Thunderbolts is not Suicide Squad (and vice versa)

I read From The Marvel Vault: Thunderbolts last week, a neat little one-shot presenting a lost tale of Nomad written by Fabian Nicieza from the time he was the regular writer on Thunderbolts and pulled recently from Tom Brevoort’s drawer to see publication for the first time. The main story was good, but it was a quick missive from Thunderbolts co-creator and original writer Kurt Busiek on the letters page thanking the fans for their years of support that grabbed my attention.

Like the proud parent he deserves to be recognized as, Busiek pointed out that Thunderbolts has been going strong nearly 15 years now over the course of 150+ issues and with only one brief break in regular publication of an ongoing series. Considering the book began in 1997, hardly fertile breeding ground for long-running comic book success stories, that’s quite an achievement. Thunderbolts is among the most enduring mainstream creations of the 90’s—I’d rank it above Superboy, at least on par with Kyle Rayner, maybe a notch below Deadpool—a fact even more impressive given the unique niche it has staked out.

For those who don’t know, the original premise of Thunderbolts was that the Avengers and Fantastic Four had seemingly been killed during the Onslaught event, so a new team of heroes rose up, only to be revealed—to the reader at least—in one of the most shocking last pages of a first issue ever—as the Masters of Evil in disguise, pretending to be good guys with the promise by Baron Zemo of some future scheme in mind.

I’ve said it before, but books starring bad guys are generally a hard sell, and they were even in the 90’s. Quick character-building villain-centric minis are great, but sustaining an ongoing with a protagonist who’s a nasty person the audience can’t sympathize with, no matter how cool they think he/she/they are in the abstract, is usually a recipe for early cancellation or unfortunate watering down of the character core (Venom and Deathstroke in the 90’s being the prime example of the latter).

Thunderbolts has managed to last as long as it has in no small part because though it started out as a book about lying villains, it grew organically into the story of people who had made mistakes trying to do better, as the bulk of the team turned on Zemo, having gotten a taste of being heroes and wanting to go for the real deal. It wasn’t another case of psychotic Eddie Brock or mercenary Slade Wilson suddenly getting a conscience for sales’ sake, it was genuine and not always surefire attempts at redemption from well-chosen small time villains off the B-list or lower who were never mass murderers to begin with and were believably cast in their role. Everybody loves an underdog story, and in many that’s what Thunderbolts has been for the past 15 years.

Obviously when you’re thinking about “villain books” that have done well, another that immediately springs to mind is the fondly remembered Suicide Squad, a series I’ve made clear is one of my all-time personal favorites. In the grand scheme of things, the prime Suicide Squad ongoing lasted a little over five years and shy of 70 issues, but if you look back at the mark it left on fans and creators and how influential it has been in the intervening period, you can see that its success was measured by something beyond longevity.

Suicide Squad did not take the Thunderbolts approach in conquering the issue of a cast you didn’t necessarily want to cheer or sympathize with, as Deadshot and Captain Boomerang certainly never really seemed to be seeking any sort of legitimate redemption and even though Amanda Waller was ostensibly the Professor X of the Squad, no question she was—and remains—a total “rhymes with witch” (as well as one of the most unique and awesome characters around). Instead, the circumvention route of Suicide Squad was to make no apologies for how reprehensible much of the featured players were and also give you a rotating handful of identification figures who would inevitably get driven out by how awful these people were (Nightshade, Nemesis, Vixen), go over the edge from being surrounded by madness (Rick Flag) or do their best to grin and bear it while recognizing they couldn’t do much to change things (the stalwart Bronze Tiger). Of course you also had the gimmick that any character could go at any time—hence the name—and the reliably strong writing of John Ostrander, who oversaw things from beginning to bitter end.

Given that Thunderbolts and Suicide Squad are perhaps the two most prominent villain/pseudo-villain-centric series in comics history in terms of length and esteem, it’s not a shocker that they will draw the occasional comparisons. If Marvel and DC did another Amalgam event tomorrow, it’s a safe bet we’d see the Thunder Squad or Suicide Bolts led by Baron Waller. It makes sense, yet despite the fact that there are surface similarities—two teams of super criminals fighting on the side of good under some duress with a lot of interpersonal drama—really once you scratch that, the two concepts couldn’t be more different, and as a fan of both, I’m certainly happy for that because both work well.

