Secret Defenders #20: The Unlikeable Dr. Druid

Secret Defenders #20
“Death and the Art of Living”
Writers: Tom Brevoort and Mike Kanterovich
Breakdowns: Bill Wylie
Finishes: Tony Dzuniga
Letterer: John Costanza
Colorist: John Kalisz
Cover: Penciled by Mark S. Pacella, inked by Mark McKenna
Editor: Craig Anderson
Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco
Released: Aug. 9, 1994

Having a regular supporting cast is great – until they have their own stuff to do.

Cadaver declares he's headed back to Seattle because his dad and friends are probably worried about him. He seems to have forgotten his friends saw him die and he's come back as a 6-foot-6 zombie who, as Doctor Druid declared in issue 18, has the memories and mannerisms of Cody Fleisher but isn't really him.

Jillian, aka Shadowoman, starts to point this out, but good ol' Doc Druid says, hey, let the boy go where he wants – no doubt confident the powerful creature will come back to him when he finds he can't go home again. Jillian starts demanding answers about her own condition, but Druid distracts her with a kiss, then mystically returns her to that statue she emerged from in issue 18. He thinks she's too fragile at this point to know the truth; I think Druid just likes to have folks under his power.

He's still ticked about Doctor Strange cursing him with visions of mystical danger, despite it being the first indication in a while that another superhero finds Druid useful. But then he's struck by one of those premonitions and heads to San Francisco solo, since Cadaver's gone home and he can't yet return Shadowoman to corporeal form for magic reasons.

As he goes, the eyes of Jillian's statue flick back and forth suspiciously before a voice – possibly belonging to the shadowy figure we glimpsed in #18? – welcomes her back.

So far in Druid's tenure reluctantly leading the Secret Defenders, we've seen him hire allies (Deadpool and Luke Cage) and trick heroes (Giant-Man, Archangel and Iceman) into helping him. This time, he just flat out hypnotizes Spider-Woman, Julia Carpenter edition, into not only assisting him in looking for the threat, but letting a hypnotized stranger drive her daughter home as well. I'm starting to understand why the other Avengers didn't trust this guy.

Meanwhile, Cadaver finds one of his pals outside their high school, but the guy shockingly doesn't recognize his much larger, much deader classmate. So, he figures, hey, I'll go see my dad.

This goes about as well as you'd expect, assuming you expected it to lead to a cardiac event. The Body Formerly Known as Cody calls an ambulance, then makes like David Banner leaving town at the end of an episode of “The Incredible Hulk.”

Back in San Francisco, before Spider-Woman can even tell Druid this isn't the first time she's been drafted onto a makeshift team to stop an unspecified mystical threat, they cross paths with one of the most-suggested Secret Defenders: San Francisco's own lethal protector, Venom. But Druid uses magic to assure him they're just regular folks, up to normal, boring stuff. When Spider-Woman suggests they could have used Venom's help searching the underground tunnels to which Doc's Druid Sense is leading them, he brushes her off, saying it would have been hard to control both the human and symbiote.

Seriously, this guy sucks at team-ups.

But he's better at finding multi-armed, multi-headed monsters. The creature attacks and Druid takes the strategy he did in the museum fight in issue 16, going invisible and letting his allies, or ally in this case, fight while he tries to find a solution. Spider-Woman is outmatched, so Druid grudgingly comes to her aid – only to be laid out by the beast himself.

But help is on the way in the form of USAgent,* summoned by Spider-Woman's daughter to figure out what happened to his West Coast Avengers teammate. So maybe next issue we'll get to see two of the least-liked Avengers team up. Wonder if Namor's available?

Druid and Spider-Woman wake up in what appears to be a pile of bodies or body parts, where they meet the villain of the piece – a dude named Slaymaker, who's dressed like a face card in a Bicycle deck. His goal is to mold all of this raw biological material into a twisted work of art he calls the Panentropic Engine but which kind of reminds me of the gross creatures from “Stranger Things” season three.

It feels like some details have shifted behind the scenes a little bit, but the storyline and momentum that started in issue 15 are continuing. Although Strange was ostensibly in charge up to issue 11, most of those stories were pretty self-contained. Even if you count the Unofficial Geatar Saga, this is the longest consistent arc in the series.

Druid's actions have gone from kind of manipulative and selfish to borderline villainous as he uses Cadaver and Shadowoman for his own ends and pretty much kidnaps an Avenger, all because he's too proud or unpopular to just ask for a team-up. It seems like the Sorcerer Sufficient is headed for a showdown with some members of the heroic community for his arrogant machinations. At this point, the only thing keeping him on the hero side of the ledger is his opposition to legitimate villains, even as he throws ethics and empathy to the side in his Secret Defending. It will be interesting to see if and when Cadaver and Shadowoman turn on him, since they don't seem to have any allies or support beyond Druid.

Well, except whoever or whatever is lurking in that statue.

I swear I've seen a physical copy of this issue before, but I couldn't find it in my collection, so I'll be finishing the series on Marvel Unlimited. That means no letters pages, so I'll have to come up with my own Suggested Secret Defenders of the Week.

For this one, I'll try to make up for one of Druid's casual dispatching of Rachel Carpenter and come up with a team of Marvel heroes you actually would trust to care for your child. First up is Captain America, because, hey, he's Captain America. Then the Invisible Woman, a literal supermom whose defensive powers are second only to her maternal instincts. Next: Wolverine. It may seem unlikely, but some of my favorite stories involve Logan protecting younger characters from the evils of the world. To smooth out his rough edges, round out the team with Squirrel Girl, who served as a nanny to Luke Cage and Jessica Jones' daughter and is an optimistic, positive role model.

* - “Form of USAgent,” said no Wonder Twin, ever.