Thunderbolts is a comic that’s like a superhero in origin. You look at a lot of the major superheroes and you see that they were diamonds that expelled from the rough. Parents gunned down led to the creation of Batman. An uncle gunned down led to the creation of Spider-Man. A planet exploding gave us Superman. A war led to the enlisting of Steve Rogers, giving the world Captain America.

Comparing it to murder and genocide might be more than a little over-the-top, but comics in the 90’s were filled with terrible shit. Nobody proved this more than Marvel, who did a nice job of chasing readers away around 1997. Thor had a laughable extreme outfit that included a blue headsock connected to a halfshirt. Spider-Man was stuck in a story about clones that went on way beyond its expiration date. A promising idea about Xavier becoming an unbeatable mega-villain led to an unfortunate story that led into an even more unfortunate story about half the Marvel heroes being vaporized and then reborn in another world. Plus Venom was in a bunch of comics and that was the worst—wait, what the hell am I talking about?

This was around the time when I stopped reading comics for 6-7 years, missing out on the gem that grew out of the Onslaught/Heroes Reborn mess. Even when I got back into comics, I didn’t have Thunderbolts on my radar. I didn’t even know what it was about, nor care enough to check it out. It wasn’t until Warren Ellis took over and gave it the New Avengers treatment (putting beloved mainstream characters on the roster and making it a jumping-on point) that I started reading it. I haven’t stopped since then and later went back to the beginning to catch up on all the stuff I missed.

I found the series to be golden, through and through. Not that it doesn’t have its flaws and headshaking moments, but for a series that’s been around for nearly 15 years by this writing, it’s pretty damn special. There are different reasons for that. Obviously, it’s because of the pantheon of great writers, from Kurt Busiek to Jeff Parker with all the other top-notch guys in-between. I’ve established many times that I’m a major fan of redemption stories and that’s what Thunderbolts perpetually is. Yet I think the main thing that Thunderbolts has going for it is that it’s a comic that’s not allowed to hold still. Most superhero comics are allowed to hold onto the same status quo for decades if the sales and writing are strong enough, but Thunderbolts isn’t able to maintain such a thing for too long, else it begins to fall apart. The comic is in constant motion with its cast developing and moving around to the point that even the mission statement gets mutated a couple times.

I thought I’d give a look at the whole series, which as of now is 167 issues in, not to mention multiple miniseries and specials. With some exceptions, I won’t go as descriptive as I was with We Care a Lot, explaining every issue in detail. I’ll probably gloss through the main plot, then focus on the characters and their personal situations.

This being the prologue, I guess it’s fitting to start at the beginning. No, not at Thunderbolts #1, but even before that. The team made their first appearance in Incredible Hulk #449 by Peter David and Mike Deodato.

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Sorry for the long break there. For the past few months I was more busy writing about Eddie Guerrero and Brock Lesnar than Eddie Brock, so I had to let the whole We Care a Lot thing fall to the waysides. Now, then. Where were we? Ah, yes. I was talking about alternate reality versions of Venom for the sake of completion. Now it’s time to look into the future.

I was originally going to call this installment “Brock to the Future”, but I noticed that no matter what alternate future you look at, Eddie’s days are almost always numbered. Even in the futures where he could still be theoretically alive, he’s not only dead, but they don’t feel the need to explain how he bit the dust. Same goes for Mac Gargan, except for when he appears as Scorpion in Spider-Man: Reign.

I’ll go farther out into the future and inch my way back towards the present. That means starting with All-New Savage She-Hulk, a miniseries by rocking writer Fred Van Lente. The new She-Hulk is Lyra, who has come to Earth from an alternate future, hundreds or thousands of years from now. Her mother is Thundra, a warrior leader in the never-ending war between barbarian men and amazon women. Thundra went back to the present, scraped some DNA off the Hulk’s face during a fight, went back to her time and created Lyra. Lyra is the bane of her people for having a father, despite her great strength. That strength, by the way, comes from a zen mentality. If she gets angry, she becomes increasingly weaker.

So what does she have to do with Venom? In her time, the men are mostly split into tribes that worship the long-dead superheroes. Since her reality seems to be based on Osborn never being dethroned, the tribes are mostly copycats of different Dark Avengers. They have the clawed Howlers, the Goblinkin, the Men of Gold, the War Gods and, of course, the Crawlers.

Not only that, but the Venom symbiote still exists in her time. Man, what kind of life expectancy do these creatures have, anyway? The women warriors have their home protected by a moat with the creature now known as “The Black Bloom” residing. The women are treated with a pheromone that renders them invisible to the symbiote, meaning that when the tribes of Crawlers, Goblinkin and so on chase Lyra, they end up getting devoured by the hungry pool of black.

Later on the story, when Lyra is in the present, she fights the Dark Avengers. She’s amused that Venom wears the Black Bloom and easily disposes of him. After all, her pheromones make her into Venom’s kryptonite.

