiverse with people and more a collection of the archetypes that would be the basis for the Seventh and Eighth Cosmoses.
• Face Framed in Shadow: At first it looks like this is going on with Omnimax. Then it turns out that no, that is how his face always looks. He is the remnant of the Dark Cosmos, after all. Only his Beard of Evil sticks out.
• Foreshadowing: A cross-title one. Seeing the Green Door, Stephen mutters "Tetragrammaton". One of the alternate definitions for the name of God, before the very big reveal at the end of Immortal Hulk.
• Hero's Evil Predecessor: As Galactus is to the seventh and eighth cosmos, so Omnimax was to the sixth. Only unlike Galactus, who doesn't remotely enjoy his job or the constant hunger (or people always trying to kill him), Omnimax does enjoy killing planets. Very, very much.
• History Repeats:
  • Each Cosmos has a Devourer of Worlds: the Seventh and Eighth have Galactus, the Sixth has Omnimax (aka Mor-i-Dun), the Fourth has What-Must-Be (who, much as Galactus would become the Lifebringer, transforms into What-Can-Be), and the Third has Anti-All, the great dragon. The Devourers of the Fifth Cosmos is unseen.
  • The residents of the Fourth Cosmos — primal, archetypal "living ideas" who would be reflected as the heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe — are seen undergoing their own equivalent of Civil War (2006), with "Of-Past" fighting "Of-Future". This, indeed, ties into the issue's overall point about the cyclical nature of comic book storytelling.
    Four-Are-One: •THE CONFLICT RECURS•
    Four-Are-One: •"OF-PAST" ARGUES WITH "OF-FUTURE" SIDES ARE TAKEN BATTLE IS JOINED•
    Four-Are-One: •ONE WINS BOTH DIE ARE REBORN EVOLVE LEARN GROW•
    Four-Are-One: •WE ALL EVOLVE LEARN GROW•
    Four-Are-One: •UNTIL NEXT TIME•
• Horrifying the Horror: Mor-i-Dun is utterly terrified when Doctor Strange uses Betty as a conduit for the Green Door, and the One Below All.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: Mor-i-Dun is the Sorcerer Supreme of the Fifth Cosmos, meaning he's made the rules for magic. As Strange notes, this means he's bound by them as well.
• Inconvenient Summons: None of the ad-hoc team were given any heads up before Stephen calls on them, but Betty is especially annoyed since she and the Hulk were about to rescue Bruce Banner from the Leader. It'll be even more inconvenient down the line since the cost of using magic is steep. But Doctor Strange was desperate.
• Interspecies Romance: Taaia, an extraterrestrial from the Sixth Cosmos and the mother of Galactus, develops a thing for Doctor Strange, to Harpy's disgust.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Zota angrily rants at the inhabitants of the Fourth Cosmos that he "gave [them] conflict" and meaning. As per Marvel Comics #1000, Zota was one of the Scientists' Guild from the Human Torch story in Marvel Comics #1; in other words, Zota did cause the conflict of the first story set in the Marvel Universe.
• Made a Slave: By the time the Defenders crash-land in the Fifth Cosmos, Zota's been there a while, and has run afoul of Mor-i-Dun, who has enslaved him.
• Mirror Match: Silver Surfer versus Doctor Zota having become Omnimax's herald. Norrin notes that if they'd fought on power alone, he would've actually lost, thanks to Omnimax being older than Galactus, and therefore stronger. But Norrin's been the Surfer for aeons, and knows the Power Cosmic's intricacies better.
• Multiple Head Case: The Hulk archetype in the Fourth Cosmos has four faces on his torso, each with a different expression, that is known as One-Who-Is-Four.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the first issue, by summoning Cloud, a sentient nebula, Strange realizes that he's basically destroyed the Earth himself, so releases magic unbidden to give them a human form again before it's too late. This works, but then the magic takes its price and pulls them all into the past, to the Sixth Cosmos and Taa.
• Nonhuman Nonbinary:
  • Cloud is given an arc exploring their relationship with gender. They started as a noncorporeal sentient nebula thrust by circumstances into a physical form that switches between male and female presentation borrowed from the first cisgender humans they met. Contemplating the abstract, primal, archetypical nature of the beings in the Fourth Cosmos, they settle on a nonbinary appearance and choose to stay behind when the rest of the team leaves to explore themselves further.
