Thunderbolts: Justice Like Lightning

Wow, I’m really not sure how to do this without throwing everything into the spoiler section. My guess is you probably already know about the Thunderbolts, but I hate to give too much away for those that don’t, so I’ll be pretty vague in this review — except for within the spoiler area of course.  Oh, and if you decide to buy this TPB and don’t want the ending ruined, don’t read the back jacket on it.

I was actually reading another TPB that the Thunderbolts made a guest appearance in when I discovered them.  I did a quick wiki search and decided I wanted to more about the group so I ordered a few Thunderbolt TPBs that I found online and got reading.

This book takes place not long after the Onslaught battle which marked the loss of the Earth’s greatest heroes.  I knew all about that because I was an X-Men guy and I had read the Onslaught books when they first appeared in the comics.  Don’t worry if you didn’t know that we lost our best heroes to Onslaught because they all came back to this reality eventually.

Anyway, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four were gone and the public was hungry for some heroes so that they could feel safe again.  Who was going to protect John Q Public from evil fiends like the The Fearsome Four, the Wrecking Crew or even the Masters of Evil?  Well, that’s the role the Thunderbolts were built to play, so in one of New York’s darkest hours these new heroes appear and are greeted with open arms.

Despite being a new team, they took on some serious opponents, like the aforementioned Wrecking Crew, the Hulk, The Thinker, the Enclave, the Circus of Crime, the Bio-Fanatic and the Masters of Evil.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t overwhelmed by their powers and honestly none of the heroes really stood apart from the crowd to me.

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The real reason for getting the book was the big twist, but if the twist wasn’t there I’m not sure it really would have been one of my top 50 TPBs.  If you want to actually read it for the continuity, to see how the Thunderbolts were born I’d recommend it, but if you already know the twist and the concept behind it doesn’t overwhelm you then I’d stay away from this one and pick up something you’d enjoy much more.

New Avengers: Breakout

Historically, I haven’t been huge on the Avengers.  I don’t exactly know why, when I started reading comics all of my friends were into the X-Men and so that’s what I began reading.  At that time, I also liked matching costumes which I know is lame but I was  bit anal back then.

Anyway, I actually got into the Avengers through the Ultimates, which was really the first true Avengers type book I had read.  After that I picked up the Essential Avengers and went from there.  So while I know the basics, I’m still a little foggy on their recent history right before Breakout which means, I read Breakout without without having read Avengers Disassembled.  Blasphemous, I know but that’s the way it is with TPB’s, sometimes you get what’s available.  So the question I had going into this book was, ‘how well is this book going to stand on its’ own?’  Turns out, pretty well.

I remember seeing a Joe Quesada interview about the New Avengers and I remember him seeming excited about a brand new start and mentioning how they could add popular characters like Wolverine into the mix.  Hearing his excitement made me want to pick up the title even more, but adding Wolverine to the mix, not so much – isn’t he stretched pretty thin as is?

Other than that I knew nothing about the title so I picked it up and jumped into it with both feet, reading and enjoying the book in a single sitting.  The first thing I noticed was that the coloring was amazing, just like it was in The Ultimates. See to me, coloring is really important because it can make good art look like crap if it’s done wrong.  The art, text and layout look excellent as well, as I would imagine it should in a top shelf title.

So the story opens up with Electro inciting a jailbreak at a maximum security prison for the super-powered.  I love this concept, even if it is a bit played out.  A bunch of bad guys with a lot of pent up rage make for an outstanding super hero beatdown, and that’s exactly what happens.  Some of the released criminals include Carnage, Purple Man and The Hydro-Man, you know the usual suspects. The heroes who just happen to be there or get there quick enough to make a difference include Captain America, Spider-Man, Spider Woman, Luke Cage, Daredevil, Iron Man and some guy called Sentry who only plays a small part in this book.

The battle that takes place is absolutely fantastic.  It’s mass chaos set at a frantic pace with bone-crushing results.  I would suggest this book to anybody just for the initial fight scene alone, it’s just that good.

After the fight, Captain America attempts to recruit the heroes that helped put some of the super-criminals back in their cells to be the New Avengers, because as he says, ‘it’s fate’ that they all gathered at the same spot in a moment of need.  Most agree and a new team is born.  Soon after the collective team discover clues about the breakout that lead these heroes to the Savage Land where they run into Wolverine.  Our heroes let him tag along because it never hurts to have a killing machine along with you for the ride when you’re in a jungle filled with dinosaurs and mutates.

Our heroes eventually discover the reason for the breakout and and get caught up in intrigue fueled by an unsuspected conspiracy that leaves the New Avengers unsure as to who their allies and enemies really are.

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So with the amazing action in the jailbreak fight, the humorous interactions of Spider-Man with Luke Cage, the sexiness of Spider-Woman and the inclusion of some of the best heroes Marvel has to offer — Captain America, Wolverine, & Iron Man — you’ve got to pick up this book because it’s got something for everyone put together by some of the best writers and artists Marvel employs.

Wolverine: Blood Hungry

Well the first thing you have to know about Blood Hungry is who the artist was. Sam Keith of The Maxx fame put his unique stylings into this work. Keith’s art is a bit edgy to say the least. Not that I’m complaining mind you, I always like his take on things as I liked Jae Lee’s earlier work with Wildcats; lots of jagged definitions and something different from every other artist out there . That being said, when you delve into Blood Hungry, you aren’t getting your standard Wolverine fare, you are getting something a little grimier, a lot edgier and bordering on the surreal.

In fact, the only reason I purchased this title was specifically because Sam Keith was the artist and I was dying to see his rendering of a classic character. It’s like seeing McFarlane’s take on Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk from around the same time period.