At its core, Suicide Squad is a cynical book. It’s brilliant, but in the same way shows like The Sopranos or The Wire are (or so I am told, having never regularly watched either—don’t hit me!). It has many messages, but a pretty central one is that playing by the rules doesn’t always get the job done and sometimes criminals and killers can succeed where heroes would fail because they’re willing to go dark places.

By contrast, despite the fact it originally starred a group flat out called the Masters of Evil and has traveled to some pretty dire instances itself over the past decade and a half, Thunderbolts always has been and likely always be optimistic underneath it all. Its message is that even though not everybody can change for the better, enough can—and want to—that redemption is a concept worth believing in.

Even when it appeared Thunderbolts was becoming outwardly more like Suicide Squad, there was something about that redemptive theme buried at the core that I swear pulled the book back. Warren Ellis had a great run that indeed centered on more dangerous figures like Norman Osborn and Bullseye being put to work by the government and doing some truly heinous stuff, but look even there how many times unlikely heroism took center stage, be it Jack Flag overcoming the odds, American Eagle standing his ground, or Songbird fighting the system from within. I swear Busiek wove something into the DNA of Thunderbolts that even when you set out to tell the most deranged stories possible, a trickle of that inspirational underdog tale is going to sneak in and work its magic.

It’s really tough to make a villain book work in comics, but both Thunderbolts and Suicide Squad found their own path, and given how much I dig them both, I can’t wait until somebody shows me a third way.

Cruel Summer: Ultron

Most killer robots that populate the ranks of villainy in comics and just about every other form of action fiction come across their creepiness by being cold and emotionless; terrifying because there’s no way you can hope to reason with them.

Ultron goes the other way.

While he may come across visually with the best of science fiction’s malevolent automatons thanks in large part to his simple but sinister design by the great John Buscema, Ultron is brimming over with emotion. This is a case where the book not even remotely matching its cover defies your expectations and makes for a great villain.

Ultron is Oedipus in the Greek tragedy that is the life of Hank Pym (aka Ant-Man, aka Giant-Man, aka Goliath, aka Yellowjacket, aka The Wasp). Created as a stab at artificial life by Pym using his own brain patterns, Ultron would rebel beyond the control of his “father” and spend the rest of his “life” hating him in a slightly more extreme fashion than most angsty teenagers do their parents. Ultron would go on to try and create progeny of his own in The Vision as well as two would-be brides in the forms of Jocasta (whose brain patterns he based on Pym’s wife, the original Wasp, thus going back to the whole Oedipal thing) and Alkhema; all three would turn against him, with Vision and Jocasta both becoming part of daddy’s team, the Avengers.

Every time Ultron shows up, he’s seething with rage; anger towards Pym, toward the Avengers, towards his “children” and against humanity and general. He really is the classic adolescent dressing in all black and listening to Nine Inch Nails except he’s got adamantium skin and several death rays in place of Hot Topic accessories.

The artists who best portray Ultron—Buscema, George Perez, etc.—have gotten a lot of mileage out of the fact that his expression never changes and holds the same Jack o’ Lantern shape as he screeches “Die Avengers!” or cries out in agony because The Scarlet Witch is hexing him to “death”; it’s quite haunting.

As I’ve mentioned more than a couple hundred times on this very blog, I grew up reading comics in the early 90’s, and for me, that meant not too much Ultron to be seen. The Avengers comics I read had them battling Proctor and only Proctor pretty much every issue with occasional respites to team with the X-Men against Fabian Cortez or battle pissed off Kree and Shi’Ar expatriates. Ultron may have appeared in Avengers West Coast, but I didn’t buy that book until the last issue; I also know he played some role in a Vision series that came out at around this time, but again, I didn’t read it.

