In case you’ve been wondering what I look like, the brilliant Sean Long has taken the time to painstakingly paint my portrait. Many thanks Sean!
Welcome to my column, or in this case my long-form and yet surprisingly “low spoiler” review of…(drum roll)…Thunderbolts 101!
Thunderbolts 101
Writer: Fabian Nicieza
Penciler: Dave Ross
Inker: Cam Smith
Editors: Molly Lazer, Tom Brevoort
Like I said, if Fabian and Co. put together a good issue of Thunderbolts, I’d let you all know. Thunderbolts #101 sat quietly on my stack of unread books for a couple of days. #99 was horrifying and disturbing for an all ages book. #100 was rife with characterization inconsistencies, bad dialogue and disjointed pacing, a complete train wreck for a “Milestone” issue. I’d even heard from Fabian regarding my disdain for his product, and the point was raised that despite my dissatisfaction I still buy the book. I walked past my stack of unread comics for a coupe of days, not finding time to read them, mostly, and in the case of the Thunderbolts simply mortified by the prospect. After all, I felt like the book had “jumped the shark” by the end of #100, to borrow a television term. And the cover to #101 was a vivid reminder: Zemo and Songbird, despite being on opposing sides of conflicting Thunderbolt teams, were apparently a couple. Well nuts, I guess #101 won’t review itself…hmmm…hmm-mmm…huh…and…my God, that wasn’t half-way bad…so who wrote this and what did they do with Fabian’s body?
OK, obviously it was indeed Fabian Nicieza who wrote this, and to be honest this is much closer to what #100 should have been. Where #100 was mostly a long, meandering morality play about which team of Thunderbolts got the privilege of killing Captain Photon-Vell with bizarre character “voices” such as Techno’s Redneck Quantum Theory explanation, #101 did a good job bringing more of the individual stories of the team members to the forefront. We also discover the unique properties of the base Zemo created for the team, a collection of holes in space filled with real areas of the planet. For example, Radioactive Man’s “room” is a tranquil Chinese temple, Songbird’s room is a posh, upscale Manhattan apartment, and Goliath stays at his family farm in Wisconsin. It’s like an M.C. Escher house filled with tesseracts (look it up, some new vocabulary words won’t kill you). And the way Fabian presents it doesn’t hinder the direction of the story. Nicely done. It also serves as a nifty framing device for moments of character development.
The story itself is rather expository but never boring. It weaves the character-enriching segments afforded to each member with flashbacks that help explain the new Zemo-Songbird romance, all at a nice, brisk pace. It succeeds marvelously at redefining Songbird’s role in the book. She never been more central, and without having Jolt around as the heart and soul of the team (I’ve always though every good team has one–Cap isn’t an original Avenger but they’re not the Avengers without him, Colossus and Ben Grimm are the emotional anchors of their teams respectively), it was important for Fabian to build someone up as the pillar that supports the whole structure. I’ve no problems with it being Songbird. But is it all rose petals and champagne? Not quite. He wastes the opportunity to incorporate Nighthawk. I admit, I didn’t care much for Hawkeye being on the team in years past. It was mostly because I just don’t care for that character, but I also felt like a mistrusting Avengers squad foisted him upon them, when they were doing just fine on their own without him. Nighthawk, on the other hand, is far more interesting to me character-wise, and would have made a nice counter-balance opposite Zemo. Plus he’s rich, every good team needs a Tony Stark level backer. Which brings up a point–how does Xavier afford to rebuild the school every time it gets knocked down? But I digress…The team is mostly comprised of villains, and I think after 101 issues (slightly less if you, like me, equate the Fight Club issues with Highlander 2 and operate under the assumption that it never happened) it’s OK to pull away from the “villains struggling to be heroes” concept a little. The (by now) old-timers on the team–Songbird, Atlas, Mach IV, for example–should have a handle on the heroism thing by now. Adding a guy like Nighthawk helps validate their “graduation” on to the hero side of the ledger. You still have the new Thunderbolts like Blizzard, Joystick and Swordsman struggling against their own villainous natures, so those kinds of stories can still be told as well. I’m a bit skeptical about the revelations regarding Joystick, but on the whole it’s the best issue of Thunderbolts I’ve read in months.
Oh and lest I forget, Dave Ross and Cam Smith do a nice, clean job on the artistic side. Something about it invokes ChrissCross’s Captain Marvel run, and I’ve always been a ChrissCross fan (except for his not using a space between his first and last names–that gives my spell-check program fits). I always liked Tom Grummett’s work on the Super Books at DC, but his Thunderbolts work just seemed to lack his usual panache. It doesn’t mention in the credits if Ross and Smith were just filling in or if they’re going to be around awhile, but they get my vote. I enjoyed Dave Ross’s work on Breakdown, part of the quasi-superhero world Devil’s Due Publishing attempted to do a year or so back. Cam Smith inked Ed McGuinness on Superman, which wasn’t my bag, but certainly not entirely his fault. I think Ross and Smith together works very well and while not stylistically not that different from Grummett’s work, it somehow seems to come together much better. But like I said, I don’t know if this was a fill in issue while Tom takes a break or not. If or when Tom Grummett leaves the book, I hope Tom Brevoort and Molly Lazer keep Ross and Smith in mind to replace him.
So to sum up, It’s not going to make forget about the debacle that was Thunderbolts 99 and 100, but like hot tea after three plates at a Chinese buffet, Thunderbolts 101 does help cleanse the palette. If some of this could have been in issue 100 it would have made the Thunderbolts milestone issue much more agreeable to my comic story sensibilities. Fabian did a much better job structuring the story, giving almost everyone a little space to grow and setting up some intrigue for future issues. Is it enough to hold people’s interest if they were abandoning ship after the last couple of issues? It’s enough for me, but probably not enough for everybody. While I’m probably more critical of Thunderbolts than most people, I have a soft spot for the characters and am more willing to soldier on than some casual fans who are having to cut corners somewhere if they want to keep up with the constant crossovers like Marvel’s Civil War and Annihilation and DC’s Infinite Crisis. It’s hard to hold on to books that aren’t meeting expectations in the face of so many other choices. For me, the return of Hal Jordan just isn’t holding my interest. I generally enjoy Geoff Johns’ writing but the returning Green Lantern just hasn’t really done a whole lot after some 6 to 9 issues. So I’m willing to bet $2.99 a month that Fabian is finally finding his power stroke on Thunderbolts. He hit some long homeruns during his tenure on X-Men so I know he’s got it in him. And if not, well, even if I’m giving him Hell over the book, any publicity is good publicity, right? I mean, IGN.com didn’t even bother to review #101.
Grade: B! I was tempted to grade lower, but I’ve read it twice now and it’s just such a marked improvement over the last couple of issuesâ€â€writing and artwork bothâ€â€that I’m going to recommend it.
Now like I promised last week, no more Thunderbolts for a month. I have other topics to get to. And I have a ridiculous job that confounds my ability to get around to them. We’ll all be surprised by what I come up with for next week, because at this point I got no idea. And we all know how the Dark Overlord gets when the deadlines come due and our columns aren’t ready…
Welcome to my nightmare.
