Thunderbolts: Lightning in a Bottle

It was the late 90s. The comic book bubble had burst. Marvel was in financial trouble. Things were desperate. They needed to generate interest in their books. This was the time that Marvel tried to shake things with their Heroes Reborn initiative that saw troubled Marvel flagships like the Avengers and Fantastic Four reimagined by two of Image Comics biggest stars, Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. I’ve discussed this move at length in other primers. The short version is that it was short sighted and while it initially generated a lot of interest up front, the sale flagged and there was a sense of buyers remorse as readers realized that these characters were pillars of the Marvel Universe.

This was because, while the Avengers and FF were sent to a pocket dimension, hardly any of their foes went with them. So now you had a Marvel Universe that is missing all of its heavy hitters and all of their rogues on the loose. The only big name heroes that were left were the X-Men family of books, Spider-Man and Daredevil. Two thirds of these characters were usually busy with their own personal shit to deal with the plethora of villains that were still out there.

Marvel decided to fill that void by introducing a handful of brand new books to fill that void in 1997. Off the top of my head they were second volumes of Marvel Team-Up, Alpha Flight, a third volume of Ka-Zar, a Heroes for Hire revival, a Maverick and Quicksilver solo series, and lastly a brand new property called the Thunderbolts.

The series was the mastermind of Kurt Busiek who was building up as a writer throughout the 1990s. He was the guy who brought you Marvels, he did Untold Tales of Spider-Man, and would go on to revitalize both the Avengers and Iron Man after Heroes Reborn.

The characters were first teased in Incredible Hulk #449 and in the Tales of the Marvel Universe one-shot. At first they appeared to be just a brand new team of heroes. Nothing special. However, as readers discovered in the first issue of Thunderbolts was that they were really the Masters of Evil in disguise. They were going to trick the world into thinking the were heroes as part of a nefarious plot to take over the world at a time when most of its heroes were believed to be dead.

According to an interview he gave in issue #72 of Wizard Magazine, Busiek stated that his original idea was to have the Masters of Evil slowly infiltrate the Avengers one by one until the entire team was populated with villains. But it didn’t feel quite right to him. It didn’t hit the way he wanted it to. Onslaught and Heroes Reborn gave him the avenue to revamp the idea and what we got was the Thunderbolts.

The concept was a huge hit and with Busiek at the helm we got an interesting spin on the superhero team dynamic. He was joined on the book by fan favorite artist Mark Bagley, who was best known at the time for his work on Amazing Spider-Man.

The series was a massive hit.

The first twelve issues dealt with Baron Zemo’s plans to trick the world into thinking they were superheroes in order to gain access to all the crime databases of the world. While this may have been a slow burn back when the issues were printed on a monthly basis, reading it now in one sitting it doesn’t feel quite like the slow burn it needed to be. I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that Heroes Reborn came to an end and the Avengers and FF were brought back to the mainstream Marvel Universe. Reading these stories now, I feel like end of this arc seems anti-climatic. The villains were trying to juggle their master plan and things were starting to catch up with them. Rather than getting caught, Baron Zemo pulls the plug when he achieved what he wanted. Which, to me, is kind of a let down.

Regardless, where this series shines is that it takes a bunch of villains who otherwise wouldn’t get much work other than being the foil of the month, and get to develop them. You learn about their back stories, about their hopes and dreams, their fears and insecurities. You see them try to be heroes and realize that it is more rewarding than being a criminal. So it becomes less a story about Baron Zemo’s master plan and more a story about redemption. They made d-list villains like the Beetle and Screaming Mimi into interesting and complex characters.

After Zemo exposes them the team then finds themselves on the run and are taken under the wing of Hawkeye, who has left the Avengers. The famous bowman sees potential in the group and decides to keep them on the straight and narrow and have them achieve as the heroes they’ve always wanted to be.

I also like the fact that Busiek went all out when it came to finding foes for the Thunderbolts to fight. He had pretty much the entire Marvel toy chest to work with and so you have these massive battles between the Thunderbolts against a new Masters of Evil team that includes characters like Man-Killer, Tiger Shark, Flying Tiger, and the like. Villains that were z-list at best getting a chance to shine.

Another interesting story about the Thunderbolts series was the addition of the character Charcoal. In the 90s, one of the best comic book resources was Wizard Magazine. It started off as a comics price guide with a few articles about comics but soon blew up into a major player in the industry. At the height of its popularity, Wizard would have special offers for exclusive mail-in comics as well as huge contests. One such contest was to design a new villain for Marvel Comics. The winners were Wallace and Nadja Frost, whose creation called Charcoal was selected as the winner. It was supposed to be a one-and-done appearance, but Kurt Busiek liked the character so much that he made recurring appearances in the title, becoming a full member of the Thunderbolts team.

The character went on to be something of a internet lore surrounding the contest and an alleged legal challenge from the Frost’s regarding the ownership of Charcoal. No surprise that a lot of this stemmed from slip-shot research over at CBR getting it wrong a lot of the facts behind the incident were misrepresented all over the internet. It stems from when the character was killed off in the 2001 issue of Thunderbolts. It’s been believed that the character was killed off because of the threat of legal action. As it turned out, writer Fabian Nicieza stated that his decision to kill off the character wasn’t intended for that reason. It was later decided that Marvel editorial decided to cancel plans to resurrect the character later because of the issues they were having.

According to the Appendix, Kurt Busiek commented on it himself on his Formspring page in 2013. Unfortunately, the original post has been lost to the memory hole of the internet, but I trust the source. At any rate, Busiek stated that the issue had been settled but since the creators were being really shitty about ownership then editor Tom Brevoort opted to keep the character dead, and dead he has remained among the deceased for well over 20 years as I write this. However, reprints of the stories featuring Charcoal have been made available (especially digitally) in more recent years. So it seems to me that the Frost’s either settled or gave up on their attempt at legal claim.

There is some hearsay about how the contract that the contest winners signed wasn’t quite as clear as it should be. I’m trying to track down the truth online by, you know, checking actual evidence then making assumptions like CBR did. However, regardless of what the reality was, this is a pure case of not biting the hand that feeds you. Especially knowing what I know about the comic book industry and their usual work-for-hire ways where they own all characters lock stock and barrel now. The Frost’s weren’t exactly Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel here. Yeah, it sucks they don’t own the character they created but at the same time, it was a contest out of a magazine best known for making low brow dick and fart jokes and ogling comic book cheese cake, what were you expecting?

In addition, Busiek is a fountain of knowledge when it comes to continuity and he blend his encyclopedia knowledge of the lore and still presents stories that are easily accessible to new readers. It’s a delightful read.

Of the entire decade of, I would argue that Thunderbolts was the best idea to come out of the 1990s.