Free Defenders: The Best Defense Chronicled By Al Ewing Digital

attempt to make a big overlapping story which to me somewhat falters as some of the chapters don't fit into the whole, . . and I did not dig the whole, I guess all Defenders stories are super trippy, This one was a little too confusing and messy, Not my fav For the creators involved here I was extremely let down, The individual heroes' titles seemed like they were barely connected and added little to the team book, The Hulk story was by far the best, The art was very good throughout by many artists, Overall, this story was filler work and seemed unimportant, This was just okay. The stories are all supposed to come together, and they do, but not in a exciting way,

The best parts were Hulk and Dr, Strange issues for sure. A darker tone and a interesting narrative for both of those, The rest of the stories telling a story that eventually leads Defenders to team up against but by the time we get there I hardly cared and it became so convoluted it became kind of a fucking dumb.


So yeah aout of, Immortal Hulk: One of my favorite stories of the bunch, It has a very eerie atmosphere that plays perfectly into the direction the new Hulk series is taking,

Dr. Strange: My second favorite story of this collection, It has a very Hulk: The End feel to it, The art was also really fun and trippy,

Namor: I am not a Namor fan at all, but this was an ok story, Namor travels to another underwater kingdom to form an alliance and, of course, chaos ensues,

Silver Surfer: I loooooove me some Silver Surfer, but this was my least favorite oneshot of the bunch, Surfer wasn't even in half of it and it felt too unfocused in relation to the main plot connecting all of the stories together,

Defenders: A pretty fun cosmic/supernatural adventure, The team members don't really interact a lot, but it was still a really fun ride, Public library copy.

Awful art hampered by drastically different writers make this collection very uneven, Sure, some of the cover art was great, but a few artists weren't goid enough to deserve being professionally published, My overall experience of the book will be forgettable, with a few notable good ideas mixed in with the old, Que tiro foi esse Que tiro foi esse Que quadrinho mais esquisito no termo horrível do termo! Começa com uma história até interessante do Imortal Hulk e vai degringolando de gringo mesmo, é da Marvel! conforme vão passando as histórias.
O interessante de um jeito ruim é que essas histórias, aparentemente, não têm conexão uma com as outras, Temos uma história do Namor, com uns belos desenhos do brasileiro Carlos Magno, mas que me fez dormir em cima duas vezes porque é sem pé nem cabeça, Uma história do Doutor Estranho com os belos desenhos de Greg Smallwood, que é bem surreal e de um jeito bom, mas sem pé nem cabeça também, Depois temos uma história do Surfista Prateado pelo Jason Latour, que eu eu acho uó como roteirista, apesar de não mandar bem no desenho, Pra finalizar como cereja podre do bolo temos uma história dos Defensores, agora todos reunidinhos todos todos se achando, combatendo um verme dimensional bizarrê tão bizarrê como essas histórias desse encadernado.
Cara que viagem lisérgica essa gente compartilhos together, hein Que plus a mais só que não, Até o meu texto ficou viajante, Efeitos colaterais desse encadernado Oloko, bicho! I really enjoyed this and loved how they used a series of one shots to tell a larger connected story, Some good parts. I like the different artists and story telling, Some parts were meh. Didnt hate it or love it, Not terrible not great to right in middle At first, this felt like very independent solo stories for each of the characters at least with the initial Hulk and Namor stories.
But as we progress through the story, we see that there are greater interconnections and a rather ambitious plot tying past and future events together,

The story feels a little ambitious for what it wanted to achieve within a rather limited set of issues, It is a story that literally involves a cosmiclevel threat at the "end of time" if we can call it that and rushes to bring the Defenders together to face it despite the solo adventure approach they employed in the beginning parts of the series.


