My review: new DC comic series Jenny Sparks (2024) #1 ►
◄ Spotting fake signatures with Meat Loaf as an example
Okay, this is a bit more promising than #1 of the Jenny Sparks miniseries. It's not the first attempt to do Defenders in modern comics... Dynamite released a string of titles including the King Collection, Kings Watch and Kings Quest in the 2010s, which I still haven't read properly and all probably deserve review and a bit of a retrospective when I do. But the Dynamite books weren't an attempt at being in-continuity with the 80s DotE cartoon, which is partly why I haven't prioritised them in the reading pile, just heavy on use of homage. Whereas this from Mad Cave is ostensibly a continuation.
How to explain Defenders of the Earth? It was a mash-up of various King Features characters forty years ago when at the time the characters were already about fifty years old: adventures across the world and in space and on other planets, with magic as well as futurism. It spawned some tie-in media and merchandise, including a short-lived comic and limited toyline. Limited in all senses... I think I had Phantom, the Skullcopter, and Mongor. No other Defenders, although I did appreciate the stuff I got. But I think being circa 1987 it very much overlapped with later MOTU and other figures, and the Galoob toys just weren't very good and if you got one of the figures the rest were essentially the same... quite small and the dial/knob on the back of them to make the arms flail around isn't particularly fun compared a simple pull-back-and-let-go action feature with MOTU or two-toys-in-one of Transformers. I vaguely remember some role play toys too, probably slapping logos on existing toys like walkie-talkies. (Side note: the recent NECA figures aren't a bad modern take on the adult cast members).
Developed in conjunction with Marvel, the very memorable DotE theme song and introduction features lyrics by Stan Lee. The most exposed of the characters, Flash, had other cartoons and films in decades before and after, but Mandrake, Lothar and even Phantom were relatively quite unknown by Western audiences by the time DotE appeared. However, they certainly weren't gone: Phantom is still published now and seems particularly popular in Australia and some non-English-market countries, and Mandrake only ended in 2013 with the retirement of its main artist/writer. King is responsible for other newspaper originated strips that have stood the test of time and received updates, too: Popeye, Hagar, Prince Valiant, etc. Influential and in 2015 IDW published a thick centenary coffee table style retrospective.
Defenders grapples with the usual problems with updating classic pulp and newspaper strip heroes... are things that were fresh a century ago and have become cliche still interesting? Is the source material redeemable with with how of its time (racist, sexist, etc) media often was? Are characters with years or decades of stories capable of surprising whilst staying true to the source? For the 80s cartoon, Phantom gained actual supernatural abilities and it was common for female characters to have psychic powers, so his daughter Jedda got those. On topic of the skull iconography he also got associated with tigers, which was extremely cool to me as a youngster. But even at that age I think most of the audience could pick holes in the storytelling, and not just the quality... for example, it's never really clear or consistent how much of Mandrake's magic is illusion or capable of interacting with solid matter, or why it works on ice robots.
There's distinct overlap between Phantom and Lothar and Flash too, for example everyone being a mechanic to some extent when needed, and reasonably competent at a range of things. I don't think that lack of differentiation necessarily matters too much, as they're basically the Dad team to the trouble the youngsters get into and out of with their help or vice versa, with some of the least decompressed storytelling in any show ever. The 80s updates of the characters did capture my attention, certainly, and there wasn't an Internet to become aware that Lothar had an original portrayal in the 1930s Mandrake comic strips that played him as a manservant (although limited research suggests that in the 1960s things got modernised a reasonable amount, with some stronger foreign/female characters). Making Lothar a Mr T style explorer was apparently a bit of a late decision as in early Galoob catalogue images he has the open shirt and spotted trousers closer to the 60s version. So there's definitely multiple generations of storytelling and previous attempts to rehabilitate going on. How successful that all is depends on how surface level a reading is taken: Phantom also isn't exactly unproblematic as a white saviour adventure hero, Flash isn't as inherently but main series bad guy Ming the Merciless is a Fu Manchu / Yellow Peril archetype lightly updated for the 80s to have green skin. Putting the characters together in DotE was simultaneously an earnest attempt to be inclusive, add audience identification "next generation" kid characters, and gloss over anything too awkward whilst having it created by a generation who had lived through a lot of societal changes.
Anyway, how's the 2024 comic? Well, I'd capsule review it as fanfic with a budget, aimed squarely at an audience that's now in its forties, not too decompressed, and would say it looks the part rather than going for grim and gritty. In this timeline Ming's war against Earth comes to a supposedly final conclusion in 2020, with Ming literally losing his head – if it doesn't get revealed as a fake out, which seems the most obvious outcome. The heroes survive and with the help of Ming's generally untrustworthy son Kro-Tan rebuild most of the damage done by the present day of 2024. Flash has become distant from the others and his own family, although is still wearing the red jumpsuit whilst running a foundation/company with seventeen year old Kshin as his suited aide. Phantom is recovering from serious war injuries, Lothar is headed back to Africa to deal with politics, and Mandrake is... going back on-stage, with this specifically being called out as a bit insensitive when his best friend could use his help, although it's heavily implied he's actually just sneaking off to spy on Kro-Tan. Rick and AJ are also around, with Rick unhappy about his father's elusiveness. Dynak X also features briefly.
I say fanfic advisedly, because in the 90s it was very common in online circles for people to write move-the-timeline-forward continuations like this, often with added author self-insert and/or Mary Sue or Gary Stu characters and often with the preoccupations of teenagers being full-frontal and turgid, but more generally in terms of "it's a few years later and that explains why characters have changed and the stories include some more adult things". I don't mean it dismissively, and you can hear the voice actors in the dialogue.
If the characterisations feel a little off at times, the art evokes the cartoon series very well and the plot is the sort of thing it might actually have gone with, if a little more ready to include deaths. Also most of those characterisation differences are lampshaded by comments from the other protagonists. It's strange that close friends or family members haven't spoken to each other for multiple years when there's only been a four year gap, but more credible than if there was a longer one. I have to say I'm not a big fan of time gap all-will-be-revealed plotting, but it's not too heavy-handed here. Place your bets now as to whether Flash is being mind-controlled or has been replaced by a duplicate of some kind.
I'm a lot less enthused by the (and this is a bigger spoiler) semi-cliffhanger that in the Phantom's absence his brother – presumably Kurt Walker under the mask – has taken up the mantle of Phantom and started killing pirates (okay, that bit's fair enough) and an estranged Jedda has apparently decided to help him in some kind of rather dominatrix getup that involves thigh high boots, a corset and a top knot. It may well turn out within an issue or two that Kshin and/or Jedda are undercover rather than being dicks, or revert back from heel characterisation, and all can easily be forgiven. After all, the original show would spin on a dime and rush through plot points in a little over 20 minutes, as well writing characters as impulsive and unreasonable, so that wouldn't be inauthentic. Above all I'd like the main characters to get their "normal" depiction per the TV series at some point in this series, for it to be worth a shelf copy, and not just because I had a big mostly platonic crush on the Phantom's daughter and her panther best friend as a kid.
This is slated to be an 8 issue series, enough that it shouldn't feel too rushed and will be collected as a couple of four issue trades. Hopefully it'll prove worth picking up in full and maybe get a single volume release too.
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