THE 100 GREATEST CROSSOVERS OF ALL TIME #51

It's a slam dunk that Jack Kirby, co-creator of both Thor and the Hulk, should be the one to render the best (thus far) face-off between the two Marvel titans, covered in my previous post.

Nevertheless, the Hulk-Thor battle in DEFENDERS #10, scripted by Steve Englehart and pencilled by Sal Buscema, comes a close second. The scene represented on the cover, in which the two super-strong guys, after lots of pounding and throwing things, presents the argument that the two are fundamentally equals, in that they struggle against each other, arm against arm, for something like a solid hour.

This was the high point-- though not the only good moment-- of the seven-issue crossover  called "The Avengers-Defenders War." This took place in the AVENGERS (issues #115-118) and DEFENDERS (issues #8-10) titles, both at the time being written by Englehart. In later interviews Englehart would assert that other Marvel employees doubted that he and his artists could pull off a crossover that had to be timed so that each segment came out precisely on the heels of the last installment. Later, this sort of multi-issue crossover would become standard practice at both Marvel and DC, often criticized for weak storylines and a transparent attempt to boost sales in an artificial manner. But Englehart's story carries the same innocent thrill of the "heroes-meet-and-fight-cute" trope that Marvel perfected in its Silver Age heyday.

The plot, dealing with a conspiracy by villains Loki and Dormammu to reshape the Earth into one of Dormammu's realms, serves adequately to bring the two teams into a conflict in which each believes the other to be villains. The only downside of this generally enjoyable outing is that although Sal Buscema is perfectly fine in his DEFENDERS segments, penciller Bob Brown, given mediocre inks by Mike Esposito, gives the AVENGERS segments a sloppy and unfocused look. The one exception to this generalization is a chapter devoted to a battle between Captain America and the Sub-Mariner, but only because this section is crisply inked by an uncredited Frank McLaughlin.