Thunderbolts: Justice, Like Lightning…


By Kurt Busiek, Peter David, Mark Bagley & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-0817-7

At the end of  1996 the “Onslaught” publishing event removed the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Iron Man and Avengers from the Marvel Universe, unwisely (hindsight being a magical thing) handing over creative control to Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee for a year. For the early part of that period the “Image style” books got all the attention, but a new title created to fill the gap in the “real” universe proved to be the real star of the period.

Thunderbolts was initially promoted as a replacement team book; untried champions pitching in because the superhero big guns were dead and gone. Chronologically the team debuted in Incredible Hulk # 449, by Peter David, Mike Deodato Jr. & Tom Wegrzyn, in a fairly standard game of “heroes-stomp-monster”, but the seemingly mediocre tale is perhaps excusable in retrospect…

This volume gathers all the early appearances of the neophyte team: the Hulk tale, Thunderbolts #1-4 and their 1997 Annual, a Tales of the Marvel Universe one-shot, and Spider-Man Team-Up Featuring… #7, and although the stories are still immensely readable a book simply can’t recapture the furore the series caused in its early periodical days, because Thunderbolts was a high concept series with a big twist: one which impossibly for comics, didn’t get spilled before the “big reveal.”

The action here starts with issue #1 as Busiek, Bagley & Vince Russell introduce a new team who begin to clear the devastated, post-Onslaught streets of New York of resurgent super-villains and thugs who are making the most of the established heroes’ apparent demise. They consist of the Captain America clone Citizen V, size-shifting Atlas, super- armoured Mach-1, ray-throwing amazon Meteorite, sonic siren Songbird and human weapon Techno, and the terrified citizenry instantly take them to their hearts. But these heroes share a huge secret…

They’re all super-villains in disguise and Citizen V has major long-term plans…

When unsuspecting readers got to the end of that first story the reaction was instantaneous shock and jubilation.

The aforementioned Hulk tale incongruously appears next, followed by the Tales of the Marvel Universe tale ‘The Dawn of a New Age of Heroes!’ as the group continue to do good deeds for bad reasons, and #2 ‘Deceiving Appearances’ finds them winning more hearts and minds by defeating the Mad Thinker at a memorial service for the Fantastic Four and Avengers.

Spider-Man Team-Up Featuring… #7 ‘Old Scores’ by Busiek, Sal Buscema & Dick Giordano sees them even fool the spider-senses of everybody’s favourite wall-crawler as they take down the super-scientific Enclave, whilst Thunderbolts #3 finds them facing ‘Too Many Masters’ whilst dissension begins to creep in as the team round up more old allies and potential rivals such as Klaw, Flying Tiger, Man-Killer, Tiger-Shark and other assorted Masters of Evil. ‘A Shock to the System’ in #4 has them invading Dr. Doom’s castle to aid utterly oblivious innocent and potential new recruit Jolt; finding and fighting the monstrous creations of rogue geneticist Arnim Zola along the way.

Thunderbolts Annual 1997 concludes this collection; a massive revelatory jam session written by Busiek with art from Mark Bagley, Bob McLeod, Tom Grummett, Ron Randall, Gene Colan, Darick Robertson, George Pérez, Chris Marrinan, Al Milgrom, Will Blyberg, Scott Koblish, Jim Sanders, Tom Palmer, Bruce Patterson, Karl Kesel and Andrew Pepoy, which could only be called ‘The Origin of the Thunderbolts!’

This is a solid superhero romp that managed to briefly revitalise a lot of jaded old fan-boys, but more importantly it is a strong set of tales that still pushes all the buttons it’s meant to more than a decade after all the hoopla has faded. Well worth a moment of your time and a bit of your hard-earned cash.

© 1996, 1997, 2001 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.