  • Similarly, the Fourth Cosmos, previously identified with "him" pronouns back in Ultimates, appears here with a non-binary appearance as well, making them a mirror to Cloud as well.
• Once More, with Clarity: In issue #5, Eternity repeats the speech about granting the Eternity Mask he gave back in Marvel Comics #1000, with the readers getting to see who he was giving the speech to.
• Opposites Attract: Betty Ross figures this is going on with Doctor Strange and Taaia.
• Painting the Medium: The beings from the Fourth Cosmos speak in shades of cyan, magenta, yellow and black. After Cloud inspires them to change the cycle they're stuck in, they instead start speaking in red, green, and blue.
• Planet Eater: When the Defenders are sucked back in time to the Sixth Cosmos and Taa, they see the world devourer of the Sixth Cosmos: a giant Galactus-like being called Omnimax.
• Power Nullifier:
  • When the Masked Raider shows up at Strange's Sanctum, Strange throws several spells...which the Raider immediately blocks. Realizing that the Raider couldn't have learned such spells so quickly and he must be using his mask to give him an advantage^note the Eternity Mask gives anyone who wears it equal power to anyone they are fighting, Strange casts a spell that nullifies all magic and any power not contained in the body for the next 30 seconds. Leaving both of them with no powers, but Doctor Strange with a brown belt.
  • Since Cloud is a being of science, their very nature is out of place in the Fifth Cosmos, rendering them powerless.
• Shout-Out:
  • Fitting for the multiverse of Jack Kirby homages, Galactus's mother plans to fight off Omnimax with a Mother Cube, a knock-off of the Mother Box from Kirby's Fourth World mythos over at DC.
  • As she's being used as a conduit for the Green Door, Betty thinks "I am as I am." Only the being she's being used as a conduit for is a lot less benevolent than God.
• Tarot Motifs: Since Strange uses the Tarot of the Secret Flame to summon the Defenders, each member gets their own card and meaning:
  • Doctor Strange: the Magician, reversed. In need of new experiences. Resisting change, or love, or missing something, some vital synchronicity or portent.
  • The Masked Raider: the Hierophant, reversed. Self-education. A challenge to the status quo. Rejection of what was previously accepted.
  • The Silver Surfer: Judgment, reversed. Self-doubt. Fear of judgment. For wrongs done. A message unheeded.
  • The Red Harpy: the High Priestess, reversed. Secrets and disharmony. Withdrawal and silence. Information withheld.
  • Cloud: the Lovers, reversed. Self-love. Internal conflict. A strained relationship.
• Tempting Fate: At the end of issue 3, Betty notes that, after what's happened, she's stuck as her human self for the moment, so they'll need someone else for the muscle if something weird happens. She doesn't even finish her sentence before something very weird happens: A four-headed Hulk.
• Turned Against Their Masters: As soon as Adam-IV is online, he immediately turns against the Enclave and kills most of them. The last one left is Carlo Zota, who uses magic to travel back in time.
• The Reveal: The mystery of just who is wearing the Eternity Mask is revealed in the final issue, with Dr. Carlo Zota shooting him and removing the mask to see his own face, courtesy of a time-loop.
• You Can't Fight Fate:
  • The Masked Raider knew he couldn't prevent Korvac's revival, but he still felt the need to try.
  • The Surfer and the Raider both know there's nothing that can be done to prevent little baby Galen from one day becoming Galactus, and they're not about to try. However, the Surfer does give him a gift to make the long eternity a little less awful for him.
  • Mor-i-Dun will one day survive the end of the Fifth Cosmos, and Strange already knows this, what with having met his future self, so killing him by dragging him to the Below Place won't keep him down forever. It just means he's going to get there the hard way.
  • The Masked Raider knows he can't actually talk Zota out of his insane decisions, but still feels he has to try. He knows it'll get him killed, but this just means Zota will try the exact same thing, convinced he can break the time loop.
• You Fight Like a Cow: Justified. As Stephen puts it: "Snappy patter—the magician's first tool. As cover for the second—misdirection."

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