So I more or less had no idea who Ultron was outside of the passing mention in a Wizard article or Official Index to the Avengers. Sure, I fought him in the Captain America & The Avengers video game, but I didn’t know him as Ultron, just a weird-looking robot who had a strange laugh. I was also out of the comics game by the time Avengers: United We Stand—currently airing on Marvel.com—where he was the main villain took the airwaves, so no dice there either.

My first genuine exposure to Ultron was Kurt Busiek and George Perez’s “Ultron Unlimited” which was one of the bigger epics from their golden period on Avengers in the late 90’s. The story unfolded in 1999, though I wouldn’t read it until a few years later, picking up the trade as I was trying to assemble the whole run.

The entire first issue of the arc is the Avengers and special guests Black Panther and The Wasp running around chasing leads after Hank Pym gets kidnapped by a robot army. One of the cooler things about the first chapter is how hesitant the Avengers—a group that is at full power and includes Thor, Iron Man and Captain America at this point in time—are to even mention Ultron by name, because they’re that scared of him and you can really feel these fictional characters clinging to some hope against hope that he’s not the guy they’re up against; the anxiety crosses the line and even makes you pretty tense with anticipation.

The Avengers actually end up finding Alkhema first and for a second almost breathe a sigh of relief because maybe she’s behind it all (and she’s not so tough)—then they turn on the TV and see Ultron massacring the entire nation of Slorenia, lighting fires across the country in the shape of his face. The whole story is full of powerful imagery like that, and of course nobody does it any better than Mr. Perez.

As we learn, Ultron has kidnapped Pym, as well as The Vision (his “son”), The Scarlet Witch (Vizh’s ex-wife), Wonder Man and The Grim Reaper (Vision’s “brothers” and thus family in some weird way to Ultron). He also grabs The Wasp for good measure and we’ve got a family reunion. The endgame for the bad guy is that he’s going to swipe the brain patterns of his “relatives” to program a new species of self-aware robots that he’ll use to replace humanity. It actually sounds like a standard super villain plan except that fitting with our theme it’s more akin to a kid who feels neglected wanting to run away from home and finding refuge with replacement family figures be they rock stars, movie idols or just like-minded teens.

Also, Ultron committed genocide just to provide a distraction, so there’s that.

As you’d expect, the Avengers end up spoiling Ultron’s fun, battling through a literal army made up of his previous models in a great action scene then busting down the wall so Thor can get the great line, “Ultron, we would have words with thee…” off. In the end, Pym himself gets to score the much-needed kill shot with an assist from Justice, who figures out Ultron has a weakness to vibranium and tosses the good doctor a pair of knucks made from the stuff so he can pound the crap out of his “son” and vent about how he’s not a failure in a most cathartic manner.

“Ultron Unlimited” is certainly Ultron at his best: Shell of a killer robot, insides of a disenfranchised youth and power of a small army, not to mention a well of resentfulness and ruthlessness that can never run dry.

But while Ultron has traditionally been an Avengers heavy through the years given his close ties, he has branched out elsewhere in the Marvel Universe as well pretty successfully. I loved his run as a cosmic big bad during Annihilation Conquest where he took over the Phalanx and led them on a campaign to assimilate the cosmos; the motivation from “Unlimited” remains the same, as he’s still searching for that surrogate family, he’s just widened his scope on a massive level.

It’s fitting that Ultron has expanded beyond the Avengers in terms of who he’s willing to fight, as he’s a unique take on a common theme whose look has become fairly iconic and whose anger towards his “dad” can pretty easily be redirected at whoever is standing in his way as easily as the kids I’ve been referring to this whole entry seem to be fairly pissed at the entire world.

Of course in most cases, disgruntled young adults grow out of that phase and move on into either grown up happiness or dissatisfaction depending on the situation, but Ultron being a robot—and a comic book character—will never get over it, which is just another way he’s one of a kind.

My History with the Avengers

Monthly on Marvel.com, your pal and mine, TJ "It stands for Thomas Jane" Dietsch, does a feature called “My Five Favorite Avengers” where he asks various creators, um, who their five favorite Avengers are. With a new Avengers #1 on sale this Wednesday, I thought why not give the list you’ve all really been waiting for: mine.

