Thunderbolts #111
Faith in Monsters, Part 2
Earlier
Norman Osborn, the new director of the Thunderbolts, continues his one-on-one interviews with his team. After interviewing Bullseye and Moonstone (Karla Sofen), he has moved onto Songbird (Melissa Gold).[1] Melissa comes into it with assurances she was made by the government by signing up. Osborn informs her that they lied and that he is the one in charge. He has a hard time trying to figure out what to do with her since she did technically betray SHIELD to Baron Zemo.[2] However, she is the public face of the Thunderbolts and a marketing gold mind. So he decides to keep her on the team. He tells her that she will serve for a year or two and then will be let go with a full pardon, all a bunch of money, and a new life. Seeing that she has no choice, Melissa accepts these terms.
Now
The Thunderbolts — Songbird, Moonstone, Radioactive Man (Chen Lu), Penance (Robbie Baldwin), Venom (Mac Gargan), and the Swordsman (Andreas Von Strucker) — have been deployed to Cleveland, Ohio to locate and capture an unregistered superhuman in the area.[3] Jack Flag (Jack Harrison), a former ally of Captain America, believes that they have come for him.[4] After sending his girlfriend Lucy to stay with her mother, Jack suits up to confront the Thunderbolts directly. As the team leaves their ship (the Zeus) to confront him, Moonstone notices the media has appeared to record the confrontation. This annoys Karla as she hoped to just shoot Jack and be done with it, but now they have to place nice for the cameras. She orders the team to get into position and for Radioactive Man to use his powers to put microwaves in the gas tanks of nearby cars. Karla explains that she will spin it to make it seem like Jack Flag mined them for an ambush. She wants to get things shut down quickly as she has a date with a dockworker back at base for meaningless sex. She then mockingly says she might get the man to dress up like Baron Zemo as a dig to Melissa.
When Jack tells them to come at him, Radioactive Man detonates all the cars around him. Although Flag is injured, he manages to get back up on his feet. He is then ambushed by Swordsman, but punches through his sword. Jack then kicks the broken blade, sending it sinking into Venom’s chest. This angers Venom and his symbiote increases his size and mass as he closes in for the attack. However, before Venom can eat Jack alive, Moonstone orders their handlers to activate the nanochain that keeps the Thunderbolts in line. The jolt of electricity incapacitates both Venom. This allows Jack Flag to make a run for it but he is pursed by Songbird. However, Melissa has a hard time following him in the thick smoke of the blown up cars. That’s when Jack grabs a manhole cover and tosses it as Captain America would his shield. The cover bounces up and strikes Melissa in the throat cutting off her powers and causing her to crash land. She then orders Penance to fire up his powers and clear a path. Pushing down on the spikes on the inside of his costume, Penance does as told, and the energy blast strikes Jack in the back. This staggers him for only a brief moment and he continues running.
However, when he arrives at a police cordon, Jack decides that he’s not desperate enough to fight the cops just yet. Instead, he tries to duck into a nearby building. However, that’s where Bullseye — the Thunderbolt’s secret weapon — is waiting for him. He stabs one of his sias into Jack’s back, destroying his cauda equina, saying that Flag won’t walk again.[5] With Jack down, Bullseye and his handlers covertly return to the ship while the rest of the Thunderbolts carry Jack out. Moonstone uses the gathered media to spin the story to make it seem like Jack was responsible for the explosions and the electrocution of Venom during the fight. Once they are back aboard the Zeus and out of the public eye, Swordsman spends the flight back beating on Jack for breaking his sword earlier. Nearly catatonic with pain from his injuries all Flag can do is weakly call out for his girlfriend Lucy.
The whole battle is watched on TV by Norman Osborn who recognizes the mission for the shit show that it is. His secretary comes in and gives the next list of unregistered humans that the government want brought in.[6] When she mentions the Scarlet Spider, Norman thinks he hears her say the name of his arch-nemesis, Spider-Man. This causes Norman to start sweating profusely and becoming disorientated.[7] When the secretary confirms she did not say Spider-Man, Norman pulls out medication he takes for his mental health and takes two medications at once, ignoring the warning on the labels that say they should not be taken together.
