Thunderbolts #161 – Review

By: Jeff Parker (writer), Declan Shalvey (artist), Frank Martin, Jr. & Fabio D’Auria (colors), Albert Deschesne (letters), Rachel Pinnelas (assistant editor) & Tom Brennan (editor)

The Story: The Fear Itself version of Juggernaut seems to have gotten away from, but there is no rest for the wicked.

What’s Good: As with Hulk #38 (also out this week), Jeff Parker has really risen to the challenge of crafting a Fear Itself tie-in smack in the middle of his ongoing stories.  We comic fans should really give him a big round of applause for this because every other Marvel writer has just surrendered to Fear Itself and written a 2-3 part story that had almost nothing to do with their ongoing material.  All of these writers have clawed their way to the upper echelon of the profession and should be able to do the same thing.  But, Parker did it, they didn’t.  So, bravo to Parker for flinging his Thunderbolts into a new mission that grows very organically out of this Fear Itself story.

It’s also been really enjoyable watching this team of Thunderbolts grow closer together.  They’re actually starting to gel into a team and care about the well-being of each other and care about completing their missions.  This run of Thunderbolts really started with the characters doing the supervillain equivalent of putting on an orange reflective vest and picking up trash on the side of the road under the watchful eye of a sheriff’s deputy, but they are quickly evolving into anti-heroes.  There’s nothing really wrong with that either.  Gail Simone got almost 40 issues out of a similar concept on Secret Six and was running full steam ahead when DC pulled the plug on that incredible series.  I’d love to see Marvel let Parker continue this work with the Thunderbolts until the story collapses (just because these characters are villainous and will have to double cross the team eventually).

Declan Shalvey continues to throw fastballs and is just great in this issue.  There are really a lot of fussy characters to draw in this series.  Juggernaut is huge and hulking.  Fixer has a fussy uniform with all his tech pieces.  Ghost must be very time consuming to draw because of all his tech, and he is a completely non-standard body-type.  You’ve got Man-Thing.  And then there are characters like Moonstone who you would think is just a “standard” female character, but is actually drawn much more lithe than most female superhero characters (like Satana).