In Death is not the End, we spotlight the outlandish explanations for comic book characters (mostly super-villains) surviving seeming certain death.

Today, we look at how a big chunk of the Defenders were resurrected after sacrificing themselves in the final issue of the original Defenders series!

In Defenders #152 (by Peter Gillis, Don Perlin and Dell Barras), one of the members of the new version of the Defenders, Moondragon, was possessed by an evil entity known as "The Dragon"...

She used her powers to hold a knife to the throat of Candy Southern, the girlfriend of Moondragon's teammate, Angel! Candy, despite being a civilian, was actually voted the leader of the Defenders because the other members were fairly weak when it came to leadership skills.

In the end, a mysterious being known as the Interloper used his powers to merge his life force with the other members of the Defenders to defeat Moondragon (namely Valkyrie, Andromeda and Manslaughter), even though they died in the process...

The mutant members of the team (Beast, Iceman and Angel) were too far away to merge their life forces, as well, and they had to save Candy!

In the end, it seemed the good part of Moondragon spoke to some of the people whose lives were saved by the Defenders' sacrifice...

This freed up the mutant members of the Defenders to be able to go form X-Factor (convenient, right?). Sadly, it left half the team dead, including a longtime superhero, Valkyrie!

Gillis later wrote the Doctor Strange feature in Strange Tales (a failed attempt by Marvel to bring back anthology books) and in #5 (art by Larry Alexander and Randy Emberlin), Doctor Strange is with a guide who is badly injured and near death. Valkyrie arrives and offers to have the dead Defenders and her help Doctor Strange if he sacrifices the guide. Strange reluctantly agrees...

We then see the Defenders in action in the next issue (Terry Shoemaker on pencils)...

As I noted, the "let us try anthologies again!" did not work out, so both sides of the Strange Tales book (Cloak and Dagger and Doctor Strange) got their own books and Gillis remained on the book to relaunch the new series with artists Richard Case and Tony DeZuniga.

In the third issue, the dead Defenders showed up again and they were rewarded for their good deeds by being given the bodies of some recently dead people to take over and become, well, them...

And so they were all back alive!

Moondragon obviously came back, as well, but that's a separate tale for the future!

If anyone else has a suggestion for a future Death is not the End, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!