What are the Defenders defending?

Netflix is supposed to be making a series based on the Marvel superhero team the Defenders. I have no idea who is excited by this because the team is obscure to the general public. I also have no idea who will be on the team on the TV show but here is who the Defenders were in the comics.

The initial Defenders series ran during the Bronze Age, from the early ‘70s to the mid-‘80s. The Avengers are a club, the X-Men are students and the Fantastic Four are a family but the Defenders were different: They were famous for being a “non-team” of heroes who met irregularly and didn’t always get along. They didn’t work out in the Danger Room or meet in the Baxter Building or have Jarvis bring them tea in Avengers Mansion. They hung out off and on at Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum and went their separate ways after the villain was defeated. Writers like Steve Gerber, Steve Englehart and JM DeMatteis wrote some really offbeat stories of the team fighting mystical threats and such. Once they had a subplot of elves walking around shooting people for no apparent reason, a story that wasn’t explained for years. Once they fought Satan. This was before Marvel backed off and called him just another demon — he was flat-out Satan in the original story.

The “big four” of the Defenders were Doctor Strange, the Hulk, Namor the Sub-Mariner and the Silver Surfer. Objectively, this is the most powerful team in Marvel. Doctor Strange is Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme and thus the planet’s most powerful mystic, Namor rules Atlantis, the Silver Surfer’s cosmic level powers come from Galactus himself and of course, HULK SMASH. I don’t think Namor or the Silver Surfer will join the TV Defenders since they are Fantastic Four characters but Doctor Strange and the Hulk are fair game.

The “little three” of the team were Valkyrie (Asgardian goddess), Nighthawk (basically a Batman knockoff) and Hellcat (Patsy Walker, a character who dates back to Marvel’s ‘40s romance comics, who has enhanced athletic abilities). They’re not as powerful as the other four but were more stable team members. By 1983, the big four left after the revelation that if they stayed together, they would inadvertently bring about the destruction of the world. Joining the team in their place were B- and C-listers like the demonic looking Gargoyle, the arrogant telepath Moondragon, Son of Satan (they fought his dad), the mysterious Cloud, Andromeda and former X-Men Iceman, Angel and the Beast.

Marvel canceled the Defenders comic in the ‘80s. They revived the title periodically, most notably in 2001, with the angle that the big four were cursed to come together whenever the Earth was in danger but they all hated each other and a spell made them crankier and more arrogant until they ended up taking over the Earth for its own good and got overthrown. People hated that run but I really enjoyed it.

I have no idea what Netflix will do with the Defenders series. I hope the show shies away from the popular kids like the Avengers and looks at some of the weirder corners of the Marvel Universe.

I guess I never did answer what the Defenders defend. Huh.