Explanations! The End of the Beginning…

The Thunderbolts (Hawkeye/Clint Barton, Jolt/Hallie Takahama, Moonstone/Karla Sofen, Mach-2/Abner Jenkins, Songbird/Melissa Gold, and Charcoal/Charlie Burlingame) have finally captured Scourge, the assassin who has been targeting the team for weeks now.[1] However, the situation is made complicated when Jolt lets everyone know that their leader, Hawkeye, lied when he offered to help them get the Commission on Superhuman Activities to pardon their criminal backgrounds.[2] Clint admits that he lied to them, but he did really go to the CSA and they turned them down. Despite that, he still thought they were able to reform and he now considers them all friends. That’s when Moonstone suggests that they take this discussion and Scourge away from the Denver Airport before the authorities arrive.

The team quickly retreats back to their crash-landed jump ship that is acting as their temporary headquarters.[3] There, Moonstone discovers that Scourge is wearing some kind of holographic device to make him look like Steve Rogers (aka Captain America) to hide his true identity. When she rips the device off his neck, the holographic mask is removed and Clint recognizes him as Jack Monroe, a former partner to Captain America as well as the vigilante known as Nomad. Which comes as a shock to everyone because word was that Monroe was dead.[4]

As the Thunderbolts are making this discovery other events are transpiring that will have an impact on their lives. At their former headquarters, hidden inside Mount Charteris, a SHIELD team has been working on securing the facility. The field commander, G.W. Bridge, is soon contacted by Director Sharon Carter who tells him that they will be handing things over to the CSA, much to Bridge’s chagrin.[5] Observing these developments is the Ogre, who has been hiding in a tesseract chamber. After the disaster of revealing himself to the Thunderbolts, he reminds himself that he cannot do so again if wishes to make sure a powerful mutant is no unleashed upon the world.[6]

While in Cliff’s Edge, Virginia, Citizen V (John Watkins III) is training a new team of government backed superhumans: The new Meteorite (Valerie Barnhardt), the Beetle, Scream, as well as the new Smuggler. After their their training session Citizen V commends them on working well, but more work needs to be done for them to be an effective team, not to mention the each member getting pardons from the government. Watkins hopes that their final member will be able to make the team more efficient. That’s when they are visited by agent Warton, who tells them that their last recruit has finally awoken and wants to talk deal.[7]

Meanwhile, at Castle Masada in the nation of Symkaria, the V-Battalion have brought in investigative reporter Andrea Sterman. She was taken in by the Penance Council because she is also investigating a conspiracy within the United States government involving Scourge and a hard air process called Omega-32, and it had put her life at risk.[8] They have brought her here to help expose the conspiracy. They then introduce Andrea to someone else that’s helping them out, Val Cooper from the CSA.

Back in the Rockies, the Thunderbolts are trying to question Jack Monroe, but some kind of cybernetic relays in his costume prevent him from telling them who his employer is. Jolt is unsurprised to hear this given Monroe’s long history of having his mind played with. An expert on superheroes, Hallie tells her teammates how Jack’s career started in the 1950s as the partner of 4th Captain America. He fought crime as Bucky, but the Super Soldier Serum they injected themselves with was incomplete and they eventually turned into mad anti-communists who started attacking American citizens. The government shut them down and put the duo in suspended animation where they remained for decades until someone freed them in more recent times. They fought the original Captain America and the Falcon, who took them down. She goes on to tell them how Jack got his mind straight and, for a time, was a partner to the original Captain America as Nomad for a while. Eventually, Jack became a solo vigilante who was much more violent than he had been in the past. He eventually uncovered a Neo-Nazi group that had ties to his past that was secretly being run by Senator Bart Ingrid. As far as Jolt understood, Nomad reportedly died assassinating Ingrid and shutting down his operation, but apparently that was incorrect.[9]

Moonstone then speaks up, pointing out that the rest of the team is less interested in his past, and are more concerned as to why he was targeting the Thunderbolts to begin with. Mach-2 then tells the others that he may have figured out part of the mystery. His scanners have detected that Jack is being controlled by nanites and that he has picked up the frequency they get their commands from so and uses an on board device to cut off the signal. Once free from the nanites control, Jack collapses to the ground. As he regains his strength, he vows to make the person who enslaved him pay for what he has done.

