While I criticised the first issue of The Last Defenders for having a lack of direction, the second issue quickly gets to the point. The idea behind the Last Defenders, as a series, is taking cues from all the previous versions in establishing that Defenders teams don’t last very long - the current team, assembled last issue, is quickly disbanded after a disasterous first mission with too much collateral damage for Stark, who was never quite sold on the idea of a Defenders team in the first place.

The idea of breaking up the team after a mission gone wrong is an original use of the Initiative concept - as Stark reasons, they’ve seen what happens when teams don’t work well. Much as how the idea was used to form the Defenders, it’s fitting that it’s also the reason that the team is broken up. It also lends some weight to the Initiative - up until now, they’ve basically been little more than a super-hero gestapo tracking down “vigilantes” and causing more damage than they prevent, but this decision shows them actually doing what they were supposed to - having a system of checks for super-heroing and weeding out what doesn’t work before the small problems become big ones.

With the team broken up, I realise what we’re actually more in line for is closer to being a Nighthawk miniseries - he takes the repeated failure of the Defenders very personally, and the focus remains on him the entire issue. Alone in the Defenders’ former base, he finds the location of a SHIELD agent in trouble and goes to investigate, taking She-Hulk with him. The two uncover a plot to brainwash the public, and meanwhile a subplot involving Hellstrom, the Son of Satan (in 1973) seems to be introducing links back to the earlier incarnations of the team.

Still, even with the new-found appreciation for where the series is going, it’s not really grabbing me. Muniz does a good, Frank Cho-esque bulky Iron Man that actually looks as if there’s a person inside the suit, and Casey’s writing has no obvious flaws. It’s just a question of how interested you are in the idea of a Nighthawk/Defenders title. After what appeared to be an attempt to jettison the Defenders nostalgia last issue, it appears to be that, actually, it is relying on it after all. Ah well. I’ll stick with the series for one more issue just to catch that Atlas appearance, but I strongly suspect I’m not going to have the drive to finish this one…

Tags: Jim Muniz, Joe Casey, Keith Giffen
Publisher: Marvel