I loved how the Busiek era explored the "seduction of the light side" for a change. Doing good and being rewarded for it is a powerful incentive to change for the better.
To bad that the concept of the team has devolved from a team of reformed villains becoming heroes and doing good things of their own volition into instead being a wannabe Suicide Squad (an irritating status quo that was kicked off by, what else, Civil War).
I was a huge fan of the original Thunderbolts and fell off following every single version. BUT, I do like how they don't roll the same story and concept over and over.
Baron Zemo Jr. Doing a better job at playing hero than Norman Osborn could only dream of! I absolutely love Mark Bagelys work on this series and glad my boy Beetle got to shine once again!
This is the first time I remember seeing Mark Bagley's drawing and understanding who he was. I've always found his drawing kind of fascinating in the way he can making something seem really stylized and realistic at the same time. I agree about Songbird, she was a great character who could be used as an anchor to a lot of good future stories.
I read this run a few years ago and loved it, even knowing the twist before going in. It made me a Kurt Busiek fan and I immediately started his Avengers run after it. I think Warren Ellis’ oh so brief run was also excellent during Civil War.
Thunderbolts was one of the first comics I bought physically and it was also the only trade paperback I got. I had no background info on any of it but it was still an amazing read
Great video on a great comic! Thunderbolts brought me back into comics after I found the first 8 issues at a second hand store when the run was at issue 10, so easy in. Kurt (And Mark) did a great job on a solid concept. Well worth the read.
With the rise of Marvel Snap! it would be really cool to see these characters as both their evil and good alter egos. You can slightly change up the effects of the cards with one version being on reveal and the other being ongoing or something. Either that or card variants!
I bought ThunderBolts when it was hot off the press. I didn't have the resources to keep up with all my comics but I love Busieks writing style and followed his Marvel stuff as much as my college days budget allowed. I want to have all the Heroes Return stuff. ThunderBolts held the fort during the Heroes Reborn crisis.
I've been following Jim Zub's current Thunderbolts run because I'm a huge fan of a lot of the character's featured, but now I gotta read the original.I remember Busieks writing being a little too dense for me when I tried Avengers Forever, but I'll give it another shot.
Avengers Forever is Busiek at his absolute densest, it's his League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and I love it for what it is but it's definitely not representative of his strongest work. Thunderbolts has much more room to breathe - there are still plenty of reinventions and retcons and bringing back obscure lore, but much more slowly and never takes over the whole book, the book itself is all about solid character work and fun, straightforward stories with just enough twist to be exciting.
I'd argue the whole run is up there with the best team books Marvel has published. Fabien Nicieza really picked up where Busiek left off and kept delivering month after month. I re-read the first two volumes of Omnibus Marvel put out recently and eagerly awaiting Vol.3. I agree the later iterations of the team suffered from diminishing returns. And yes, I do remember the Champions. The book ran into a lot of production issues if I remember rightly. It might have worked in the right hands, but man was it inconsistent.
Thunderbolts really made me sit up and take notice of Hawkeye when he joined them. He's always been there in the Avengers but this changed my mind as him as a good leader and maybe solo hero. He starts out as a reluctant villain who beats Iron Man - still got to find and read those issues. Then he joins Captain America's Avengers and is a hot head who thinks he should lead and keeps calling Cap Methuselah. He does this while Cap trains him. He helps out Cap when Cap gets discouraged and drops his superhero ID. Gives him a fresh prospective and leading to the idea of being a hero without the patriotic name, Nomad. He joins the Defenders for a few issues. I just love the opening splash page of shooting arrows at the Hulk and demanding the Big Guy tell him about these so-called Defenders Hulk had mentioned an issue previously. He has his bad periods too like when he become Goliath, giving up his bow, and his Indian outfit. He gets married, he goes deaf, he becomes a widower. His only real problem is he never had any big villains of his own to fight. The Swordsman is his only one. The guy who trained him at the circus and it turns out training him to join the Circus of Crime. And that started him down the road he traveled.
I love that run!!! Here in Brazil it was published in a especial edition, wich has the first ten issues, i think. As a tenager at that time, i was blown way by that plot twist. Great book.