He then explains the rest of the story to the Thunderbolts. At the same time, Andrea Sterman is telling the same story to Val Cooper based on the information she has gathered from her investiagation. Between both tales, a full picture of the events that unfolded became clear. After Bart Ingrid’s murder, Jack was put in suspended animation by his friend, FBI agent Vernon Hatchway. Hatchway did so in secret so Jack had time to heal from his injuries and to give the country time to forget what he had done. However, a few years later, someone located Jack’s cryo-chamber and removed it from Vernon’s hiding place. Jack was then awoken by scientists who told him that he had been infected with nanites that will allow them to control him. He was told that he would be an assassin and that his targets were the Thunderbolts. He was given a complete dossier on the group, learning that the founding members were all former members of Baron Zemo’s Masters of Evil and how their initial motivation for being heroes was a secret plot to take over the world. However, Jack became very aware that while this was a government operation, it was at the behest of someone’s personal vendetta.

Jack was then given an arsenal of confiscated weapons used by super-villains and trained in their use. Among these weapons was a hard-air process called Omega-32 which was used to create Scourge’s untraceable bullets. It was developed in secret by Roxxon and based on the powers of the mutant member of Alpha Flight known as Windshear (aka Colin Hume). As Scourge, Jack was forced to eliminate those who found out about the project that could potentially leak his mission to the world. Scourge was then given the order of targets who were current and former members of the Thunderbolts to be eliminated in a specific order. The man who ordered these assassinations was Henry Gyrich of the Commission on Superhuman Affairs. When Hawkeye and the others ask why Gyrich ordered them eliminted, Jack tells them that Henry only said he wanted them dead because he could so order it.[10] Gyrich has harbored a hatred of superhumans for years and the Thunderbolts were the opportune subjects to go after as part of a larger plan to wipe out every superpowered individual on the planet. Clint always knew Henry was a jerk, but he didn’t think it was this bad.[11]

What becomes clear is that Henry Gyrich needs to be shut down. For the Thunderbolts, this could be what finally redeems the team. Hawkeye and the others all come to the conclusion that they have to shut this down on their own, with no outside help. For the V-Battallion, this confirms Roger Aubrey’s original plan to have Gyrich assassinated.[12] However, they have a contingency plan in place with the Redeemer program that they have been secretly facilitating within the United States government.

At that very moment, the Redeemers are having a team meeting at their Cliff’s Edge facility in Virginia. Citizen V has gathered the Beetle, Meteorite, Scream, and the Smuggler to meet their final recruit, P. Norbert Ebersol, aka the Fixer!

Primary Characters

Thunderbolts (Hawkeye, Moonstone, Songbird, Mach-2, Charcoal, Jolt), Redeemers (Citizen V (Watkins/Zemo), Beetle, Fixer, Meteorite, Scream, Smuggler), Scourge, Henry Gyrich, Val Cooper, V-Battalion (Fred Davis, Betty Barstow, Roger Aubrey, Iron Cross, Nuklo, Topspin, Goldfire, Miles Warton, Andrea Sterman), SHIELD (Sharon Carter, GW Bridge), Ogre, Humus Sapien

Continuity Notes

1. Scourge has been targeting the Thunderbolts since issue #34, leaving a trail of mostly death and destruction in his wake. However many of his targets have cheated their fate:

   • The first victim was Jolt who was shot in Thunderbolts #34. However, that was one of those “faint spark of life” situations and she was revived by Techno in issue #46.

   • The second was Baron Zemo who Scourge decapitated in Thunderbolts #39. However, Zemo cheated death by having his mind transferred into the body of John Watkins III, the current Citizen V, as will be explained in Citizen V and the V-Battalion #3 and 62 respectively.

   • Techno was also destroyed in Thunderbolts #46. However, this wasn’t the real Techno but a robot with his copied memories that took his place circa Thunderbolts #8 as we’ll see at the end of this issue. However, the explanation for his resurrection won’t be provided until issue #62 as well.

   • Atlas also seemingly perished thanks to Scourge’s interference in Thunderbolts #47. However, his ionic form will merge with Dallas Riordan in issue #57.

   • Scourge also murdered reporter Gayle Rogers and Bobbie Haggart in issues #35 and 36 respectively. Since they aren’t superheroes or villains I think its safe to say they’ll remain dead.

2. When Hawkeye first convinced the Thunderbolts to let him lead the team in Thunderbolts #21, he said that doing so would help them eventually get a pardon for their past crimes. However, his proposal to the CSA was rejected.

3. The Thunderbolts have had to flee their former headquarters, located within Mount Charteris last issue because SHIELD had raided the facility.

