Marvel is teasing the return of THE DEFENDERS … again.

And this time, it looks like the Beyonder is headed for them.

Not sure that hiding his face was ever needed. That uniform distinctly marks him as The Beyonder.

Way back, when I first started collecting comics (late 70s/early 80s), I was picking up everything Marvel. While Defenders was one of the books I collected, I didn’t really get into the Defenders until Defenders #125 where it was changing to New Defenders from 126 to 152 (check out some digitally colored images I did here, here and here). This was when I enjoyed The Defenders the most – because they felt like a rag tag team, rather than “big four characters” (Doctor Strange, Namor, Hulk and Silver Surfer) who seemed to be forced to work with one another.

I loved Valkyrie and Gargoyle the most, but loved the familiarity that Iceman, Beast and Angel brought from the pages of the X-Men. And I firmly believe that in those issues of New Defenders, all three of those characters got more development and felt more alive and real than they ever did for their years in the X-Men books.

Back in 2019, when I heard Jason Aaron (who may be a great writer, but I strongly disliked his Thor run – and I mean, Thor as Thor, not Jane Foster as Thor – I was already on the verge of stopping my collecting of comics by the time Jane Foster had taken the Thor mantle) – but when I heard he then slaughtered all the Valkyries and then made Jane Foster a Valkyrie, I knew my departure from comics was the right move. While, new comics were bringing in new fans (which is great!), for old timers like myself, I stuck to re-reading older comics and finding my enjoyment there.

I never picked up the latest version of The Defenders mini, because I’d stopped collecting by this point – despite, by the cover it looked like it may have had characters from New Defenders such as Valkyrie and Cloud.

So when I saw Beyonder was coming back – and in a new Defenders comic… It was curious. The original Secret Wars was probably one of my all time favorite limited series. I think one of the things that I really enjoyed about the original Secret Wars was that we got to see things from the villains perspective – and they were given personalities, rather than just being bad guys of the month. Yes, they were all still villains – but we saw Absorbing Man, for example, develop a relationship with Titania, and then Molecule Man and Volcana – these were all things you’d never get to really see, except for an issue or two, in the pages of the hero’s books (Captain America, Thor, X-Men, Fantastic Four, etc). But, because Secret Wars was so well done and so well received, like all things – it got a sequel.

Naturally, Marvel did Secret Wars II where Beyonder comes to Earth. This was a horrible idea. Well, not a horrible idea, just horribly executed.

And I just read how they did a Secret Wars III where – in short, Beyonder isn’t the Beyonder, but a piece of the cosmic cube. I get trying to explain things away – but some things don’t need to be explained (say, like when Lucas decided to explain the Force as being metachlorians or whatever…)

I am curious with what they plan to do with this Defenders comic coming up… and how they will handle the Beyonder and who will be the roster that makes up this Defenders team…

• Tawmis