Defenders: There Are No Rules

“Defenders – There Are No Rules” collects the (2021) five-issue mini series of that name, plus several pages from Marvel Comics #1000 & 1001, where this story germinated.So, the Masked Raider, one of the original Marvel characters from he 1940s, drops in to the Sanctum for tea and a chat about the villain he is pursuing, who is trying to follow in the footsteps of Sise-Neg (from an old Doctor Strange story) in order to usurp Mr Neg’s power when he does his apotheosis.The good Doctor, realising the importance of stopping this, invokes a team of Defenders and they drop back in time in pursuit of the villain.This takes them back though the previous universes/creations that existed before ours, starting with the immediately-previous one, where they meet the baby Galactus, whose mother joins the team.If you are old enough, you will quickly realise that she is a ‘final phase’ Kirby character, both in look and in speech.I have, in my reviews of Mr Ewing’s recent work, noted that he has found the cupboard where Marvel hid (and then lost the key to) the bottles containing the Kirby and Ditko magic, which he has been unleashing in his stories.Well, here Mr Ewing holds the bottles up for us to look into, as he takes us where Kirby and Ditko were never given the chance to go, though to be honest, the printing processes of their day probably couldn’t have coped.Anyway, here we have a voyage through the origins of the Marvel universes, both physical and metaphysical.And if you are old enough to remember Sise-Neg, then you’ll also understand the final panel, and you might even notice that the ‘fade-out’ on the preceding pages manages to fit in a tribute or two to the pencils of the great artists of the good Doctor’s heyday.I can’t say if the story is any good or not, as I’m not actually sure what the writer was up to, if anything, but it was certainly a memorable story.