I think the pre-Disney Thunderbolts series are some of the greatest stuff Marvel has ever produced. I can't believe I only read through them last year. I felt the first twist came a bit too early though, they could have teased it out further. But then all of it slowly turning into a redemption story that went on for years with fully developed character arcs for everyone was just glorious, modern Marvel has all but abandoned this form of storytelling and I really miss these long series. They made the event fatigue bearable, now it seems there are more of the cross-comic events than regular series as the regular series are just limited runs that last a year or less. 😞
This was the first tpb of collected comics I read, which weren't a common format back then, it contained the first arc. It hooked me from start to finish. Firstly in making story use of the fallout of the onslaught event ( heroes reborn was a failure, and Marvel quickly retconned it). That's also speaks about the genius of Kurt Busiek, how he knows and loves the lore, so his stories always feels organic to universe and characters. It was good to show each character with flaws and attributes, like some were genuinely evil while others just bad luck and mistakes lead them to crime, and some experience believe in themselves for the first time as more than just a hired gun, Meteorite (Moon Stone) was one of my favourite, she was on board with Zemo's plan but it's acting like the captain of the team, getting to hang out with the more noble team members softs her on caring and protecting from Zemo. I was genuinely surprised when Seymour himself leaks out the information that they are the masters of evil. Very much in character move, an egocentrical neurotic he was very aware of much his team were waning down their resolve on their ultimate goal, and masterfully takes the proactive choice of just outing Thunderbolts secret by himself. Definitely the best and most original incarnation of team
I love the issue where Baron Zemo has an almost heroic last stand against that cyborg Scourge of the Underworld. I wish fights in superhero comics would still be written like that.
I read Thunderbolts when it first came out and really enjoyed how it made me care about a bunch of second tier characters and made them cool. And as the series progressed I only cared more as Jolt, Charcoal and Hawkeye joined, the team confronted Graviton, the story with the Redeemers etc,. I don't really read comics anymore but the strength of this series has stayed with me and I can't say that about most comics that I've read.
Have you tried Busiek's Astro City? One way I describe it is as a superhero comic for people who used to love superhero comics but find them hard to care about these days.
@@joelpartee594 Yes, I really enjoyed that series also. I might actually still have a few issues from that series in storage. I liked how the cast would change with each arc. Busiek's a really talented writer.
It was a good series. One of the lowest moments in the publication history was when one of the characters did surgery and became black to hide from the authorities. Something similar that the Pubisher had done years before.
I'm mystified how Marvel keeps failing to relaunch this title on a more regular basis for years now. And Songbird should have been on an A-list Avengers lineup by now.
Good video, but c'mon dude... Mark Bagley's run on The Amazing Spider-Man from '91-96 had already established him as a superstar prior to this (I mean... seriously... Carnage! Need I say more?) I remember being shattered at Bagley's departure from the title post-Onslaught.
I actually have all of volume 1 collected in flopies (except for New Thunderbolts, I have those in TPB, and I don't have Dark Avengers). That includes issue #0 from Wizard and a signed copy of #1 with the variant pink cover.
Just recently finished reading Thunderbolts from the beginning to "Thunderbolt Ross" era and i love it. Still amazed how Songbird grew up as a character thrue the years.
I enjoyed The Thunderbolts when Busiek and Bagley started it off, but I didn't like Hawkeye taking over as the leader and by the time the team added lame-o's like Charcoal, I was pretty tapped out. Zemo as Citizen V was such a compelling bad guy and I wish he had stayed as the mastermind behind the group for the entire run.
THANK YOU for this video. I love the O.G. Thunderbolts run. I've bought other Thunderbolts books but if the book doesn't have Moonstone or Songbird or The Fixer, etc in it, I skip it. I've been making the same argument about the Thunderbolts movie but no one seems to understand. The Thunderbolts, to me, is like the FF without Reed & Sue, or the X-Men without Storm or Wolverine or Cyclops, etc.
3:28 That was such a lackluster Disappointing Final Battle. Just Nonsense. I was a Kid Teenager back than.... THE EPIC EVENT...THE TRAGIC... But It felt like thin stinky air. AND IT WAS. The Artwork and the Battles, Alliences in the Onslaught Sage where Epic. Joe Mad, Andy Kubert, Adam Kubert.... 11:07 Great Artwork on the left side! Thank you for this Video! The redemption Arc... I will give it a try!
13:42 Uh, I do. Had the whole run of Champions. Still a big fan of that version of the team, even if they were a fairly random bunch of oddballs with equally weird villains. Even introduced Swarm, if it weren't for them comics wouldn't have a Nazi made of bees. And hey, they were the first Marvel heroes to fight Godzilla. Think SHIELD is angry with Hercules about him accidentally knocking that helicarrier out of the sky with a missed throw. How do you miss Godzilla, you meathead?
It was a great series, no doubt, but I always thought they should have held that reveal a while longer. As it stands, it's not so much a twist as it is a cliffhanger. It's fine and it was interesting, but I remember thinking even at the time that they could have gotten a year of stories out of the title before the reveal.
And the absence of such experience is why I was already remembering the Chump... er, Champions before he even finished the phrase "completely forgettable"!
