Thunderbolts #174 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (story), Declan Shalvey (art), Frank Martin Jr. (colors)

The Story: Centurius discovers the secrets of hair growth, to Fixer’s benefit.

The Review: Time-traveling is a messy business, not just within a story, but for storytelling purposes in general.  As much fun as all that period-hopping can be, they usually tend to implode upon themselves, meaning they rarely result in major changes in the status quo.  Frequently, the necessity of preserving continuity (and not ruin things for other writers) means whatever happens, once everyone gets back to their proper time, things are pretty much as they should be.

Last issue delivered a fairly significant twist, a breach of time-traveling protocol so severe that you felt there was no way anyone could escape the consequences.  How does one get away with flat-out killing a person of such influence before their time, particularly when that person is one’s very own self?  Yet despite this, the Thunderbolts do manage to patch things up in the end—which is a tad disappointing, admittedly, but they take some interesting steps to get there.

Thunderbolts #173 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (story), Declan Shalvey (art), Frank Martin Jr. (colors)

The Story: Fixer takes self-loathing to a whole new level.

The Review: There are two common paradoxes that nearly always pop up in these time-travel stories.  In one situation, the future folks seemingly alter the past, only to realize their alterations were necessary anyway.  The other mind-boggler is when the future folks meet their past selves, interact with them, and return to the future, realizing their actions in the past were meant to happen—and yet with no memory of ever having met themselves in the past.

The first paradox already popped up in #167, where the Thunderbolts realized by their actions that they were “Jack the Ripper.”  Here, with all this Thunderbolt-on-Thunderbolt action, the second paradox almost has to be in the making, as we have all kinds of interference happening, to the point that Centurius officially declares their history “destroyed.”  They observe, however, that none of them have yet disappeared or been transformed by their meddling, meaning the changes will most likely catch up to them if and when they return to the present.

Thunderbolts #172 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (writer), Declan Shalvey (artist), Chris Sotomayor & Jordie Bellaire (colorists)

The Story: The T-bolts get the opportunity to beat some sense into their younger selves.

The Review: Perhaps way, way back in the sixties, the premise of heroes fighting other heroes was a novel, engaging idea on its face, but now, it just feels like a lazy way to inject some instant tension to the story.  While both of the Big Two publishers do the hero-on-hero thing far more than either ought, Marvel probably edges out DC in this respect.  They do seem to base a significant number of their Big Events on splashy “civil wars” within the superhero community.

What’s frustrating about these conflicts is there’s little to say about them other than point out some of the more interesting match-ups and maybe, if you’re lucky, discuss the motivating spark that sets off all the infighting.  In this case, the “present” Thunderbolts (for lack of a better description) fight the “past” Thunderbolts (ditto) because of course the thing to do when you encounter your parallel self is to try to beat them down or blast them apart.

Not to say the issue is bad, per se.  There are a couple interesting moments, like present Boomerang raiding his old stash, thereby leaving past Boomerang in the lurch and vulnerable to arrest.  You have a rather grim pause where Fixer recognizes a spot where he’ll one day return again, “[w]ith a sword through me.”  You can also bet Moonstone drawing off her younger self for an intimate chat will probably lead to some paradoxical time-travel nuttiness.