But we’ll do that tomorrow; tonight, a slice of my own personal history with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

The first Avengers comic I ever remember reading was issue #291 of the original series, written by Walter Simonson with art by John Buscema. I was like six and my father bought me one of those awesome multi-packs of random comics we had back in the day at the local supermarket when I was up visiting my grandparents in New Hampshire. The story had the Avengers—whose roster at the time consisted of Thor, Namor, the female Captain Marvel, She-Hulk, Doctor Druid and The Black Knight, only the first two of whom I had even a passing familiarity with—all dressed up at some fancy dinner party where Marrina (the Sub-Mariner’s wife) suddenly turned into a fish monster and started destroying the city. There was something going on with multiple Kangs in a sub-plot as well, but I didn’t know who Kang was.

Buscema’s imagery was what stuck with me this was my first exposure to his work and he remains one of my all-time favorite artists), in particular his depiction of Marrina’s transformation from pretty young lady into freaky scaled creature, which scared the crap out of me. Between being suddenly terrified that all girls could potentially turn into sea monsters at a moment’s notice and the fact that Doctor Druid seemed like the least cool super hero ever, I had no particular interest in learning any more about the Avengers at that time.

I next revisited the title in the early 90’s when I was really falling head-over-heels into comics and buying pretty much everything for at least a few issues at one time or another. This was during the Bob Harras/Steve Epting run on Avengers where everybody had brown leather jackets and every story seemed to center on Sersi, The Black Knight and/or Crystal (seriously, based on that old school issue and my 90’s immersion I just assumed Black Knight was the Avengers’ franchise player for a long while). I wrote a bit on this era previously and had a nice conversation with Mr. Epting about it last year at San Diego Comic-Con (he is a very good sport about the leather jackets and let’s just leave it at that).

Frankly put, this was not a great time for the Avengers and I don’t believe it was the fault of anybody in particular. Fact was, X-Men was selling like hotcakes so conventional wisdom said it made sense to make the Avengers more like the X-Men, with more leather and soap opera, less classic foes and nostalgia. Bob Harras was editing the X-Men, so he was the logical choice to make the Avengers more like them (Bob Harras is also, by the way, an extremely underrated writer, and you should check out his work on Breach if you can track it down).

But what worked for the X-Men didn’t work for the Avengers because their DNA just wasn’t the same (oh I didn’t even realize what I was doing there; I am so clever). The X-Men franchise had well over a decade of Chris Claremont doing the ultimate soap opera run in comics and characters who were by design not iconic and thus more suited for the angsty character-driven stuff; Avengers was supposed to be the biggest and best Marvel heroes all in the same book, with epic threats and huge battles as the order of the day.

In the early 90’s, the Avengers very much felt like a B-list X-Men, which was completely wrong as being an Avenger should be the ultimate “you’ve made it” moment for any Marvel hero and being on the X-Men should kinda suck (because you’re feared and hated). It didn’t work for me, and so, for a second time, I ditched the Avengers.

Third time’s the charm, though, as in 2001 (or thereabouts) during my second comic book renaissance, I discovered the Avengers once more, and have been a card-carrying fan ever since (I actually do have a membership card because we had a bunch of leftovers from some promotion around the office recently; it’s signed by David Gabriel, so you know it’s legit).

The way I circled back around to the Avengers was that I’d gotten heavy into the Marv Wolfman-George Perez New Teen Titans and was looking for more of that sweet Perez art fix. Somehow or another I was tipped off to the fact that Mr. Perez drew 30-some-odd issues of Avengers written by Kurt Busiek beginning in 1998, so I was off to the races hitting the back issues bins.

And good lord, as incredible as Perez’s stuff was on NTT, I could not believe how much better his Avengers was. I know I’m not alone in praising George Perez for, among other things, constantly working to improve his game no matter how long he’s been on top (his Legion of 3 Worlds work from last year is incredibly even better than his Avengers stuff). George is simply one of the greats, and also a true gentleman in every sense; getting to interview him a few times is one of the high watermarks of my career and a Nova sketch by the man remains among my most sought-after treasures.

