Review by Karl Verhoven
While more casual readers think of the Defenders being a team featuring Doctor Strange, the Hulk, Namor and the Silver Surfer, the original intention was of successive groupings featuring different heroes united under the name responding to a specific desperate need. That’s the basis of Al Ewing’s selection of teammates for Doctor Strange, selected by tarot card, while the desperate need is supplied by a dangerous presence journeying back via magical means to the universe that existed before our own. The only being known to have survived the death of that universe is Galactus, but the Galactus presented here is as never seen before.
There Are No Rules begins with an energy rush, and the constant changes of location and the massive threats one following another identify this as Ewing’s Jack Kirby homage. Ewing even has the conceptual capability to throw in devices echoing Kirby and sounding the way he’d describe them: “The mother cube!! Charged with all Omnimax lacks – The emotions of everyone on Taa!!” However, on other projects pages by Javier Rodríguez have been the very opposite of Kirby’s artistic power. His is a very considered style, almost delicate at times, and although ramping up the dynamism and he sometimes seems ill at ease with energetic approach. When it comes to design, though, and especially colour, his approach is a swirling miasma that assaults the senses.
Over the titles he’s written for Marvel, Ewing has referred to the present day Marvel universe being the seventh, and the Defenders travel back through several of the earlier iterations, one per chapter, the narration switching to a new person with each. As it should be with the Defenders, an odd selection of characters is supplied. The Masked Raider and Red Harpy are both Ewing’s creations from other places, the Silver Surfer is a natural choice when cosmic power is involved, and while Cloud may take their name from a 1980s Defender, they couldn’t be more different. The final team member is picked up along the way, a strange Ditkoesque intrusion into a Kirbyverse. That’s because Kirby’s only the inspiration at the start as Ewing moves through other influences as the Defenders work their way ever further back in time, and the need for an extremely adaptable artist becomes very apparent. Rodríguez is astonishing at times.
As Doctor Strange keeps stressing, all magic has a price, and here it’s much mystical mutterings and technobabble to be accepted as part of a thrilling homage, and there’s a fair chance some readers will guess one of the mysteries before the revelation. Suck it up! Imagination on a grand scale exists within these pages (or digital equivalent) and anyone who loves a trippy adventure with food for thought should seek out There Are No Rules. Ewing and Rodríguez follow up with Beyond.