@@kenlieck7756 Nuts. That book was a fun read in the same way Defenders was. Both had that "random team of oddballs fighting gonzo villains" vibe throughout. And if weren't for them, we wouldn't have Swarm, comic's only Nazi made of bees.
@@richmcgee434 Actually I don't disagree with you -- but it is a fact that before he finished his sentence, my first thought was "The Champions"! (And I can't prove it, but surely there's other apian-oriented Aryan antagonists out there somewhere, just as I know where to find Zzyyxx, the other elf besides Relf and Melf who carries a gun.) Sieg Hive!
I love the OG Thunderbolts. Seeing these villains pretending to be heroes and some of them realizing that was all they ever wanted and going all in on being heroes was great.
I remember loving 'Thunderbolts' back in the 90s. I particularly enjoyed a crossover with Spider-Man in which Spidey's enthused to be working with these new heroes and Mach-1 is finding it very awkward due to the number of times he fought Spider-Man as The Beetle. Brilliant bit of subtle character work.
I got this book in Italian about a year after it's original publication (there was a 10-13 months delay due to translation) and it was a insane. Granted, internet was nowhere near as big as it is today, but the fact that Marvel Italia was able to keep to lid on the pot for another year was huge.
I remember being hyped by this new super team when I was in high school post-Onslaught. That first issue reveal blew me and my comic-reading friends away at the time. Definitely one of the greatest comic twists of all time. I followed the book for years after, but nothing past that Busiek run ever captured the magic quite the same way again.
@@davidlloren The reasoning was probably they didn't know how long they could keep it going, and it would require them hiding parts about the characters and make them less interesting. I mean from what I read it almost got released in the Hulk Issue they were in that was released before their first comic, so they probably wanted to get out the surprise before it was ruined.
@@scottwagner2566 The very reason I snubbed the original *"Infinity Saga"* from the 90s. As far as I'm concerned, the 1984 12 issue *"Secret Wars"* is the ONLY Marvel event that truly mattered.
@@56postoffice I had to check out anything with Jim Starlin's name on it. That outweighs what I might think of Marvel's "events" in general. Btw, here in Texas we know it's only an event if it involves a fantastic deal on the new model years trucks!
@@56postoffice you're definitely missing out. Infinity Gauntlet is so fun and features incredible art. Don't sleep on it. Age of Apocalypse is also a ton of fun. That said, I think events should rarely happen.
Brilliant series. After Busiek left the book, Fabian Nicieza took over for 40-some issues and the book was still great. For new readers, there are several recent softcovers collecting ALL of Busiek’s run and the first bit of Nicieza’s. Marvel just came out with an Omnibus line for this series, too.
Came to say exactly this: Fabian Nicieza's run was excellent and very faithful to Busiek's vision (kept twists and team dynamics changing), but after those two, all other thunderbolts runs fell short and it never felt like the same team again.
@Tennislove88 I feel the same way. Nothing recaptured the feel those two runs had. Ellis's run was alright, but it definitely felt like something very different. I love the late 90s Heroes return era.
Hard disagree with that one. I remember sticking with the series out of loyalty, but the counter-earth stuff was real rough to push through. I was kind of relieved when the series took a break to become a totally unrelated story about a fight club. The biggest problem is that most of the characters had their "bad guys become heroes" arc finished already. The book just kept inventing nonsense drama to keep them together and it all went nowhere.
Original "Thunderbolts" run was a WONDERFUL change of pace and a breath of fresh are when it came out. The twist of taking the Masters of Evil taking on new identities and pretending to be heroes was just the icing on the cake. Busiek's obvious love for comics was a stark contrast to the deconstructionist mentality that was dominating the industry. Lots of writers love comics, but Busiek is one of those rare writers who just GETS it. I'll buy anything with his name on it.
I actually bought the omnibus from my LCS which collects the first 30 issues, the annual and 1st appearance in Hulk. It was excellent and the rare omnibus I actually finished.
I remember when Mark Bagley had his Spider-Man run, he didn't get the respect that he was due, mainly because he was in the shadows of Todd McFarlane and Erik Larsen, both of whom jumped ship to start Image, and had their mega-successful titles. I think Thunderbolts was when Bagley finally started getting respect as an artist, which is sad, because this was the time when I stopped reading comics. I still pick up an occasional comic from time to time, so I might give this a shot.
didn't get due respect? they got him to draw a whole card set, gave him a new Spider-Man comic to do from scratch, Bagley is the best damn Spider-Man artist ever
Funny how he’s now imo the best modern Spider-Man artist. No one is better. Especially the run on Ultimate which basically cemented Bagley as a legend.