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(Gavok note: This is an article I wrote for PopCultureShock a while back. Because I’m distracted by my inability to defeat Title Defense Piston Hondo at the moment, I figured now would be a good time to start posting some of these where they belong: at 4th Letter. I snipped the first few paragraphs, since it was more of an introduction and you already know me. Which reminds me, we need to hang like old times. Let’s hit the roller rink this Sunday. They have a Wrestlefest arcade machine there. It’ll be fun.)

Allow me to introduce you to what may be the first comic I’ve ever owned. I’m not certain if I owned this before or after I was given a copy of that Luke Cage anti-smoking comic in health class. In fact, I’m really not certain why or how I had this in the first place. All I recall is one day owning a copy of The Adventures of JELL-O Man and Wobbly.

Nobody else seems to remember JELL-O Man, I’m afraid. He was a brief JELL-O mascot during the introduction of their Jigglers. As you can see from that cover, JELL-O Man’s dog Wobbly was created by the J, as JELL-O Man himself was the E, L, L and O mixed together to create some kind of horrid demon freak never meant to walk God’s green Earth. I also notice that they each have a dash for a nose. Where’d that extra dash come from?! It’s questions like this that answer why there was never a second issue. Brevoort would’ve been all over that shit.

Other than a kid’s cookbook, JELL-O Man and Wobbly were featured in a couple animated commercials that I seem to recall as being pretty sweet. I can’t know for sure until somebody puts them on YouTube.

This comic has three stories, a rather huge insert that I’ll get to in a bit, a couple pages of games and seven different JELL-O advertisements. Our first story, The Outrageous Origin of JELL-O Man and Wobbly is written by Michael J. Pellowski, a regular on Archie Comics and its spin-offs. Richard Howell does all the art here, except for Ken Steacy, who does the cover and advertisements.

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And we move forward. Yesterday saw Magneto sit back and listen to the Scarlet Witch. But how can that be if Wanda is dead? But what of the Multiple Man hiding out behind his throne? Today’s update has both of those answers.

Thanks to ManiacClown, who tried to have me change Magneto’s rant into a different topic. No dice, my friend.

Tomorrow we’ll see Giant Man vs. the Blob. It’s really stupid.

Day Three!
Day Four!
Day Five!
Day Six!
Day Seven!

Article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

Note this classy cover by Greg Horn. We’ll be covering those in the next update, don’t you worry. But when we last left Marville…

Ah yes. I also forgot to mention there is no love plot. There is no pining or anything. I don’t know why the hell they added that to the blurb, probably because almost nothing from the first issue is going to carry over into this one and they needed to fill space. Also space-filler: the Kingpin blurb, but we’ll get to that.

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Halloween was just a couple days ago, but I still feel the need to post this from one of today’s stories.

The Spider-Man and Captain America costumes are sort of okay, but that Wolverine kid’s got the height accuracy.

We’ve seen Venom deal with Spider-Man a couple times, then cross paths with the Punisher and at some point help put an end to Carnage’s plot to destroy New York City. Now what?

Well… more crossovers, I’m afraid. First off is The Madness, a 3-parter by Ann Nocenti (words) and Kelley Jones (art). In on-going terms, this would be Venom #10-12, ending off his first year as an anti-hero.

The Madness centers around two very strong concepts that appeal to me, but unfortunately they’re bogged down by ridiculousness. The first idea is Venom vs. Juggernaut. That’s just my character bias.

Then there’s the idea of more Parker-to-Brock escalation. In that last story, Pyre was to Venom as Venom was to Spider-Man. Same concept here. Spider-Man’s a pretty sane guy, so the idea of a sentient costume added to his person messed with his head and forced him to take action. Brock, on the other hand, was totally cool with it. So this story goes to the next step. Instead of Venom being made of two beings, he’s suddenly made of three. This third being, while granting extra strength, is so extreme that even Eddie Brock needs to take notice.

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Caught the midnight showing of Incredible Hulk tonight. Very fun movie that’s definitely better than the Ang Lee non-prequel. It flows nicely and the action wasn’t too brief, as it sometimes felt in Iron Man. Not to say it’s better than Iron Man, because it isn’t, but there’s no shame in that. Besides, this is the second episode of the Avengers Movie Saga and it does feel right in that respect.

Several weeks back I read the Peter David novelization, as I’m wont to do, so I already had been spoiled in terms of the plot. While there are few surprises, there’s still the interesting experience of seeing stuff that was in the original version of the story that got cut out. I’ve done this before, of course, with Spider-Man 3 and Iron Man. The former was originally a solid story until important chunks of it got cut out. The latter remained good, despite a subplot cut out because of the Air Force’s say so.

With Incredible Hulk, the good outweighed the bad in terms of cuts. God, did it ever. Yes, there was definitely some stuff that should have stayed in there. No doubt. It’s just that a lot of scenes that got ousted had the potential to be really bad. Really bad. I’m talking Superman’s cellophane S projectile bad. I’m talking Matt Murdock fighting Elektra at the playground bad. I’m talking the entirety of Rise of the Silver Surfer bad. It’s cool that I count that movie as one long, horrible scene, right?