I liked it but it wasn't quite great either, It's solid, but I also wish that they had more time to build things up more or something, I'm surprised this volume has gotten such mediocre ratings, because it's really quite a clever story, Four entirely disconnected stories about the Hulk, the SubMariner, Doctor Strange, and the Silver Surfer eventually come together to create a larger narrative, Mysteries in one issue who killed Dr, Strange are revealed in another, and everything sets up the final problem that the classic nonteam must defeat,

Some issues are better written than others, but overall this is an awesome narrative with a classic Defenders feel and even a classic Defenders foe.


This just didnt gel well with the other stories, Kinda dissapointed. Did not realize that this book collectscomics which include a solo oneshot for each hero, And one issue that features all four heroes, more or less, in one grand finale issue, Honestly, it's a hot mess, This one star overly awarded, A better rating would be/of a single star, Avoid this book. Doctor Strange is dead, Hulk, Namor and Silver Surfer are putzing about, and someone wearing a sheet is stabbing people, The Best Defense is the worst Defenders book Ive read yet!

The “story” is a disjointed mess of uninteresting garbage, The only connecting thread between them is that someone in a bedsheet is stabbing people Ive already forgotten who and why! And it all leads up to fighting a giant space squid! What a load of crap.


None of the specials stood out as worth reading, The Doctor Strange and Silver Surfer issues were the definition of workmanlike, The Chip Zdarskyscripted Namor issue in particular was painful to read how this dude ever got an Eisner is beyond me, He seems like a fun dude to hang out with in real life so I imagine all the industry people who vote in the Eisners just like him as a person hes a horrible writer.
There was no point to his Namor issue besides getting the character into space for the idiotic finale,

Absolutely pants from start to finish, Namor succinctly sums it up at the end when he sarcastically says “Another exciting nonteamup for The Defenders, Lets all have shawarma sometime” damn skippy, ya grumpy sea Vulcan! Some of these stories work OK on their own but together this is a disjointed mess, The only thing that ties together themain stories are one page panels of a person with a sheet over his head stabbing aliens to death, That's never even explained! The Silver Surfer story was particularly bad, Jason Latour shouldn't go anywhere near the Marvel cosmic characters, The art is terrible. I couldn't even follow half the pages, Then in the Defenders story, the Defenders are trying to stop a space train from wiping out the Earth so some leopard men and a space squid can steal

all the human souls and sell them back to Mephisto on the cheap.
This story makes zero sense, I expected more from the likes of Al Ewing and Gerry Duggan, So poor.
Why write a Defenders story when none of them get to properly team up with each other
Peter David seems to have started a trend with his God awful Wild One special years ago and like Captain Britain dies everytime he gets a new book, so too must one of the Defenders be a ghost or some other altered state.

JUST GIVE US HULK, NAMOR, DR STRANGE AND THE SILVER SURFER AND WATCH THEM BITCH AND KICK ASS!
I could eat a can of alphabetti spaghetti and pass a better story than Best Defence.
There are initially four solo stories of varying quality featuring the title team's characters Hulk, SubMariner, Doctor Strange, and Silver Surfer before they actually work together in the final chapter.
They were originally a mystic 'supergroup' of sorts for Marvel back in the's and early's, While the Hulk opener was good featuring some throwback art panels from the's and Silver Surfer's section say that three times fast! briefly featured him in a disguise reminiscent of Clint Eastwood's gunslinger character in the spaghettiwestern trilogy, the volume otherwise seemed fairly mediocre.
.stars. Read this in singles before I was on goodreads, The Immortal Hulk and Dr, Strange issues were the best, really good, The Namor issue was solid and the Silver Surfer issue was my least favorite, The actual team up book was Ok, What did I just read I agree with others' reviewers here, it's probably one of the worst Defenders story that I have read, I'm a fan of Doctor Strange, and I think only his issue is worth the read, everything else was a mess, Oh talking about mess the trade paperback screwed the reading order, That should be: Doctor Strange, Hulk, Namor, Silver Surfer, and Defenders, The TPB has the Doctor Strange story listed has the third, and it clearly wasn't intended as a flashback, . . Anyway skip it!!! A story that ranges across time and space to avert an apocalypse I say sure! If that's your thing, you'll really enjoy this book,

