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◄ My reviews: Lenovo Tab M9 and M8 (2023)
See here for Part 1 and here for Parts 2-4. Spoilers ahead!
Part 5
It's time to move the Phantom storyline forward. Kurt Walker talks to Kro-Tan, but is overheard by Jedda. Phantom, Mandrake, Flash and Lothar air some grievances, Mandrake having moved the mansion to the savannah of the Seven Nations. He also manages to transfer the magic animating Phantom into the latter's skull ring, with a warning that removal means permanent death. Whilst Flash and Lothar prepare to go and meet Lothar's ex Chakara, the chief of the Seven Nations, Phantom joins Rick and LJ in going to meet Jedda. Of course, it's a trap set by Kurt and the Singh pirates. After a lengthy fight Kurt apparently dies when the Skull-copter crashes into the Wambesi Falls. Chakara welcomes the Defenders but has apparently fallen under the sway of Kro-Tan, Castra and Kshin, accepting Mongo technology... it's not clear if this is neutrality or a trap.
In an interesting decision, a part 6 cover reveal immediately after the instalment telegraphs the return of Ming fighting Flash.
Maybe it's the childhood Phantom fan in me talking, but this is the strongest part yet. Character interactions are satisfying and most of the pieces are on the board now with several parts remaining to give a conclusion some weight.
If he's actually dead, I'm not bothered about the Phantom's brother being written out. Firstly he was already written out in a return episode in the original series and Defenders has a habit of hand waving explanations when writers feel like it, and honestly this is more than enough of the character. I'll be less sanguine if the 'real' Phantom is written out by the end of this series.
Mandrake's magic feels more satisfying here too, because there's a sense of limits being reinforced. You can still hear the voice actors in the dialogue as written, and if the character wasn't so suave and genuinely well-meaning he'd be highly punchable. I think i'd like the situation with the ring is a bit less fragile, more a case of Phantom can't remove it due to being permanently bonded and a Ghost Who Walks than "what if it slips off?"
I'm guessing the art is still coming under fire from other reviews, but the layouts, points of view and action sequences are all very serviceable. Faces and the detail of proportions are questionable in places but by this point it feels like a style rather than shortcomings, and I'm not sure how much of it is due to the thick inking, which is also a consistent style.
Part 6
Chakara and the Seven Nations seem sincere enough to be upsetting Kroton with their unwillingness to turn over the Defenders, although we get some backstory about Lothar abdicating his throne to go adventuring with Mandrake. At the border, Kro-Tan and Castra's troops mass. Elsewhere, Garax reports a civil war on Mongo and there's a rebel cell of prisoners in Kro-Tan's base, but Kro-Tan has spies in the Seven Nations' throne-room and discovers that Chakara has been playing for time, working on geothermal energy project that Lothar initiated as an alternative to Barin Atomics' compromised tech. Castra zaps Flash in the neck and prepares to leave, at exactly the same time the rebels at Ice Station Earth make their move.
Meanwhile, Mandrake is handing out dolls of himself to children in a Seven Nations hospital (the Defenders are there whilst their own are patched up and recuperate) and reaching a sort of reconciliation with K'Shin. A ghostly previous Phantom who Jedda recognises as her grandfather briefly appears, apparently accepting her.
The coup fails, and ice warriors and ships converge on the Seven Nations.
Flash presumably isn't dead. The scenes with Chakara have a nice callback to Lothar's origins in Mandrake comic strips with his fez making an appearance. It's also very welcome that there are character interactions that aren't intended as Chekhov's guns and involve characters being wary, unsure or somewhat antagonistic but respectful of each other. Mandrake is still suave and leaving K'Shin to either come to his own conclusions or break Kro-Tan's programming in his own time. If I had a criticism it's that Jedda unmasked looks nothing like earlier portrayals (although she's back to brown hair). The appearance of the 26th Phantom is possibly a hint that "our" Phantom may be a goner.
But the cover of part 6 is a fake out and Flash doesn't duel Ming. However, something seems to gone wrong with solicitations... part 6 was listed everywhere with the very spoiler-y description of "A battle over bits and bytes! Kshin betrays the team to unleash Kro-Tan’s deadly serpent, Mongor. Meanwhile, Dynak-X faces off against Octon, only to discover Kro-Tan’s shocking secret: her body is still alive in stasis!" which presumably is for part 7 and if so a similar thing seems to have happened with part 7 and the solicitation text for part 8.
Hopefully this series doesn't try to cram Ming into the two remaining issues. I'd certainly accept a cliffhanger ending if there's another miniseries in the works, based on the strength of this one, but there's insufficient space here.
Part 7
Solicited as "With Seven Nations on the brink of surrender to the ruthless Kro-Tan, Lothar and his ex-wife race to unite the fractured leaders, while Flash faces an impossible choice: save the world or the woman he loves." which presumably is for part 8, but isn't too spoiler-y.
Notably this part has an alternate cover that mocks up a figure of Jedda Walker, subtitled as the 28th Phantom. These alternate covers mix the card style of the Galoob figures with representations of the NECA ones, and I'd love to see this as an actual figure. (Since there seems to be insufficient market for the younger DotE members, I couldn't resist making at least an updated Jedda: the purple jumpsuit variant Diamond Select Black Widow with a McFarlane Batwoman Beyond Unmasked head plus some handguns from a Marvel Legends The Hood, paint to cover up the cleavage a bit, and a Mojo panther companion.) Djordje Djokovic designed and sculpted most of the NECA figures, which is why his alt cover designs for Jedda and next month's Kro-Tan fit so well: https://www.instagram.com/djordjedjokovicart/
Flash has been poisoned, but wakes from a coma with a start to have Dynak X tell him that she's been sifting through his mind (how?) and discovered that Kro-Tan supposedly killed Ming rather than him. Meanwhile, the other Defenders are dealing with an assault of ice robots when he joins them. Separately, the kids are also fighting off ice robots, when the previous Phantom appears to Jedda, who's able to use a version of the Ten Tigers mantra, implying that she's taken up the mantle. Everyone makes it back to a village. Chakara reveals a secret weapon, which is a literal fire wall to hold the ice robots at bay.
