Reviewer: Kevin S. Mahoney
Story Title: Ditch
Written by: Fabian Nicieza
Penciled by: Tom Grummett
Inked by: Gary Erskine
Colored by: Sotocolor’s J. Brown
Lettered by: RS & Comicraft’s Albert Deschesne
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Publisher: Marvel Comics
This title has gone through a lot of swerves lately. There was the House of M issue. And last month’s denouement to the Purple Man escapade brought the book’s first arc to a halt without answering all of its outstanding questions. Genis-Vell went through yet another costume change. The team changed leaders. Dallas Riordan is again paralyzed. And now, finally, the US government likes the T’Bolts more than the next team. It just so happens the next team is The Avengers. And so the stage is set for another T’Bolts/Avengers donnybrook, with the government rooting for the opposite side this time.
It’s tough to argue with the logic involved. The Scarlet Witch pretty much made the Marvel Universe her own private edition of Barbieâ„¢ Dress-Up. That catastrophe combined with the Avenger’s abrupt change in roster and bylaws would worry most pencil pushers. But even given the Avengers recent inclusion of former villains (Haven’t they always done that?) and genuine psychos, most teams wouldn’t lift a finger to interfere. The Avengers have a brand, a huge amount of hard-earned goodwill, and their latest roster still includes Captain America. There is no legitimate team that would knowingly interfere with them. So the canny, sneaky, government went out and enlisted the only illegitimate team powerful enough to do the job and potentially moral enough not to double cross them. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Thunderbolts!
So the two teams fight. And the Thunderbolts are getting the upper hand. Happily though, there is more to this issue than the build-up to the slugfest. We get brief appearances by Paul Norbert “The Fixer” Ebersol, Joystick, a certain giant robot, and Spider-Woman. The Avengers’ headquarters is nearly burgled. And the last page includes a character that goes way back in Avenger’s lore. He has gone by more names than any Avenger ever, certainly. What he’s doing in this story at all is anyone’s guess. But then, if I wanted boring straightforward storytelling, I’d be reading something else. Maybe Green Lantern.
The art in this issue is in tune with what longtime readers expect from the series. It border on top flight, heavy in detail and extremely imaginative in its depiction of power effects. The blasts of both Photon and Dr. Spectrum are particularly vibrant. The only real gaffe is the continued depiction of Luke Cage as a stereotypical bling-wearin’ thug. I know he’s super strong and a former criminal; heck that’s his origin story in paraphrase. But do the readers have to see him in a knit cap and nightclub bouncer leather jacket on the cover and continue to put up with him wearing sunglasses at 10:30 PM… inside an airplane?! It may be true that certain heroes would look ridiculous in long johns. It seems that certain heroes look just as a dated (or perhaps lame) in street clothes, emphasis wholly on street.
