“I hate when uninvited guests drop by.”
Defenders Of The Earth #2
Marvel/Star Comics (March, 1987)
“Creation” WRITER: Michael Higgins PENCILER: Alex Saviuk INKER: Fred Fredericks COLORIST: Nel Yomtov LETTERER: Ken Lopez EDITOR: Howard Mackie
Adapting the second episode, “The Creation Of Monitor“. Using Dale’s life essence, Rick creates the Defenders’ new supercomputer, Dynak-X, while Flash calls his old friends the Cryl for help to build their new headquarters, Monitor. However, Ming learns of the plan and sends his forces to stop them. One of them spots Zuffy with Kshin (I spelled his name wrong in the last review), who runs off when Mandrake gets mad at him. Ming sends his ice robots after them, but they find an entrance to the mountain near Mandrake’s mansion that shows it’s actually a dormant volcano, which melts the ice robots. The heroes decide it would be a good place to hide their new base, which will be their home since the mansion was blasted up during the battle. They manage to trick Ming into thinking his forces succeeded in destroying them, leaving them time to complete their base as Ming focuses on finishing his own. Meanwhile they find an area of the volcano that could be turned into a jungle-like habitat, which makes the homesick Jedda happy.
What they got right: While not a proper adaptation of the episode, it actually improves on a few things. Ming comes off as less of an idiot for being tricked so easily. The interaction between Mandrake and Kshin works better. And it’s not the Cryl leader that slowly walks everyone to the potential position for a new Skull Cave, but Dynak showing the area–someone who might be more interested in showing off a good spot for one of her masters. We also see LJ is the one who comes up with the name for the Defenders’ new base.
What they got wrong: I have no issues with the adaptation but I realized something I missed with all the continuity errors. Why did Dale have to perish? They actually made her a kick-butt warrior (which would make some sense with all the years the Gordons and Zarkov–what happened to him by the way?–fought Ming) and then stuff her life essence into a computer. She may as well just be dead at this point.
Recommendation: It’s rare to see an adaptation that is better than the episode but this one qualifies. Give it a look.
BW Media Spotlight 
Marvel’s Star Comics used to put out some decent comics. Thundercats, Heathcliff, and Groo the Wanderer were among my favorites from Star. Why, I even remember having an issue of Madballs from Star! At the time in the 80s, I guess I wasn’t aware that Star also put out Defenders of the Earth. The cartoon I slightly remember though. Now I also know that Star had He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series, however, I never had gotten any issues of that series at the time even though I was a fan of the cartoon. Think I’ll now look up some Defenders of the Earth episodes on Youtube!
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They’re legal on Hulu. All I found on YouTube were intros anyway.
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