Word on the street is that there are 70 minutes of stuff cut. It’ll probably be seen in DVD form. Whether or not that makes for a better movie remains to be seen. The deleted scenes below, filled with spoilers, don’t seem to sum up to 70 minutes, but when it comes to cutting them being a good or bad idea, I’ll let you be the judge.

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The Incredible Hulk, part two of the “Avengers Saga” of Marvel films (there go my nipples again), is on its way in a few weeks. Naturally, Peter David wrote a novelization based on the upcoming movie. Since I did the same for Spider-Man 3 and Iron Man, I went up for round three by picking it up and seeing what it had to offer.

Incredible Hulk is like Ang Lee’s Hulk mixed with Superman Returns, only better than each of them. Granted, I did enjoy the older Hulk movie for the most part. I thought most of the stuff involving David Banner was fantastic and found him so sympathetic that I can’t even bring myself to call him a villain. But let’s be honest, the pacing had problems and there was a huge unbalance in the story where they try to tell the tale of a man’s tragic relationship with his father one minute and HOLY SHIT DID YOU SEE WHAT HE DID TO THAT TANK the next.

This new movie is most definitely not a sequel to the Ang Lee production, but like with Batman Begins and the Tim Burton Batman, stupid people will believe they’re connected no matter how many changes in continuity they spy. Still, the movie knows what we saw in Hulk and doesn’t give us a story based purely on origin. Though the Hulk’s origin is different this time around, it’s only delved into through explanations and brief flashbacks.

David’s book is based on the screenplay treatments of Edward Norton and Zak Penn. That means that it’ll be harder to tell how accurate it is to the final product than usual, based on the stories I’ve heard about the movie’s production. For one, Norton had been rewriting scenes on the set just about every day. For two, they decided to make some edits that have pissed him off. Even the little footage I’ve seen of the movie is different from what the book goes with. Such as that scene where Hulk tears a cop car in half and uses it as boxing gloves. Not only is that not mentioned at all here, but that scene involves Abomination talking. Abomination has no dialogue in the book after his transformation.

This could be a good thing or a bad thing. Truth is, there are a couple minor bits I wouldn’t mind changed.

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The weekend of chunky guys dressed like Colossus and hot women dressed as Slave Leia has come to an end. I myself had a great time, spent with hermanos from this very site and a whole bunch of guys from Funnybook Babylon. Sadly, Thomas “Wanderer” Wilde deemed himself “too broke” to consider joining us and Hoatzin would have probably involved a gigantic plane ticket paid in rare diamonds, since he’s from Europe. I don’t know. I really have no grasp on how that type of thing works. Besides, Hoatzin seems to have vanished from our planet. What happened to that guy?

This one movie sent the other movie into space.

Day One

Last year I got to New York the day before the con started, which allowed me enough rest and whatnot. This year I had to come in the first day of the event and kill time until David Uzumeri came in from Canada, since he was in charge of dealing with the hotel. I walked straight from the Port Authority bus terminal to the Javits Center, which tired me the hell out.

After getting my swanktastical press pass, I met up with hermanos and Joseph of FBB. They were at a panel starting up that was a screening for a new Will Eisner documentary. Since I was tired from all that walking, I decided to stick around and watch it. I found it interesting in the sense that I honestly didn’t know all that much about Eisner, which is almost a sin if you’re a comic fan. The four of us (David U. showed up towards the end) mostly agreed that while it had some fantastic stuff in there, such as taped conversations between Eisner and guys like Kirby, the sum of it was incredibly dry.

Shortly after, we went to the panel on online journalism, with guys from Newsarama and CBR there. It wasn’t as good as the comic blogging panel from last year and mostly focused on arguing over criticism vs. getting press releases. Once that was done with, I was rested up enough to do some wandering.

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A year ago, I bought, read and reviewed Peter David’s novelization of Spider-Man 3. I thought it was pretty good and went on record to say that Sam Raimi would have to go out of his way to fuck up that movie. Wouldn’t you know it, he did exactly that. He deleted a handful of scenes that would have turned the movie’s three villains into more than ridiculous, one-dimensional jokes. While he removed all the valuable Eddie Brock and Sandman scenes, he made it even worse by hardly shaving off any whiny Mary Jane moments.

I made the decision to go for round two. This time Peter David writes a novelization based on the upcoming Iron Man film. More than anything, I was curious. The build-up has been nice. Not just with the trailers, but the feeling that there’s love in the movie. I recall Jon Favreau saying that in preparation, he had been reading every single issue of Iron Man from the 60’s on. So would love be enough to make this story work?

Yes. Yes it really would.

I’m not going to give out explicit spoilers, but if you really want an absolute blank slate to the point that you didn’t even watch the trailers, by all means don’t read this and instead just give me $5.

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