Thunderbolts (2022) #1 Comic Book Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? Did you all have a good weekend? I had a quiet weekend. Today I'm back with a comic book review. It's not anything crazy and involved. I haven't done a simple single issue review in a while, so I thought today would be the perfect day for it. I'm also reviewing something relatively recent. As you probably saw in the title of this review, I'm taking a look at Thunderbolts #1 by Jim Zub with art by Sean Izaakse and colors by Java Tartaglia. I'm going to try and make this review as spoiler free as possible as it is a current issue that just came out at the end of August. So let's get into it.

This issue was purely an impulse buy. I was at the comic book store with my best friend, Brad, and we were just looking around, unsure of what I wanted to pick up, aside from the final issue of Power Rangers Universe being that I haven't kept up, both in buying and in knowledge of what's coming out, with current comics much, aside from a few DC titles and the Power Rangers titles that Boom! Studios has been publishing. I was looking at the month old Marvel section of the store, where books go before they become back issues. I don't know if it's because the Thunderbolts movie is coming out in about a year and a half (mid-2024) or because Brad had just been telling me about this book in the car on our way to the comic book store, but I picked up this issue along with issue #2 and She-Hulk #6. So keep an eye out for reviews of those issues in the near future. 

Thunderbolts #1 takes place following the events of the six issue mini-series, Devil's Reign and its one shot epilogue, Devil's Reign: Omega #1 where Luke Cage replaced Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. the Kingpin, as the mayor of New York City. Because the last incarnation of the Thunderbolts had consisted of villains hired by Kingpin to be the only legitimate superhero team in New York City, after he banned the Avengers and other superheroes from the city, Cage, who had led the Thunderbolts in the past, wanted to fix the name's tarnished reputation. He asks Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye, to lead the team, and uses the new team partially as a marketing stint for his tenure as mayor. 

In addition to Clint, the new Thunderbolts are America Chavez, Gutsen Glory, who is a brand new character making his debut in this issue, Persuasion/Kara Killgrave, the daughter of Jessica Jones's number one villain, Zebediah Killgrave, a.k.a. the Purple Man, and Victor Alvarez, who took Luke Cage's place as Power Man, with Monica Rambeau/Spectrum helping them out. I'm not overly familiar with any of these characters though I know Clint and Monica the most since I've seen the MCU films that Hawkeye is in, and I watched Hawkeye, and I saw some of WandaVision, which Monica is in, as well as Captain Marvel. I only know who Luke Cage is because of how much people talked about the Netflix series back when it was coming out. Of course I also know who U.S. Agent is thanks to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

The team is called to take out the former Thunderbolts team, which consisted of Electro/Francine Frye, Whiplash/Anton Vanko, Agony/the Agony Symbiote/Gemma Shin, Taskmaster/Tony Masters, and Abomination/Emil Blonsky. Of these villains, I know Whiplash from Iron Man 2 (2010), and Abomination from She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. I know he was in The Incredible Hulk (2008), but I never finished watching the movie, and it's so detached from the rest of the MCU, despite characters from the movie popping up from time to time, that I didn't even see Abomination in the movie, and completely forgot that he was even part of the MCU until it was announced that Tim Roth was reprising his role from the movie on She-Hulk. 

Anyways the mission doesn't go well. They catch the bad guys, but the new Thunderbolts also cause some major property damage, and Clint punches out U.S. Agent who was there as a representative of the F.B.I. to return the bad guys to prison. But, as usual, Walker acts like a supervillain instead of the hero he's supposed to be, hence why Clint knocks him out. Mayor Cage isn't happy, and neither is the marketing advisors he hired to head the team's public relations department.

After the mission something weird starts happening, but rather than trying to explain it here, I'll let you read the issue yourselves to find out what it is. If you've already read this issue though, you know what that thing is.

I enjoyed this issue. I wasn't lost as Zub did a good enough job at catching readers who hadn't read Devil's Reign up on what had happened before, such as myself. I also enjoyed the team dynamics in this issue. For once it wasn't full of bickering and petty infighting due to baggage from the previous incarnation of the team or full of a character's history with a member of the team. Which is nice. Though I get the feeling that Cage only asked Clint to lead the new Thunderbolts because his first pick said no. Again, I won't say who it is in case you want to read this issue, but it's not really a surprise as to who it is.

Jim Zub is not a writer I'm overly familiar with. I know he's done a few things for Marvel since 2016, one of them being the previous, pre-Devil's Reign, Thunderbolts book where Bucky was on the team as it's leader. He also did a few books for Image and some Dungeons & Dragons comic book mini-series for IDW, along with a Samurai Jack comic and a Rick and Morty vs. Dungeons & Dragons mini-series.

The only thing I didn't like about this book is that the villains's names aren't mentioned anywhere in the issue, and aren't even captioned above their first appearance in the issue so that new readers know who they are. The only reason I recognized Abomination is because he was on She-Hulk and that had just dropped it's first two episodes when this book came out, and was just finishing the season when I bought this issue a few weeks ago. I had to look up the rest of the villains on the Marvel Wiki because I had no clue who any of them were. Like, the last time I saw Electro in anything, it was the Max Dillon version as played by Jamie Foxx in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014), and I've never encountered the character in the comics, so I had no idea that Electro was currently a woman. Which is fine, I have no problem with that, but she wasn't even in costume in this issue so all I saw was a character with electricity powers, which could've been anyone. I also had no idea who Agony was since I don't keep up with the various Venom/Carnage symbiotes that seem to populate the Marvel Comics Universe.

Izaakse's artwork is pretty good. He's also someone I'm not familiar with. Though according to the Marvel Wiki, he's done alot with the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and worked on both Civil War II and Secret Empire. All books I've never read. He's good though. I like his artstyle.

Overall this was a pretty good read. I have issue #2 so I'll be reviewing that at some point down the line, though I'm not sure when yet. I felt the story stood on it's own pretty well given that it came off an event book, AND has the history of the older Thunderbolts series behind it both in the Marvel Universe and in the real world. The artwork is also pretty good. I'm not sure how much of this series I'll be able to keep up with, but I would definitely recommend this issue to those of you who read comics and haven't picked up an issue of Thunderbolts before. It's also not required to have read Devil's Reign before picking up this issue. Which is good.

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back later in the week with more posts, and possibly even my review of Power Rangers Turbo. But we'll see. Until then have a great rest of your day, evening or whenever you're reading this, and I'll talk to you all later. Take care.