Recurring Characters
Thunderbolts (Norman Osborn, Songbird, Moonstone, Radioactive Man, Swordsman, Venom, Penance, Bullseye), Jackflag
Continuity Notes
Norman Osborn mentions how Songbird used to be the criminal called Screaming Mimi, this was her name she took when she first appeared in Marvel Two-In-One #54.
Here, Osborn goes over Melissa’s association with Baron Zemo:
At first, he confuses Helmut Zemo with his father, Heinrich, mentioning that he was an enemy of Captain America back in 1944. Heinrich is notorious for being the one responsible for Captain America going missing in suspended animation for decades, as per Avengers #4. Surviving until the present day, Heinrich died fighting his mortal foe in Avengers #15.
His son Helmut appeared on the scene in Captain America #168, but did not become the new Baron Zemo until issue #275. He first associated with Melissa when he recruited her into his Masters of Evil, as seen in Avengers #271. He later chose her for his original line up of the Thunderbolts, as detailed in Thunderbolts Annual 1997.
Osborn is distorting an inconvenient truth, Melissa had recently got romantically involved with Baron Zemo, as revealed in Thunderbolts #101. However, this was to get close enough to him to put him down if he broke bad again. The two worked together to help stop the Grandmaster from taking control of the Wellspring of Power, as seen in Thunderbolts #106-108.
This story takes place after the passage of the Super Human Registration Act (SHRA) in Civil War #1. As the name suggests, it requires superheroes to register with the government. Those who refused would be branded as criminals and hunted down. This law will remain in effect until Siege #4.
Of course they mention that Jack worked with Captain America for a hot minute. If you want to check it out for yourself it happened in Captain America #434-443.
Bullseye stabbing Jack Flag from behind with a sai is a callback to the iconic scene where he killed Elektra from Daredevil #181. Although Bullseye states that Jack won’t walk again, his spine will eventually be healed in Guardians of the Galaxy (vol. 2) #10.
When the secretary comes to Norman with the government’s list of unregistered superhumans, she tells him that the intel on them is patchy, which explains a lot since some of these people were not active at the time this story was published.
The Black Fox: Was indeed active at this time, appearing in Irredeemable Ant-Man #7-12.
The Scarlet Spider: An odd choice since the original Scarlet Spider (Ben Reilly, a clone of Peter Parker) was killed in Spider-Man #75 and wouldn’t resurface until Free Comic Book Day 2016: Captain America #1. At the time of this story, there were three clones of Michael Van Patrick who were going by the name the Scarlet Spiders since Avengers: The Initiative #3, but they are registered with the government.
Digger and Dansen Macabre were both active criminals at this time and will be seen next in Marvel Zombies 4 #2.
Purple Mask, also known as Laughing Mask, a hero that was primarily active during World War II. He first appeared in Daring Mystery Comics #2. However, he and a number of other wartime heroes have been MIA as they had been captured by the Nazis and put in suspended animation in a bunker that will not be unearthed until The Twelve #1.
Battlestar, aka Lamar Hoskin, former partner of John Walker (aka US Agent). Lamar has been branded an outlaw for not registering with the government and was part of the anti-SHRA heroes as seen in Civil War: Front Line #3-4, 6 and Civil War #6-7. He will remain at large until the SHRA is repealed in Siege #4.
Norman Osborn has a long history of fighting Spider-Man in his alter-ego the Green Goblin dating back to Amazing Spider-Man #14. The rivalry has become incredibly personal after Norman and Peter discovered each other’s secret identities in Amazing Spider-Man #39-40 and that Norman is the father of Peter’s good friend Harry.
Topical References
The medications that Norman Osborn is taking are labelled as Tegretol and Lithane. This should be considered topical references as these are brand names for drugs. In this case the drugs generic names are Carbamazepine and Lithium respectively. At the time this story was published both of these drugs were used to treat individuals with bio-polar disorder.