Reviewer: Tim Stevens
Written by: Fabian Nicieza
Pencilled by: Rick Leonardi
Inked by: Cam Smith
Colored by: Sotocolor’s A Street
Lettered by: RS & Comicraft’s Albert Deschesne
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Publisher: Marvel Comics
The Thunderbolts and I are done. This is the end of our relationship. At times it was good, at times it was great, but now, now it’s just…well, it just is. And when I am shelling out three dollars a month for a relationship, I need it to do more than just sit there and keep me mildly interested.
Thus, this review is less of a review of #16 and more a state of the union address about the New Thunderbolts. By the way, if you need an issue appropriate review, here it is. The script is decent, Leonardi’s art is probably the worst he has produced in recent memory, and the coloring is nicely classic comic. Happy?
Where did the New Thunderbolts lose me? In the heart, really. In recently re-reading the almost year and a half worth of books to determine if I was really done with the book or not, I realized that there was nothing technically wrong with any of them. Fabian Nicieza is still a competent (and occasionally great) writer as he was at the end of the first Thunderbolts volume (that supervillains fighting thing does not count) or with New Warriors or Cable/Deadpool. The art, for the most part, was good as well. Grummett does most of the work and while he never impresses, he always delivers strong, workmanlike art. The fill-ins, when they occurred, (with the exception of Leonardi’s work here), also tended to reach this standard. So, mechanics-wise, it was all there.
However, for the most part, I just did not care.
The series, heretofore, has been a study in good ideas that were interrupted and petered out without realizing their potential. Purple Man in full “I am the writer” mode (inspired by Alias)? Awesome. How it all ended up though? A year later and all we really get for our trouble is a kind of sly “every writer has an editor” joke? Not really worth the time. Same with a new mind-controlled Swordsman. That plotline was introduced about the same time and it still has not really gone anywhere. Mach IV aligning with Baron Von Stucker? Nice echo of the first series. That secret being out in six issues and resulting in a quickly reversed quitting of Songbird? Eh. Atlas almost killing Captain Marvel/Photon? Nice evolution of the increasingly erratic Eric Josten. All, essentially, being forgiven and forgotten… Wha?! The list continues on for there to include a clash with the New Avengers and the reemergence of the Sinister Squadron (which we are currently in the midst of). All good to great ideas, all failing to excite.
What made me enjoy Thunderbolts at first was the sense that anything could happen and often did (and you still were not expecting it). That feeling has all but dissipated in this newest volume. Two disruptive crossovers derailed momentum at key moments, but it was hardly as if I were fully aboard in the first place. And in at least one case, I enjoyed the crossover issue, as much as it did interrupt the flow, more than I liked the issues surrounding it.
One area that this new series has not failed at is characterization. Radioactive Man, Speed Demon, and Blizzard have not been written this well at any time in recent memory. However, their development has come at the loss of personality for two of the “originals”, Songbird and Mach IV, who have grown weirdly flat and uninteresting. Josten thankfully has managed to escape that fate.
For all these reasons, and more, it has come time to get off this ride. I’m done. I wipe my hands of it. The grade below is for this latest issue, but overall, I give New Thunderbolts a 5.5 as a series and I just need more than that.
