By: Jeff Parker (writer), Declan Shalvey (art), Frank Martin, Jr. (colors), Joe Caramagna (letters), Rachel Pinnelas (assistant editor) & Tom Brennan (editor)
The Story: Luke Cage’s remaining Thunderbolts try to track down the escaped members of the team.
Review: Even though this is one of the dreaded Point One issues from Marvel, it quite well. I don’t think Marvel Editorial really needs to make Jeff Parker do Point One issues because all of his issues are decent jumping on points in that he covers enough ground in each issue that a reader is “caught up” within an issue or two. A better approach might be to just advertise every issue as “No jumping on point needed.” Or examine why writing for the trade has created a perception that you cannot just jump into a story…
As always, our story is romping along. The interactions among the remaining Thunderbolts are fun as Luke, Songbird, Ghost and Mach IV try to find the escapees, especially a page where they’re discussing how to take them down when they find them. Luke’s plan consists of “hitting ’em all in the head until they cry” and when it is suggested that Ghost would “probably” be able to take out Centurius (the escapees’ science guy), Ghost counters, “QUITE probably.” I love cocky Ghost. And, speaking of Ghost, it’s interesting that he’s hanging around with the team given that all the other questionable members have escaped because it just shows how Ghost is kinda his own dude: not really a villain, but not devoted to the Thunderbolts cause either, you just know he’ll leave the second it suits his anarchist/anti-corporate code.
The ending of the issue is also pretty cool as it promises some development of the Troll character that Parker introduced ~20 issues ago. Parker’s so good at that: Introduce a new character, make him/her cool, possibly get some fan feedback about whether they like the character, tease us with little appearances here and there and then finally offer some development. Hating to compare to “normal” comics, but it illustrates why Thunderbolts is so special…. A “normal” comic would have introduced Troll and then immediately have a 6-issue arc where she is fleshed out and introduced to the team.
And, what more can be said about the Declan Shalvey/Frank Martin, Jr. art team? I love all the layouts, the energetic characters and nice coloring where everything doesn’t have highlights all over it.
Even the one part in this issue that I didn’t love had a lot of redeeming factors. About halfway through the issue, we get a Songbird dream sequence that details the Thunderbolt’s history with a special focus on Baron Zemo. I’m not a big fan of dream-sequences generally and didn’t know if we needed quite this much history on the Thunderbolts. Who cares if Hawkeye used to lead the team? But, it did introduce a concept of the Thunderbolt’s “Mount Rushmore” that shows the busts of major leaders and features a double page spread of Shalvey drawing most (all?) of the Thunderbolts.
Conclusion: This story just keeps rolling along. There is a little speed-bump with some recap due to it being a Point One issue, but Parker does his best to make an editorial mandate work to service his story rather than just surrendering. It’d be nice to see Marvel stop the Point One issues. Their quality has been all over the map and many aren’t even good “jumping on points”. If they want an extra sale, just double-ship the title (which they aren’t adverse to doing).
Grade: B
-Dean Stell
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