Paying off the seeds Ewing planted in 2019’s “Marvel Comics” #1000, the series will see the team’s founding member Doctor Strange team-up with the mysterious new Masked Raider, to “take a non-team of Marvel’s weirdest, wildest heroes on a mission that will uncover the hidden architecture of reality itself. This cosmos was not the first to exist… but if the Defenders can’t track Marvel’s oldest villain through the deepest trenches of time — it might be the last!”
The series will mark fifty years since debut of the team (then consisting of Strange, Hulk, and Namor) in “Marvel Feature” #1, published July 20, 1971. As seen in Rodriguez’s art, the Silver Surfer and Betty Ross (now Harpy following the events of “Immortal Hulk”) will rejoin the team, alongside Cloud, the sentient nebula who fused with teenagers Carol Faber and Danny Milligan during J.M. DeMatteis and Don Perlin’s run in the ’80s.
“‘Defenders’ is something I’ve been turning over in my head since ‘Marvel Comics’ #1000,” Ewing said. “Now it’s finally here – and Javier Rodriguez is joining me, with all the power at his command and all the artistic freedom I can give him! When you ride with the Defenders – you’re on the trip of a lifetime!”
The new “Defenders” #1 will be released digitally and in comic book stores on August 11.