But as good as Perez’s art was on Avengers—and it was really really good—Kurt Busiek’s writing is up to the task of matching that work. It really is among the most enormous, most imaginative, most “nothing is too big to cram in here” runs in comics (and a future Essentials entry for sure). Not too many folks who have worked on the Avengers—or many other books—over the years have had a better appreciation for what their material had been at its best and what it would take to bring that out again than Busiek. He recognized the inherent coolness of the Avengers comes from having as many heroes as you can manage in the same place bumping into each other as they go and putting them up against crises that (as the old saying goes) none of them can face alone.

Aside from the regular roster of 7-10 members Busiek generally had on tap, he also had a steady supply of alumni, guest stars, cameos, etc. flowing in for Perez to challenge himself with (and George Perez is always up to the challenge). I can’t think of many comics where the creators’ (and editor’s, because Tom Brevoort deserves a lot of credit here) love for what they’re doing is more evident than Busiek and Perez’s Avengers.

And so I became an Avengers fan; and as a newly-minted Avengers fan, I did my duty and tracked the classics in trade paperback to fully understand what I was getting into.

I started from the start with Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s original stuff in softcover Marvel Masterworks form—didn’t love it. The sense I got then and have since gotten more from reading both more early Avengers and also other Silver Age Marvel is that Stan and Jack’s real passion went into the stuff they were making up as they went (if that makes sense) like Fantastic Four, Amazing Spider-Man, Thor, etc. I feel like Avengers was almost more of a book they felt they had to do because stuff like Justice League of America did well and it just made sense that if they had enough “name” heroes to have them all in one book. And don’t get me wrong, Stan and Jack at 70% is still better than most at 110, but it just doesn’t feel like their hearts were as much in those early Avengers stories as the concept more drove itself. You can see the quality level noticeably rise after Roy Thomas takes over writing probably in large part because it (along with X-Men) was the first book he could really make “his.”

The Kree-Skrull War is a science-fiction blockbuster that definitely stands the test of time, though. The aforementioned Mr. Thomas really hits his stride by cooking up a disaster worthy of the Avengers—because if two big, bad alien races going to full-on war with each other isn’t enough, there isn’t much that’s going to be—and hitting both the story and emotional beats with panache. The art chores shared by the Buscema brothers, John and Sal, plus the great Neal Adams are just stunning as well, particularly Adams bold experimentation.

One of my favorite Avengers stories I discovered during this period and really of all-time is Under Siege, the mid-80’s tale by Roger Stern and (again) John Buscema that directly predated my bad Marrina experience and is just one of the most gripping, bad ass things you’ll ever read if you love super hero comics. The gist is that Baron Zemo organizes the most massive Masters of Evil team ever and they just absolutely kick the shit out of the Avengers for a few issues. Hercules gets beat into a coma; Jarvis gets nearly crippled; Avengers Mansion gets leveled. It’s one of the most stark examples in comics of the bad guys really actually winning and the heroes being totally up against the wall, making their inevitable even-half-triumph so much more meaningful; great stuff.

Avengers Forever was also a really sweet jam by Busiek, Stern and Carlos Pacheco, but it’s so elaborate and continuity-packed that I’ll just leave it at that.

So suffice to say by the time I entered the comic book industry fo’ real in 2004, I was well-schooled in Avengers lore just as Brian Michael Bendis was blowing it all up and starting a whole new chapter. Now on Wednesday, after half a decade of redefinition, we’re gonna start seeing how Bendis’ new era meshes with the Thomas/Stern/Busiek days of yore and I’m pretty psyched at hearing what people think.

I think I’ll always be an X-Men guy at heart since that’s what I was reading when I was 12, but I’m glad I was stubborn enough to keep scratching that Avengers itch until I figured out why they were special and now get to enjoy their tenure as comics’ current biggest deal, both in print and on the big screen.

Tomorrow (barring something crazy): my five favorite.