Issue(s): Defenders #35
Cover Date: May 76
Title: "Bring back my body to me, to me...!"
Credits:
Steve Gerber - Writer
Sal Buscema - Penciler
Klaus Janson - Inker

Review/plot:
Dr. Strange requests that Dr. Tania Belinsky be brought to the US from the Soviet Union. She is a brilliant brain surgeon, and he wants her to put Kyle Richmond's head back in his body.

Belinsky is also secretly a new Red Guardian.

Meanwhile, the Hulk gets impatient because no one seems concerned about finding Bambi..

...so he stomps off in a fit.

Nebulon angrily drops Chondu/Bambi off at the Headmen's new Head-Quarters...

...and they put Chondu's brain in a strange new body. He's got a unicorn horn, chicken legs, a forked tongue, and six tentacles instead of arms.

Valkyrie and Jack go after the Hulk, and they break up a fight between him and the police, but the Hulk feels like the Valkyrie was attacking him more than the police, so he angrily jumps off again. Valkyrie and Jack continue to get closer. She's even about to rest her head on his shoulder when crazy looking Chondu goes flying by.

Chondu injures Aragorn, and Valkyrie brutally attacks Chondu, nearly killing him. When the police arrive, she is arrested.

Quality Rating: B

Historical Significance Rating: 3 - first Red Guardian II

Chronological Placement Considerations: The Hulk appears in Omega the Unknown #2 after he leaves the Valkyrie.

References:

• The Headmen plot has been running since Defenders #31
  
• The Headmen's first Head-Quarters was destroyed in Defenders #33.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

Bambi the deer disappears from the book after Chondu's mind is removed.

The title refers to a line in the old English song "My Bonny".

Chondu's transformation here is somewhat similar to the transformation Masque subjected Callisto too.

And Ruby Thursday's MO with organic computers makes me wonder if Donald Pierce ever worked with her at some point!?

No, because the entire Marvel Universe doesn't revolve around Claremont's Uncanny X-Men.

@AF: Here you go judging again. I made the comment on the basis that Claremont might have taken the idea from Gerber. Now stop trolling me.

There is no conceivable way whatsoever that a story that has nothing to do with Claremont and predates Claremont and Claremont made zero reference to ever is linked to Claremont.

You are genuinely clutching at clutched straws. This literally has nothing at all to do with Claremont and never will. Other writers write stories, y'know? They don't just write stuff to surround the almighty Claremont's work.

@AF: The whole reason it predates Claremont's work is why I suggested he was potentially influenced by it. You're welcome to your opinion (feeling sorry for the keys on your keyboard as the anger's dripping off the comment thread), but it's not as if there wasn't a precedent for Claremont taking plot ideas from Gerber and tweaking them for his own characters (case in point Daredevil #105 with Moondragon's backstory of her parents being killed by a "random" space-villain encounter which goes on to become the template Claremont lifts for Cyclops' backstory).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia

@Dr. Phil: Attempting to pathologise using wikipedia over the DSM-5. IRMC!

@Nathan Adler: That one, the bit about Moondragon, is more Starlin than Gerber.

And still has nothing to do with Claremont at all.

I miss the Red Guardian/Starlight. But thankfully, she and the Presence show up from time to time. The Presence is probably my favorite Defenders villain, with the second being the Lunatik.

I do like Talia. I think Conway getting rid of her was a fumble but even then she didn't quite stay away from the book. Just never really came back full-time. And hasn't really had a book/place to call her own since. And now she's mostly part and parcel with Presence.

@AF: So long and thanks for all the fish!

I feel like the time for Tania was there, she was in some great Defenders stories, and she and the Presence are remembered for the most respected Quasar storyline. To catch a similar essence to what a new character would mean in contemporary times, I feel like a character reminiscent of the Red Guardian, of Persian origin, would be the way to go, story-wise. I have carried a story for a Sheer-Zan in my head for year, but I honestly don't quite no enough yet to take that compelling spark that would be the torch from Gerber on that concept. I see why Kraft created the Presence and the nuclear god storylines and wonder where else he envisioned them going after #65- or if he chose that story knowing his time on the book was drawing closed and felt the need not to simply leave the plotline hanging for Ed Hannigan.

In my head since 2009 with some drawings and supporting roles in other plots and scripts, I meant.
And I honestly have had 'no' enough or I would by now know what goes into that compelling spark.
I really like a female super hero operating as an outlaw avoiding the law as well as protecting innocents from harm.

She had a moderately prominent role in the Darkstar and the Winter Guard series. I think that was her last appearance.

Yeah, she got sucked into Limbo along with the Dire Wraith Queen, so she's currently stuck there for now.

@Nathan Adler: And that one's Douglas Adams, who I don't think was ever involved in comics, just regular novels with some dabbling into music and computer games here and there.

The other interesting bit with Gerber's version of the Red Guardian is that she's a committed Communist, but working outside of the Soviet government and thus regarded as an enemy of the state.

Gerber never gets around to explaining what happens to Chondu's original brain after Belinsky removes it from Nighthawk's skull.