It boggles my mind that the MCU is going to bring Thunderbolts to the screen as a cheap knockoff of Suicide Squad. Imagine if it had been the first movie after Endgame featuring a team of new "heroes" with this twist at the end. It could have been such a great start to a new wave of movies.
Awesome video! I fell in love with Busiek and Bagley's Thunderbolts early on, so I was able to track all the previous issues of this comic book, and I ended up collecting all the run of the first team, all 75 issues, annuals, spin offs... Fabian Nicieza did an awesome job after Kurt Busiek, and even Mark Bagley, left the title. If someone had ever told me that THE BEETLE would become my favorite Marvel character, I would have denied this with every inch of energy I had. But here we are... Yeah, Thunderbolts after that is in name only. Not speaking about that apparent nonsense of a film we're promised. Thunderbolts wasn't great about just the twist, but with these characters and what they ultimately became.
Another great video Chris. I loved the original Thunderbolts and hate the fact that they along with the original New Warriors are treated as if they never existed. Also I was shocked at the way they disposed of Thunderbolts member Charcoal over a legal issue. He was a great Thing/Torch combo and could've been one of the greats. I'd love if you could do a video on the subject. Great job again.
Absolutely love Busiek and Bagely's 'Thunderbolts'. I had only just started reading Marvel comics at the time it was released so the twist reveal didn't really register with me, but I quickly fell in love with the series. The newsagent at the shopping centre in town was the only place I could get issues and I remember missing out on #5 because Marvel were doing #-1 flashback issues that month except for a few titles, so the newsagent only got the flashback issue and not #5 as well.
Thunderbolts was a fantastic book that is the perfect example of a perfect storm of different things happening all at once. The reveal at the end of the issue was great of course. The fact that they managed to incorporate the "deaths" of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers into the story, as the catalyst for the Thunderbolts forming was really clever and made good use of the Onslaught story. The Bolts encountering different heroes and villains during the early issues, all of whom they had relationships with and who the heroes and villains were in the dark about who they were dealing with, made for good reading. It was a really clever concept, executed perfectly, with a great artist on board. What's not to like. I thought it was pretty funny you called Meteorite by her supervillain name, Moonstone, when naming the roster. You just spilled the beans in the first few minutes of the vid. Zemo would be furious.
I think Zemo would be even more furious at the sight of what the Thunderbolts have become (one Suicide Squad ripoff after another). When the group encountered a group of mercenaries using the name "The Masters of Evil", he angrily told them, _"The old Masters - they never were anyone's hirelings, not like you! They were Masters, not slaves! That was the point!"_
I love that all these horrible things the villains had done to The Avengers is capped off by destroying the last surviving photo of Caps mom. Like man even sentimental things aren't safe!? These guys truly are evil!
It’s such a shame that the MCU Thunderbolts is seeming to just ignore the whole villains trying to be heroes aspect in favour of just being another boring team of super soldiers
I loved the original run of the Thunderbolts. When the team was first introduced it was a rare bright spot in an otherwise very dark Marvel Universe, post-Onslaught/Clone Saga/the Crossing/outsourced Avengers and FF books (in short: Marvel's mid-90s identity crisis). It was such a shame to see the book never really receive the love it deserved, although at least it went out with a bang (the Avengers vs the Thunderbolts crossover). Then when New Thunderbolts debuted a few years later, it became my safe haven once again in a Marvel Universe that seemed overrun by Bendises (made the Avengers an utter drag to read and didn't "get" what the book was all about), Millars (too dark), and Brubakers (again too dark, and just not fun). New Thunderbolts, with Fabian Nicieza at the helm was one of the few books in 2005 to capture everything I loved about comic books: good stories that were engaging and involved, but also FUN, plot hooks that had me looking forward to the next issue each and every time (who was this new Swordsman? What is going on with Genis-Vell?), and character dynamics that left me hungry for more after each issue to see where they would go (Joystick was awesome almost reminding me of Mark Gruenwald-era Diamondback at times, the Speed Demon/Blizzard rivalry was great and I was really hoping Blizzard, arguably the biggest babyface on the team, would eventually get his comeuppance against the team's greatest heel, Speed Demon). Both Busiek and Nicieza are just awesome at taking relatively minor characters from Marvel history, and expanding them into full fledged main characters with interesting backstories and personalities that somehow still feel entirely in line with who they were when these characters were relatively minor. It's a shame so many of the characters kinda fell by the wayside after Busiek/Nicieza left. But that seems to have always kinda been the fate of most Thunderbolts. The ones that stuck around were generally those that already had a big presence before they were Thunderbolts (like Zemo), and generally those eventually revert back to their pre-T-bolt identities. I would have loved for Marvel to have given some more love to characters that really got their first opportunity to shine as something other than fodder for Spider-Man and Iron Man or as background characters in the pages of the Thunderbolts. Characters like Joystick, Jolt, Blizzard, Radioactive Man, and Vantage.
