T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #2 – Review

By: Nick Spencer (writer), Wes Craig & Jerry Ordway (artist), Hi-Fi & Chris Beckett (colorists)

The Story: All I’m saying is if Demo grows a tiny mustache on his upper lip, I’m outta here.

The Review: Spencer is an interesting beast of a writer.  From his work on Morning Glories and Supergirl, you know he can weave some of the more engrossing, layered plots this side of modern comics.  He can also go wholeheartedly for the silly and heartfelt, as we’ve seen in his tremendous Jimmy Olsen.  Both of those sides of his writing character seem to come together in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, which can be totally sophisticated with the most outlandish material.

And you don’t get much more outlandish than “underground green-skinned nomads, who hid from the surface population for the better part of a millennium.”  It’s these kinds of concepts that made the Silver Age such a wonderfully bizarre period, a perfect feeding ground for comics.  But Spencer not only works such concepts into his story as an homage to earlier times; he gives them fresh spins to make them feel not only up-to-date, but relevant.

Consider his portrayal of the Subterraneans, who retain most of their goony appearance, yet now have a very overt political bent to them.  It’s no coincidence that at a time when the stability of Middle Eastern nations is in flux due to uprisings both nobly and criminally motivated, Spencer chooses to write the Subterraneans as a downtrodden, fragmented people (whose attraction to the more “civilized” people is their natural resources) searching for a leader, any leader, to speak out and take charge of their many grievances.

You can’t really say Demo is the best man for the job, however.  With his talent for rhetoric (“I have heard your mothers’ wailing as their children are forced to work in the mines, filling up the coffers of our oppressors!”) and his clear derangement, he brings back echoes of the Third Reich and the French Revolution, an egomaniac who feeds upon the unhappiness of the people he claims to represents to feed his own ambitions.  So, yeah, not exactly the ideal man of the people.

Demo does, however, make an intriguing villain, possessing the necessary intellect to know exactly how to take advantage of the two Agents he already has at his disposal—and I do mean that in the most basic meaning of the word.  He also has one other thing to his advantage, one which may connect directly to the last big twist from the former T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents ongoing: Iron Maiden’s claim to Colleen that, “I know he’s still alive.”  “He” being the original Dynamo.

Any rescue operation will have several internal obstacles going for it.  One, you have NoMan’s increasing hostility (“Get these children ready, because they sure as hell aren’t right now.”), which seems odd, given that we were led to believe he’s pretty much incapable of that emotion, or any at all, really.  Two, Toby has gotten pretty cynical about the team’s agenda since he found out how the Menthor helmet really works: “Our first priority has to be recovering the lost Agents—”  “You mean the stuff our lost Agents are wearing.”  Third, the newest Raven is so taken with her mission’s promise of adventure that she doesn’t seem to see the risks of being an Agent with the powers of flight while trapped underground.

Guest Ordway does a fine job recreating an old-school look to mesh with Spencer’s retelling of Agents lore, although it’s so brief and focused a sequence that Ordway doesn’t really get to show off what he can really do.  Main man Craig is competent, but not terribly inspired.  His idea of dramatic expression is to have people close their eyes, frown, and turn their heads downward at a forty-five degree angle; he does it about nine times in this issue alone.

Conclusion: Some interesting exposition, and plenty of tension bubbling under the surface, but also a bit slow and artistically bland.

Grade: B

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – Spoiler alert—I tend to doubt that Dynamo is really dead, because if he is, then he wins the award for Biting the Dust So Fast We Literally Know Nothing About Him.  Does anyone know if Spencer ever mentioned his real name?