Thunderbolts issue 1 Cover Reviews 

“Thunderbolts” #1

By | May 5th, 2016
Posted in Reviews | % Comments

Zub, Malin, and Yackey resurrect the ultimate anti-hero title for a nostalgic re-working that will likely polarise Marvel fans.

Written by Jim Zub
Illustrated by Jon Malin & Matt Yackey

They’re a renegade team rampaging across the Marvel Universe under the direction of the Winter Soldier! But are the Thunderbolts heroes or villains—and do even they know for sure?

The Thunderbolt mantle has been passed from team to team over the years, with varying degrees of success, but the core concept has always remained relatively consistent. Most of the time, “The Thunderbolts” centres around a team of recognizable villains from the Marvel Universe, captured and re-purposed by the government to run covert ops missions in an attempt to atone for their sins and wow, it’s suddenly occurring to me that DC’s Suicide Squad movie comes out later this year. Huh, I wonder why that sprang to mind.

Anyway, in the wake of  the events of “Avengers: Standoff!”, “Thunderbolts” #1 sees a new version of the team comprising Thunderbolts mainstays Atlas, Mach X, Moonstone, Fixer, and led now by newcomer Bucky (The Winter Soldier) Barnes. Bucky’s decided that the overly secretive SHIELD needs to be infiltrated in order to ensure that the huge libraries of “private messages, sealed military records, and even DNA profiles” the governmental organisations have on hand are taken from them, as he now believes they’re simply too powerful and autonomous to be trusted.

That’s where this issue kicks off, with Bucky’s hastily assembled team of ne’er-do-wells punching, kicking, and energy blasting their way through a nondescript SHIELD facility in search of some vaguely MacGuffin-ish cache of intel. The team make short work of a collection of relatively faceless SHIELD goons, with Malin displaying a pretty fun, full on energetic fight scene that has echoes of Rob Liefield’s hyper-’90s work on “X-Force” and other titles. After discovering their intel, they head back to their paramilitary hide-out (a series of tunnels and hangars that feel so similar to the set they’ve just let that the plane ride seems hardly worth it) and reveal that the final member of their team is Kobik, cosmic cube personified and precocious slang-slinging team so saccharine she’d make Spielberg blush.

Rather than layering on exposition, or relying on readers having an intimate knowledge of the multiple books that led to “Thunderbolts” #1, Zub kicks off the action straight away and with minimal explanation. While this decision does help the book feel pacey and immediate, I can’t help but feel the framework behind this story. There’s a formulaic feel to the plotting and Bucky’s inner monologue that is indicative of the more paint-by-numbers sections of previous “Thunderbolts” arcs. While Zub does manage to work a lot of room for conversation into this issue without it slowing the narrative too much, none of the supporting characters seem to be particularly well thought out beyond their broadest descriptions. In no character is this more obvious than Kobik, who explodes onto the scene with a literal crackle of energy from Yackey’s vibrant colours. Kobik bounces from panel to panel chattering a mile a minute, in a way that could’ve been endearing, but hit me as frustratingly outdated. It’s clear from her first appearance that she’s going to be one of the driving forces of this arc, but I really feel as though the trope of having a jarringly comical character balancing out a more earnestly serious squad has been done too many times before, and better, for it to be a big pull in this book.

Malin’s heavy ’90s influences are on show from the offset in this book, and when he’s ploughing through action scenes at 100 miles an hour, it’s actually pretty fun to get lost in this hugely dynamic world. Watching Mach-X tearing through a SHIELD facility, thrusters blazing behind him, or Moonstone effortlessly blasting a goon through a wall and into a canyon below is ridiculous in all the right ways.

But Malin has less of a secure handle of the team during their downtime, and there’s a recognizable lack of nuance to his contorted facial expressions and monstrous body shapes that leaves these characters feeling cartoonish. While these stylistic choices could be considered subjective, they’re accompanied by some visual inconsistencies (like Bucky going from cleanshaven to bearded and back again in the space of three pages) that just feels a little lazy at times.

Overall, “Thunderbolts” #1 is definitely a book that will find an audience who embrace it. The styles that Zub and Malin are echoing were, for all their faults, pioneering at the time, but by so closely mirroring the tropes and techniques that helped those books stand out, I’m worried that “Thunderbolts” may end up slipping into the background.

Final Verdict: 4.8 – A less than auspicious rebirth for the watcher on the wall.


Stephenson Ardern-Sodje

Stephenson splits his time pretty evenly between reading, watching TV, and sleeping. He has got a degree in English and Creative Writing, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to take anything he says seriously. In his spare time he's working on making the transition from comic-book reader to writer. Failing that he's planning on winning the lottery, he's just got to work out the right numbers first... You can follow his often incoherent thoughts over at @slate_grey.

EMAIL | ARTICLES