Though this story is nothing like you will find in any other Wolverine TPB, it’s one that is definitely worth the price of admission if you can still find a copy of it lying around somewhere.

The story opens in Madripoor – of course – and follows the dealings of a mysterious villain trying to pit the two warring underworld factions run by General Coy and Tiger Tyger – who in Keith’s rendition may just be the most voluptuous Asian woman ever — against each other in a bidding war for a very powerful hallucinogenic. A far more feral Wolverine than we are used to seeing confronts Cyber and alludes at a history of violence between the two. In their initial confrontation, Cyber doses Wolverine with his designer drug, which leads our anti-hero into the wildest trip in his life.

In his altered state Wolverine is but a high-school greaser trying to make the moves on a fifties style pin-up girl named Janet. The problem is that Janet has it good for what Coach Cyber has down his pants. Apparently he’s got more of what counts down there than poor Wolverine does. I’m sure there is some historical truths in the vision, but as I haven’t read every Wolverine title ever, I have no idea what might be true and what was just funny so they threw it in.

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In my opinion, anyone even remotely interested in Wolverine should take a look at this TPB. Not that it bears historical revelations or a significant change for the character, but just because it’s a wild ride with some humor and some gorgeous artwork in a very contrasting style than what we are used to in a Wolverine story.

X-Men: Mutant Massacre

Wow, it’s taken a long time to set up MyTPB, but now that it’s finally done I think it was worth the effort.  So what better way to kick off my review site than to start with one of the most infamous and talked about crossover story arcs ever..  The X-Men’s Mutant Massacre!

I had always wanted to read this crossover given how many times I would find it referenced in modern story arcs, but finding all the books in this relatively old & popular crossover stories with some hard to find titles like Power Pack just seemed like more work than I was willing to go through.  Luckily, that’s exactly what trade paper backs are for.

Just to clarify, I had tons of preconceptions about this story.  What I — and probably most people who never read the story but followed the X-men comics — knew was that a group of assassins including Sabretooth called the Marauders were hired to cull the morlocks, and the popular X-man Gambit had led those assassins there.  Finally and probably the most significant change from the story was the transformation of Angel into Archangel.

I was envisioning all kinds of cool looking Weapon-X black-op type of soldiers creeping through the tunnels below New York and killing unsuspecting & ugly mutants with uncanny efficiency, what I got was something a whole lot different.

Ok, so time for a synopsis.  Contrary to future history, as confusing as that sounds, Gambit was never in the storyline.  There wasn’t even a dark figure stalking about the tunnels that we could pretend could have been Gambit, but that’s comics for you, re-writing history (retcon) whenever it makes for a shocking twist.  Ok, so no Gambit, but we still got these super-cool assassins called the Marauders.

Well, as it turns out the Marauders aren’t as cool as I was imagining them to be either.  I’m not going to go through all the Marauders, but a couple of key villains were Harpoon, an Inuit who throws electrically charged harpoons, Scalphunter who wears a ridiculous outfit with thousands of gun pieces all over his body so that he can make different guns on the fly I guess and Riptide, a killer who could spin really fast and then fling out an unlimited amount of shurikens at everyone within range.  Fantastic!

Ok, so the villains kinda left something to be desired, but what about the heroes.  Well between the X-Men and X-Factor (consisting of the original four X-men) you’ve got a lot of good superheroes in this mix, the problem was that neither team ever got near each other so both teams end up taking solid butt-kickings.  I have no problems with heroes getting whooped now and again though, so I was Ok with this.

I must admit reading a comic from the 1980’s does throw you a bit.  I mean Psylocke is not yet a hot ninja chick, Storm has a Mohawk and wears a leather vest and Rogue has a mullet with a skunk stripe right down the center.  But those were the times, so you’ve got to take those in good spirit and laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Another hero of note in the Mutant Massacre is Thor, who killed a guy which was pretty cool actually.  I had no real problem with the God of Thunder making an appearance in a mostly mutant storyline & kicking some ass, but the first eighteen pages of his appearance has him babysitting a group of children until a pair of frogs named Pudlegulp and Bugeye inform him of the Morlock massacre.  And no, I’m not kidding, though I wish I were.

The New Mutants make an appearance which really makes no difference to the storyline whatsoever.  You could scrub their entire appearance and be no worse for the wear.  Speaking of appearances that should have been scrubbed, we move to our last group of heroes, Power Pack!

Do I even need to make a list of the cons of having Power Pack make an appearance in what is supposed to be a landmark crossover.  I mean it’s Power Pack for Christ’s sakes. They have to sneak out so their mom and dad don’t see them because their powers are a secret.  If annoying not only the Marauders but also the readers was the point of putting them in the book, then I say job well done Power Pack!

Ok, so maybe my pre-conceived notions of how cool this book was going to be spoiled the read for me.  Kinda like when I saw clerks five years after everyone else in the world had.  It was still a fun read to fill in some of the X-Men history I had always wondered about.

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So what did I make of this all?  It’s not a perfect book by far, but it was pretty entertaining.  The cons were really Power Pack’s appearance, the whole X-Factor versus The Executioners ridiculousness which I didn’t even bother going over here and the lack of truly impressive villains.  The pros on the other hand were some fairly violent changes not contained merely within the book, but also as to how far you could take that kind of violence within fairly conservative super-hero comics at the time – but that’s just my opinion.

So between the historical significance of the book, the birth of brutality in X-titles and some pretty good scraps between Wolverine and Sabretooth, I deem this a pretty good read for fans of the X-Men line regardless of my sarcasm throughout this review.  Just don’t expect too much like I did or you’re bound to be disappointed.