By Joshua H. Stulman

Marvel’s smash hit The Defenders debuted on Netflix after years of teasing. The shows sees the team up of Marvel’s “Urban Knights” characters that include Iron Fist, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, lead by Daredevil. This is the series that fans have been waiting for since Daredevil season 1 in 2015. 

If you haven’t seen any of the previous Netflix Marvel series, don’t worry. Everything you need to know is mentioned in the dialogue in the beginning of the series. This gives you a quick update on each character’s past adventures and powers. (Of course if you want the full story just go back and watch the series)

The 8 episode season shows the heroes uniting to take on the evil ninja clan known as The Hand. Many of the subplots and villains of the previous Marvel series are saved for other seasons leaving a tightly focused plot that is easy for new viewers to follow. 

One thing I like is that Marvel’s creative team has kept all the series in real time, so when Luke Cage finishes his prison sentence it really has been 8 months both in real time since the premiere of his Netflix season and in the story time. This means Daredevil has been around for 2 years or so as well.

The story telling is really great too. Each episode is serialized with a main story with supplemental  stories that make me feel like I am reading a comic book. Each character’s personal story and motivations are addressed in a manner that feels natural to the story. This is quite difficult to do but is pulled off nicely by the writers. I’m not really as surprised considering Jeph Loeb is creative director, who is also an incredible comic writer in his own right.

The overall series has a good deal of dialogue punctuated by action sequences. This allows for a lot of revelation as to what The Hand is and how they came to New York. It also allows for some interesting dialogue between the heroes as they try to reconcile their differences. Unfortunately this also creates a lot of slow build scenes, which pays off towards the end of the series and final episode.

As a die hard comic fan frustrations with Marvels creative direction still linger. Costuming is a major issue for many older fans. The designers have tried to address this a bit more in this series. Luke cage wears a bright yellow shirt for a couple episodes. Electra has a costume very similar to her iconic version although this one gives her pants instead of her sexy one piece, and of course no Iron Fist costume yet-although he is dressed in his green and gold colors with open shirt. Marvel Netflix’s direction has always been to create gritty and more realistic presentations of these heroes, but when you are dealing with people that are bullet proof with magical fire hands and radar hearing, I think reality is suspended enough that you can give them their costumes and the audience will only appreciate it more so. 

As far as the stories go, to appreciate the Marvel Netflix direction. You really have to view these series like a re-imagining  based on the Marvel heroes. While Marvel Netflix is purposely not trying to adapt the comic storylines. Instead these serve as inspiration for new iterations of the character’s adventures. The goal of which is to expand the audience across a larger demographic- and it’s working!

More and more I hear feedback from fans at my comic stand that are excited by the series. These are moms, teens and even older fans. Comics have a long history of following pop culture movies and TV shows, perhaps Netflix has found the formula to finally make them the standard in the entertainment industry.

Joshua H. Stulman

Owner, BrooklynComicShop.com