Carol Danvers in Another Cameo: Defenders #63 – September 1978
Defenders #63: "Deadlier by the Dozen!"
Carol Danvers has a small cameo as Ms. Marvel, in which she needs to decide whether this new team is for her.
This issue starts exactly where the previous one ended, with the new Defenders members fighting against Hulk. Eventually everyone starts fighting everyone as chaos erupts. Hellcat asks Hercules to intervene. In the middle of the chaos Iron Man shows up and tells the original Defender and Hercules that since the documentary about the Defenders, a lot of super-villains have declared that they are part of the Defenders and Manhattan is a mess. It’s time for them to take responsibility and clean this mess up.
Hercules thinks that the best way to restore reason to all of the Defenders is simply to fight them all and win. Well, he throws a tree at them – that gets their attention. Hulk refuses to fight alongside the new Defenders as they just attacked him, and leaves. He is right in this case.
The superheroes decide to divide into three teams lead by Hercules, Valkyrie and Nighthawk. However, three members of the Defenders decided to not divide into teams, but to leave.
Captain Marvel – who have seen enough to know that the Defenders are not for him, Palladin – who only works for money apparently, and Ms. Marvel – she was curious because she has previously worked with the Defenders, but apparently, she’s now an Avengers. I didn’t see that one coming, she just spend a day with them that’s all. Looks like Marvel timeline is a bit problematic here.
Hercules and Valkyrie ignore this and lead the teams into battle. Also, one member of Nighthawk’s team is call Marvel Man. Marvel is really overdoing it with the trademark rights. Nighthawk’s team is also the first to get some action, they return a car stolen by someone who calls himself a Defender to its owner. That someone is a little kid actually, the kid of the owner of the car. That documentary seems to have played a nasty trick on some people’s mind. That man is also not particularly grateful for their interference in the end, like most people are not in comic books.
Then we switch back to Presence who explains that through his genetic experiments, he has created a new strain of Amoeba. Or as I see it, a giant gooey monster. Presence regrets creating the monster and attacks it. Which is a bad idea as this monster is very good at adapting. It traps him inside its own body to drain him of his nuclear energy.
Then it’s back to Hercules’ team who get to fight some legitimate villains who were in the middle of a rubbery. Then the police show up and since everyone, bad guys and good guys calls themselves Defenders, the police decide that everyone are under arrest. I guess no one thought their plan that through. That is also how the issue ends.
Ms. Marvel just has a small cameo here. We don’t learn anything new about her other than the fact that she is now an Avenger apparently. Even though we will soon see that she's not one yet, and she still has her red suit on. She has fond memories of the Defenders, but the mess that they become is not for her. However, it’s another time in which she leaves a problematic situation in the middle, although 18 superheroes are more than enough to handle a few supervillains.
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