4. We’ll get into Nomad’s backstory in a second, what I want to focus on here is that Charcoal quips “I can’t wait until the first time I get killed…” which turn out to be ironic as he will be killed off in Thunderbolts #56 and, at least time of this writing (August, 2023), they character has not been resurrected. I’ll get into the reason why in my index entry of that issue.

5. At the time of this story, Nick Fury appointed Sharon as the new Director of SHIELD while he went on a solo mission, that happened in Captain America (vol. 3) #31. She will fill this role until Fury’s return in issue #45 of that series.

6. Shortly after the Ogre revealed himself to the Thunderbolts he was put in stasis and impersonated by Techno in Thunderbolts #33. Ogre managed to get free when Techno was killed in issue #46 and went immediately into hiding. The mutant he’s keeping contained is called Humus Sapiens as we’ll learn in issues #54-55.

7. The identities and motivations for the this new group will be revealed in later issues. They are:

   • Meteorite: Is a former member of the US Navy who beat up a commanding officer who tried to rape her, paralyzing him in the process. The Navy believed his side of the story over hers and she was dishonorably discharged. This will be revealed in Thunderbolts #55.

   • The new Beetle is revealed to be Leila Davis, aka the villain Hardshell in Thunderbolts #56. Her wearing the Beetle armor is ironic since she sought to avenge her lover, the Ringer, who was previously humiliated by the original Beetle. See Spectacular Spider-Man #58, Deadly Foes of Spider-Man #1-4 and Lethal Foes of Spider-Man #1-4.

   • Scream is actually what’s left of Angar the Screamer who seemingly died from a gunshot wound back in Thunderbolts Annual 1997, his true identity won’t be revealed until Thunderbolts #59.

   • The Smuggler is Conrad Josten, the brother of Erik Josten aka Atlas. As explained in Thunderbolts #17, when Erik first became a criminal it ruined his family’s reputation. This led to Conrad to run away from home and disappeared. Conrad is using the Smuggler alias as it was briefly used by his brother between Spectacular Spider-Man #49 to Iron Man Annual #7. Conrad’s true identity will be revealed next issue.

   • The final member is the Fixer, as we’ll learn at the end of this issue. The CSA discovered both him and Scream when they raided Baron Zemo’s former hideout, as will be explained in Thunderbolts #59.

8. This conspiracy has been on going since issue #34. Andra Sterman was hired by Bobbie Haggard’s brother to investigate her murder back in Thunderbolts #41. Roger Aubrey saved her from an assassination attempt last issue.

9. Lots of Nomad lore in this exposition dump, so lets get it all out of the way:

   • Jack Monroe’s adventures as the Bucky of the 1950s were originally chronicled in Young Men #24-28, Men’s Adventures #26-28, and Captain America Comics #76-78.

   • The bit about the impure Super-Soldier Serum and Jack’s clash with Captain America and the Falcon were covered in Captain America #153-156.

   • Jack got his head straight and fought alongside the original Captain America from Captain America #281-306 and again in Captain America #337-334.

   • Jack had become more prone to violence starting in Captain America #325, but his real vigilante period began in Nomad #1-4.

   • The Neo-Nazi group tied to Nomad’s past and the assassination of Bart Ingrid happened in Nomad (vol. 2) #22-25. What the Thunderbolts don’t know is that after Ingrid’s murder, Jack was put back in suspended animation until he was released more recently by his handler, as will be explained next issue.

10. Next issue we learn that Gyrich himself was being forced to do this by Hydra.

11. Clint’s encounters with Gyrich came mostly from his time as the Avengers’ government liaison from Avengers #168 until Raymond Sikorski took over the role in issue #238 of that series. He was a complete dick to the team and hampered their operations more often than not.

12. Aubrey plotted to assassinate Gyrich (although he wasn’t named back then) in Thunderbolts #35. At the time, Citizen V (Dallas Riordan) refused to take a human life, putting her on the outs with the V-Battalion.

Topical References

• Val Cooper complains about how they are working with Andrea Sterman, saying that she “schilled her last book on the Jerry Springer Show”. The Jerry Springer Show was a daytime talk show best known for its “trashy” content, usually featuring bizarre instances of infidelity, romance, and other tabu subjects and best known for the brawls that would often break out during tapings. It ran from 1991 to 2018. This, and the fact that Jerry Springer died in 2023 makes this a topical reference.