Becoming Villains, Part 3: Souls in Balance

As part of their mission to save Counter-Earth, the Thunderbolts have sent Mach-3 (Abner Jenkins) and Jolt (Hallie Takahama) to investigate the massive crater that used to be Paris, France.[1] The cause of the destruction is unknown, all Mach-3’s scanners can say is that the crater is giving off a radiation signature similar to the one they encountered in Tokyo.[2]

Just above the danger zone, Mach-3 deploys a series of probes that scan the area. They pick up people in the energy soup below. Hallie suggests they go back and get help, but Abner refuses to leave the people below to suffer. Since the energy would rip Jolt’s bio-electric form to shreds, Jenkins flies in alone.

Once he has passed through the energy cloud, he is shocked to find the city still in tact. Worse, the citizens of Paris have been transformed into some kind of ghosts. When they spot Mach-3, a crowd of people begin swarming him, pleading for him to help them escape the pain. Abe doesn’t know how to help and tries to blast off, but the frightened mob rips the wings off his flight suit causing him to crash hard and get swarmed once more.

Three hours later, a ship carrying the rest of the Thunderbolts — Baron (Helmut) Zemo, Fixer (Norbert Ebersol), and Atlas (Dallas Riordan/Erik Josten) arrives at the scene. Jolt quickly gets them up to date and that she has lost contact with Abe some time ago. The Fixer scans the area and discovers that Mach-3 is the only life sign down there moving around. The “people” he has been encountering are nothing more than images conjured up from alphy rhythems (brain waves) that are trapped in the energy field. With a copy of Abner’s EEG that they have taken, the Fixer should be able to rig up a device that can connect with his mind and help him see the truth.

Down below, Abe believes he is fleeing from the mob through the streets of Paris. As he is running for his life he notices that a nearby payphone is ringing and answers it. It’s Norbert, who tries to convince Abe that everything that he is experiencing is the left over brainwaves of a dead city. As the mob gets closer, Abner is forced to continue running further. He is once again stopped in his tracks when his fellow Thunderbolts appear on the computer monitors in a window display of an electronics store.[3] Zemo takes point and explains to Abner that these are the left over minds of the people of France and the only way Jenkins is going to get out of there is by convincing everyone that they are dead and beyond help.

As Abner tries to figure out how to do this, a loud voice protests with enough strength to make the monitors explode in this astral realm, and cause the Thunderbolts outside to cover their ears in agony. This voice has come from two impossibly large humanoid figures who have appeared over the remains of Paris. One of them is a male figure with sharp teeth and black skin, who is connected at the shoulder with a female white female form. They introduce themselves as “The Rip”, physical embodiments of order and chaos. They explained that they have been sent to over see the balance of order and chaos in order to judge if Counter-Earth is worthy of continued existence. They warn the Thunderbolts that their continued interference in this matter will force them to judge Counter-Earth sooner than later.

The Rip also confirms that their arrival on this world was the reason for the disaster that wiped Paris off the map to begin with. In order to prevent a spatial anomaly from expanding and destroying the planet, they created a cosmic “cork” to plug it, trapping the minds of those who died when the city was destroyed. They have to remain like this for the greater good of the planet.

However, Mach-3 refuses to allow the people of Paris to continue suffering their torment. Freed from the mental trap, he discovers that his flight suit is fully intact. He flies up into the air and attacks the Rip, but they are able to incapacitate him. As they are warning the Thunderbolts to not interfere, Abner transmits data to the rest of the team that his scanners were able to pick up. After examining it, the Fixer confirms that this could help free the trapped minds and tells the others to distract the Rip while he gets to work on this plan.

While Jolt and Atlas leave the ship to keep the Rip occupied, Mach-3 returns to what is left of Paris. He tells the suffering people there that they have already died and beyond saving. He then launches some drones that unleash an electro-magnetic pulse that causes the barrier of energy to dissipate, finally allowing the people of Paris to die.

The Rip are furious and warn the heroes that they have unleashed a danger that will consume them all. Suddenly the two beings are overwhelmed by a new source of energy forcing them to transform into two balls of energy — one black and one light — that are collected by the one responsible. It is a man in a suit of armor calling himself Anomaly, referring to the Rip as his mother and father, he promises them that he has come to save the world![4]

Recurring Characters

Thunderbolts (Baron Zemo, Moonstone, Mach-3, Fixer, Atlas (Josten/Riordan), Jolt), Anoimaly, O, K

Continuity Notes

1. This team of Thunderbolts have been stranded on Counter-Earth since Thunderbolts #59. They had decided to remain there and try and save the planet in issue #62. Prior to their arrival, Counter-Earth has been decimated by various cosmic level catastrophies as seen in the Heroes Reborn one-shots Doomsday, Ashema, Rebel, Masters of Evil, Remnants, Young Allies (where the destruction of France took place) and Doom #1.

2. Tokyo was left in ruins by a series of cosmic storms that the Thunderbolts stopped in Thunderbolts #64. After evacuating the city, they nuked it in order to stop the storms from expanding beyond Japan, as seen in issue #66.

3. It’s here that Abner notices that in the astral plane he appears as a Black man instead of in his original Caucasian appearance. Prior to this story, Abner had recently undergone a face-lift that changed his ethnicity, as seen in Thunderbolts #36. This will remain his status quo until Avengers/Thunderbolts #1.

4. Anomaly is Koyami Sazaki, a young Japanese man who refused to leave Tokyo when the Thunderbolts were trying to evacuate in issue #64. He was consumed and transformed in the nuclear fire that destroyed his home city in issue #66.

Topical References

• Mach-3 is depicted answering a pay phone on the street to communicate with Fixer in this story. While payphones were quite common in 2003 when this comic was originally published, they have since become less common as more and more people have gotten access to cell phones. Typically, this would be considered a topical reference, however one could assume that the Fixer created a the objects to interact with Abe in his mind and intentionally used dated technology to get his attention. Which would also explain away the dated camcorders and CRT monitors later seen in this story as well.