Written by Nick Spencer
Illustrated by Wes CraigOne of the most critically acclaimed series of the past year returns with a new #1 issue that serves as a great jumping-on point for new readers!
What kind of people willingly become Super Heroes, knowing that their powers will eventually kill them? That’s the question this new 6-part miniseries will explore as the team must face off against the Warlord and his Subterraneans! Nick Spencer (Morning Glories, Ultimate X-Men) teams with rising star Wes Craig for a twisted tale of super heroics, espionage, and action!
THUNDER Agents was one of our favorite books before the relaunch, with the first three issues earning increasingly higher ratings at this site. Now that the new volume is here and the story continues, one can only hope that the new installment is as good — if not better – than the old.
Pop beyond the cut for some thoughts on the latest installment of one of DC’s more successful franchise reinventions. As a note, some mild spoilers discussed.
Before we begin, I would like to throw out one quiet nitpick: this is perhaps the single least new reader friendly title from DC’s reinvention I’ve seen outside of maybe the Legion books. This book couldn’t be any less of a relaunch if it tried, as it is very much just issue #11 of Nick Spencer’s run with the characters. Where the previous volume’s first issue re-introduced fifty year old ideas for the modern era, this volume essentially just carries on business as usual with a “Reboot? What reboot!” mentality. So, if you haven’t read his previous work on the series, I would highly recommend ascertaining a copy of the first ten issues in trade before reading this, because otherwise you will assuredly be quite lost.
Moving on.
The THUNDER Agents marked Spencer’s first major superhero work in comics after a string of successful and highly regarded indie books at Image, and we were all the merrier for it. Taking a team that had been sold from Tower Comics seven different publishers and imprints before arriving at DC, Spencer, CAFU and Bit — along with a bevy of fantastic guest artists galore — reinvigorated the team with a new modus operandi and interior mantra whilst also justifying fifty years of mixed up continuity for a home in the DCU. These weren’t just lost characters; these were barely existing characters, the likes of which most of us had never really seen before. Everything about the book popped right from the beginning, and after a dynamite first arc that gave us inside looks at the team and their inner functions, we blasted right forth into the second arc.
However, as the DCnU reared its head, the THUNDER Agents’ adventures were assumedly put on the chopping block. As Spencer signed an exclusive with Marvel and plans for him to write Supergirl fell apart, as well as some other unfortunate circumstances surrounding the books art team, it seemed that DC was willing to let such a critical darling go. However, as luck would have it, the THUNDER Agents were given one more shot at life in the form of a six issue mini — and ye, much rejoicing was had.
When we last left the team before the relaunch, they were in quite a bit of disarray. Menthor had turned out to be the unwilling mole hidden in the team by his brother, the previous Raven, Lightning and Dynamo were killed, and Colleen’s very visceral parental issues came to a head when she left her own mother — revealed to be the villainous Iron Maiden — to die. You couldn’t form a more ragtag group of misfits playing superhero if you tried. Now, the three “stable” members of the team attempt to go on a peace keeping mission, which quickly devolves into NoMan being shot in the face and all hell breaking loose while Colleen and Toby go on a date. As mentioned before, the issue is very much just issue #11 of the previous book. Some time has obviously passed since we last saw our heroes, but in a fashion that is simply understood and not implicitly spelled out. We can assume our main trinity are more functioning than before through dialogue, and as a new Raven is recruited it allows for some very limited recap of the pages that came before.
Continued belowThe one drawback of the issue is that it meanders quite a bit in the middle in what seems like a tad bit of self-indulgence. While assumedly an exercise in world building, Spencer takes quite some time out in the middle to elaborate on Tony and his time as a brainwashed servant of his brother and SPIDER. In this time we’re given several pages explaining Emil Jennings’ role in the THUNDER Agents history, which will assumedly take up most of your reading time with the issue as the most dense sequence of the book as we stray from Subterranean action. It’s something that really acts as a prelude to the back-up features to come from artists like Jerry Ordway, Walt Simonson and Sam Kieth, but it suffers from the “tell” instead of “show”stigma that can often plague weighty scenes in comics.
On top of that, though, Spencer — in a rather curious sequence lasting an entire page — attempts to explain the Jean Luc Goddard’s Breathless. It’s a fantastic film, and one that should certainly find its home in your collection if your a fan of film, but it adds very little to the overall story aside from establishing that Colleen doesn’t know about movies and Toby, who always seemed like Spencer’s avatar in the story, loves film. Given that this issue’s assumed modus operandi is to bring new readers to the book, you would imagine that more effort would be put towards the bourgeoning struggle against Spencer’s re-imagined version of the Subterraneans, yet only seven of our twenty pages are dedicated to this. It would be fine to give Colleen and Tony some personal time Thomas Keane, director of the Agents program, sums it up best when he shouts, “WHERE’S COLLEEN?!?”
This isn’t to say the issue is bad, however. It’s not the strongest showing of the fantastic idea behind the title, but it still holds a lot of the previously affable qualities. The action sequences are top-notch, and Wes Craig makes a wonderful addition to the book with wonderfully emotive figures and a unique eye for action. Craig adds an interesting layer to the book when he begins to slant not just the panels but the pages themselves, as a literal representation of the story going rather off-kilter in the beginning. The colors provided by Hi-Fi additionally provide great contrast between the dark underworld inhabited by the Subterraneans and the above ground portion of the book. If the book had spent more time on the brewing Subterranean war than the talking head pieces, I can only imagine how dynamite Craig and Hi-Fi could have pulled it off, as the few brief spurts that they get are quite vibrant and stylish.
Perhaps its part of my own personal hype that led to some of my disappointment with the issue, but it isn’t the debut I would hope for in order to convince anyone who wasn’t already reading the series to try it out. For myself, as an established fan, I quite enjoyed it for what it was; Spencer had always treated the book as a module for less traditional superhero stories, mostly subverting the average story-telling structures to foster personal relations with the characters amongst the readership. With this issue, however, Spencer attempts to out throw too much too quickly and doesn’t effectively play up what are clearly Craig’s strengths. One can only hope that the pace picks up more in the second issue.
Final Verdict: 7.0 – Browse/Buy