It also builds perfectly on the long histories and established personalities of the four main characters,

I found the art and colors, especially when Namor is visiting the Vodani, striking and unique,

A!.StarsThe Defenders is one of my favorite teams they're weird and shouldn't exist, As evidenced by some runs such as Fraction's The Defenders, The Last Defenders, The Offenders, and lastly "The Last Defense",

They're weird and don't quite make sense/gel together, And that feels true of this seriesa few of the issues had standout art, but most of the stories fell relatively flat,

Al Ewing is one of my favorite writers, particularly for his Ultimatesrun, so I'm hoping his Marvel Comicswill have some of the similar strengths, I was driven to this series by the big names that compose the writing team deployed here by Marvel: Al Ewing, Chip Zdarsky, Gerry Duggan plus the forgettable Jason Latour.
The basis idea of the series is pretty compelling too: four heroes, four pubblications, four separate andentures that tangle up only in the conclusive issue, Grant Morrison made something similar with the Seven Soldiers, with much enjoyable results, Indeed The Best Defense turns out to be quite tedious, verbose and confuse, The yarn is full of bizzarre and thrilling hints but I got the impression that it is developed in a hasty and approximative way that leaves a bad taste in the mouth and a lot of regrets.
Al Ewing is Marvel's secret weapon, and even he can't make this any more than "fine", This was unexpectedly good, given that it had a lot of writers and artists involved, and I was skeptical on how too many cooks can maintain a unified story, However, it worked so well, The standout chapter was easily the Namor chapter beautifully illustrated by Carlo Magno, It's a throwback style along the lush lines of Nestor Redondo, They probably should have let Ewing write all of this, His parts are really good, and Chip does good work with what he's given, but the overall plot gets lost a bit and I think Ewing outclevered himself a bit, too.
But he has some GREAT character moments, like Surfer having to accept the sacrifice of a living being to recharge his power, echoing his creator, And of course, I loves me anything with Immortal Hulk, It's meant to be an homage to the original version of the Defenders, Instead, it's four individual stories that are very loosely connected, possibly in retrospect, and one combined story that's meant to be a really big deal but instead just feels kind of generic.
The Hulk story is good, which is not surprising considering that it's connected to the really great Immortal Hulk series, The Doctor Strange story is also pretty good, and has a few pages of fantastic, Ditko inspired psychedelic stuff, The Namor and Silver Surfer stories are passable, I guess, Not really something I'd recommend to most people, unless you want to get every bit of Immortal Hulk possible, COLLECTS DEFENDERS: THE BEST DEFENSE, DOCTOR STRANGE: THE BEST DEFENSE, HULK: THE BEST DEFENSE, NAMOR: THE BEST DEFENSE, SILVER SURFER: THE BEST DEFENSE

There was some good, and some notsogood in this collection.
The Doctor Strange issue was pretty solid, but I ended up wanting to skim most of the Namor issue, The Hulk and the Silver Surfer issue had some good parts, and then the Defenders issue kind of ties everything together, I'm mildly intrigued by the ending, and wondering if we will see the return of a version of a character created for this story,

Final Rating.An unsolvable murder. An aquatic doorway to nothingness, A wanderer at the end of time, And a cosmic train of planetary proportions, Four seeminglyunrelated events that will require the powers and insights of the members of the greatest NonTeam of them all, the original DEFENDERS, to connect the dots and challenge the strange power behind these disconnected happeningsbefore all of reality pays the price! Doctor Strange! The Immortal Hulk, Namor the SubMariner! The Silver Surfer! Don't call them a teamall them the DEENDERS! COLLECTING: DEFENDERS, DOCTOR STRANGE: DEFENDERS, HULK: DEFENDERS, NAMOR: DEFENDERS, SILVER SURFER: DEFENDERS.