It appears that Kro-Tan has implanted something into Zuffy, allowing the bad guys to use him as a spy camera. Also a red gem that was gifted to the kingdom hatches into a Mongor-like serpent that rapidly grows to a titanic size. Is this the previous Mongor, or just a species? Most of the Defenders stay to fight it whilst Flash flies off to Ice Station Earth in his old ship with Rick, K'Shin and Zuffy aboard.
I have to say I appreciate that Ming hasn't been directly shoehorned into this plot and that we got the appearance by Mongor (a favourite toy as a kid) plus Jedda as the Phantom, although hopefully it's either temporary or some update of the 'rules' that allows more than one to be active.
Not sure whats been going on with the solicitations but it could be intentional to keep readers somewhat in the dark, although I'll be very surprised if Dale Arden isn't a main plot point in the final instalment. And with only an issue of pages to play with, it seems likely that the series might end on a cliffhanger setting up another story.
Part 8
As mentioned previously, a Kro-Tan action figure mock-up gets the alternate cover the issue, and the issue opens with one of his missiles blowing Flash's rocket ship out of the sky. They make it to the ground on jetbikes, called here sky skiers, where Kshin is able to locate a door to Ice Station Earth. Dynak reveals to Flash and the others that Zuffy has been used as an unknowing spy, as Kro-Tan attempts to gas them whilst Kshin uses magic to repel it.
Elsewhere, the other Defenders are fighting ice robots and the Mongor but being driven back. Mandrake has a plan that involves the dolls of himself he was handing out to children in previous issues, animating them to fight ice robots and snare the serpent beast. Interestingly his explanation of this includes "bound to the purest hearts I could find". My head-canon for the rest of the issue is therefore that for each one of the simulacrums destroyed the kid it's linked to dies.
Zuffy flings himself in front of a blast from Kro-Tan meant to kill Flash. Suddenly, an ice-soldier-converted-captive (apparently galvanised by Flash's inspirational speech) turns traitor and snaps Kro-Tan's neck, the upping of the stakes suggesting Zuffy has also bought the farm. Dynak pops up with more explanatory exposition, stating that Barin Atomics energy sources are pre-programmed to self-destruct and everything needs to be shut down to avert catastrophe.
The last three pages are rushed and it wasn't clear on first read what had happened, but I think boils down to: Dynak presumably tells Flash that her original form, Dale, is alive. Flash uses the global connection to the energy reactors to deactivate rather than explode them (potentially killing a hell of a lot of people off-panel, although I assume this will be hand-waved if ever mentioned again). This gets recapped in two panels in which we also learn Kshin and Zuffy have survived with minor injuries (visually shorthanded with a crutch and a sling respectively) and that Kshin has identified two signals for Dynak/Dale, the one on Earth presumably being Dynak having escaled and the one on Mongo presumably Dale. The rest of the last page sets up a sequel with them heading to Mongo to find the human Dale.
Writing whilst it's fresh in mind I'm not sure how well that worked. The Mandrake deus ex machina is in keeping with his power levels being incredible in this series, which is both a welcome update on illusions / energy blasts and hinting at more dark, consequence-filled pragmatism. The character reminds me of Zatanna in DC comics or the Doctor in The Authority, and those aren't unwelcome comparisons as each has some narratively satisfying use of reality-warping powers. The two-page splash in the story is very cinematic in a Bryan Hitch way, and the Mandrake-bots (?) hovering in the air over the scene or coming out of portals that look like Bleed 'doors' also feel like deliberate Authority references. Although the art has been serviceable throughout the miniseries, a bit more of this would have been welcome.
The fake outs (Zuffy seems to be the toughest character on the team), glib handing over to the Seven Nations to deal with the chaos of the international power shutdown, and the segue into a new mission from a background plot combine to give the impression that this had an alternate ending if sales hadn't been enough to justify a sequel. Kind of like the Marvel US Transformers #4 in 1984 went with a cliffhanger last page of a bad guy taking out the good guys when it got renewed, rather than a neat and tidy "we won!" panel. Throwing a team exhausted by a near-miss win into another adventure with a bit of a pep talk is a common trope, one of my favourite lesser-known examples being the end of JLA: New Maps of Hell, and it suits the episodic style of the animated DotE.
Still, that last page with its clunky top panels leaves me feeling that this needed a couple more pages, if not another issue. It's also a bit in-your-face that at the end of the comic four pages are given to a sedate preview for #1 of a Phantom title.
So in terms of where things are left, Phantom is a literal "ghost who walks" bound to his skull ring and Jedda's simultaneously active and levelled up as a Phantom. Their brother/uncle is presumed dead. Kro-Tan is dead. The plot is sticking with the story that Kro-Tan killed Ming. Dynak and Dale are simultaneously active. Princess Castra and Octon have escaped. Everything feels remarkably similar to the series status quo, and my presumption is still that Ming is out there somewhere.
Capsule summary: if you enjoyed the 80s cartoon this has been an enjoyable story that targets an older audience without losing its original tone.
As a non-sequitur, there was a 2016 Kate Bishop / Hawkeye Marvel Legends figure in an Avengers 3-pack that at least one person has used as the base for a Jedda Phantom:
https://marveltoynews.com/marvel-legends-kate-bishop-vision-falcon-captain-america/
https://www.figurerealm.com/customfigure?action=view&id=93345
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