The Avengers/Defenders War

Avengers/Defenders War by Steve Englehart
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

The Dread Dormammu and Loki conspire to dupe the Defenders into gathering the five fragments of The Evil Eye so that they can use it to cause the Dark Dimension from engulfing Earth. However, Loki has second thoughts and tells the Avengers The Defenders mean to use the Eye to rule the universe. Can even the impending doom of the universe stop The Avengers/Defenders War?

I've known about this crossover for years but never read it. Fortunately, the local V-Stock had a buy one get one free sale on their used graphic novels so I was finally able to read this piece of comics history on the cheap.

In the days of yore, aka the Silver Age of comics, crossovers were a rare thing and ones that spanned multiple issues of two titles were unheard of. Steve Englehart, who was writing both The Avengers and The Defenders at the time, cooked this one up.

At the time this was written, it was a pretty big deal. Like many crossovers, it's largely an excuse to have super heroes fight each other before settling things and going after the true villains. The Defenders split up to find the fragments of the Evil Eye and the Avengers split up to stop them, so there is a lot of hero on hero action. Vision and the Scarlet Witch battle the Silver Surfer, Iron Man battles Hawkeye, Doctor Strange takes on Black Panter and Mantis, Swordsman fights Valkyrie, Captain America battles Namor, and Thor goes one on one with the Hulk for the first time in a decade or so.

Once the dust settles, The Avengers and Defenders go after their common foes, Dormammu and Loki, but not before the Dark Dimension begins encroaching on earth. The final chapter, with Earth being overcome by the Dark Dimension, reminds me of the end of most Marvel movies and had the epic tone I'd been wanting the whole time I was reading the book.

The art is top notch for the time period. I wasn't bonkers for Steve Englehart's writing in this one, although it was fine for 1973. This was first time something of this scope was attempted so it was bound to be a little rocky. I think with the amount of characters Englehart was juggling, he did pretty well. I've read a lot of worse crossovers since then, some written fairly recently.

I don't think The Avengers/Defenders War stands the test of time as well as some other comics from the time period but it's an interesting milestone in the Marvel universe and I'm glad I read it. 3.5 out of five stars.

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