You know what's crazy? Your proposal that a person pretending to do something might fall into it because they are technically doing it for real is how I was convinced to watch the FX show "The Americans" because that's how the showrunner pitched it in pre-premiere interviews. One of the greatest TV shows of all time. Not enough people watched it, but it had an amazing run
Watching this video makes me so mad/sad that Marvel Studios are using the lesser Suicide Squad-inspired iteration of the Thunbderbolts roster. It would have been a game changer for comicbook movies to see a film based around a team of villains masquerading as heroes. Oh well.
Great video, keep up the excellent work. Could you do a video on the somewhat short-lived Marvel title "Terror Inc." from the early 90s? It was basically a detective story with a horror theme, but it didn't last long.
The first 75 issues of Thunderbolts is my favourite marvel book of all time. I absolutely fell in love with the characters, Mach-1 and Songbird are my favourite comic book couple, and Zemo is my favourite marvel villain, all because of this book. Really happy to see you giving it some love. Thanks for this one, Chris
I love the thunderbolts that 97 series was a diamond in the rough busiek is so underated as a writer his thunderbolts and avengers books as well as astro city and the atumnlands are masterpieces
I would Say that all the run up to 75 Is great especially the double arc becoming Heroes/villains.. And busiek really loved songbird since he added her in his later Avengers Forever miniserie..
Hey Chris, I read Thunderbolts from the first issue. At the time I was mostly reading Vertigo and indie comics, let's just say that I wasn't a superhero fan but as I had enjoyed Astro City and Marvels, I gave this series a try and was pleasantly surprised. This was an enjoyable comic that brought back fun and intrigue. I loved the twists and character arcs and redemptions. I hope the MCU version is inspired by this comic!
The movie doesn't appear to be inspired by this run. From the looks of it Marvel Studios are just taking the Thunderbolts name, tying it to General "Thunderbolt" Ross, and giving it to a team of B-list second stringers. It's really quite disappointing.
Sadly it seems that it'll go more from Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers and Thunderbolt Ross' iteration as "Marvel's Suicide Squad" with a rumored plot sounding a lot like the first Suicide Squad movie.
By 1997 I was done with mainstream comics and was exclusively buying either indies or European graphic novels. I saw Thunderbolts on the shelves but assumed it was Marvel's version of Suicide Squad and didn't bother. The past year I've been "revisiting" all the titles I passed up in the late '90s/2000s, like Thunderbolts in trade paperbacks. Hmm...memories of the '90s!
@@jackdubz4247 What it reminds me of more than anything is Justice League International, heroes with character flaws (like Booster Gold and Guy Gardner). Of course, that may mostly be Harbour's Red Guardian being a dead ringer for Rocket Red #4.
I really loved the post Dark Reign series where they were time traveling. I know it was really plainly Suicide Squad but something about the characters made me really fall in love with them.
Yeah probably hard to believe for younger fans nowadays but in the 90s Captain America, Iron Man, and the Avengers were not doing well financially and was considered 2nd string books at best by readers. Spiderman, Punisher, and X-Men were what was hot. So they turned these least popular characters over to Jim Lee and Rob Linfield who famously walked away from marvel and made Image comics. With the bankruptcy and low sales alot of these new projects like Thunderbolts was a hail Mary
Discovering the twist of Thunderbolts in the shop when I went to pick up my weekly books literally made my jaw drop. I am still impressed to this day that they managed to convince Marvel to keep it under wraps until the issue released.
part of the reason I am not excited about the MCU's take on the Thunderbolts is that it seems so basic and haphazard. There's no dynamic to those characters as a unit. There doesn't appear to be anything interesting to do with them on a character level like Busiek did with Gen 1 Thunderbolts. I would love to see Songbird done right, but it would require a lot of backstory, and I don't know which hero's movie or TV show she would have to be introduced in since she doesn't have enough name appeal to exist on her own. Oh well. I have my Busiek collections to fall back on, but a man can dream.
It's really too bad that the concept of the Thunderbolts has devolved from a team of reformed villains becoming heroes and doing good things of their own volition into instead being a wannabe Suicide Squad (an irritating status quo that was kicked off by, what else, Civil War)
The MCU made a mistake not doing this version of thunderbolts. Can you imagine the twist ending of issue 1 used on the stinger at the end of it's first movie. You would grab watchers for the next movie. They would be hooked to see what happens next.
