The Defenders #123
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeThe Defenders #123 marks the first appearance of Cloud, a sentient nebula given human form who would become one of the earliest gender-fluid characters in mainstream superhero comics — freely shifting between male and female bodies at a time when the Comics Code still formally prohibited queer representation. This debut issue also introduces Harridan and Seraph, and serves as the opening chapter of J.M. DeMatteis's ambitious effort to resolve a long-neglected Steve Gerber subplot (the Elf with a Gun) while simultaneously steering the Defenders toward their New Defenders transformation two issues later. Cloud's subsequent arc — developing romantic feelings for both Iceman and Moondragon while grappling with a genuinely fluid identity — gave the title a quietly groundbreaking dimension that comics historians have returned to repeatedly as an overlooked early example of gender identity explored in a superhero context.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Writer J.M. DeMatteis had taken over the Defenders with issue #92 and spent years threading together long-dangling plot points left by predecessor Steve Gerber; this issue begins the three-part payoff of the Elf with a Gun storyline that Gerber had abandoned when he left the book. The creative team for the interior story was DeMatteis on script, Don Perlin on pencils, and Kim DeMulder on inks — a stable pairing that defined the series' late Bronze Age look — while the cover was rendered by Sandy Plunkett (pencils and colors) and Bill Sienkiewicz (inks), under editor Carl Potts and editor-in-chief Jim Shooter. Cloud was conceived by DeMatteis and Perlin, though the character's more explicitly gender-exploring stories were developed further by DeMatteis's successor, writer Peter B. Gillis.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance of Cloud (a sentient nebula in human form), one of Marvel's earliest gender-fluid characters, who would go on to shift between male and female forms across subsequent issues while serving as a full Defenders member.
- Also the first appearance of Harridan (Svetlana Porfiry) and Seraph (Sonya Tolsky), two Secret Empire agents introduced alongside Cloud as antagonists targeting the Vision.
- Story titled 'Of Elves and Androids!'; written by J.M. DeMatteis, with interior pencils by Don Perlin and inks by Kim DeMulder; cover art by Sandy Plunkett (pencils/colors) and Bill Sienkiewicz (inks).
- Cover date: September 1983; editor Carl Potts; editor-in-chief Jim Shooter; 36 pages.
- The issue runs two parallel plot threads: Cloud, Harridan, and Seraph attacking the Vision at his New Jersey home while an Elf transports the original Defenders (Doctor Strange, Hulk, Silver Surfer, Sub-Mariner) through the timestream — Part One of a three-part arc.
- The Elf with a Gun subplot being resolved here had originally been introduced by writer Steve Gerber and left unfinished when he departed the title; DeMatteis deliberately picked up and concluded the thread.
- Over-Mind silently disappears from the Defenders roster in this issue with no in-story explanation — a Marvel Database-noted editorial loose end.
- Reprinted in Essential Defenders Vol. 6 (Marvel, October 2011), which collected The Defenders #107–125 alongside Avengers Annual #11 (1982) and Marvel Team-Up #119 (1982).
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Reprints
Reprinted in The New Defenders #1 (2011), Essential Defenders #6 (2011), Defenders Epic Collection #7 (2017)
Key issues in The Defenders
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