Thunderbolts #19 – Review

by Charles Soule (Writer), Gabriel Hernandez Walta (Artist), Guru eFX (Colorist)

The Story: Road trips are apparently perfect opportunities if you plan to kill your teammates. At least, Red Leader seem to think so.

The Review: In team books, it’s usually expected that sooner or later an issue will focus on a specific member of the cast. Either a member of the team, one of the antagonists or even an important secondary character may end up getting a chance to be in the spotlight. Usually done before in the first issue of an arc or between two, those kind of issues always present the chance to see how a specific character perceive certain events and how his personality may be in comparison to others. In such a book like Thunderbolts, with a cast full of unsavory characters, the chance to put a shine on these troubled mind could very well end up being a pretty neat thing.

In a way, Charles Soule manage to surprise readers as well as take a big chance as he focus this one on Red Leader, pushing forth Samuel Sterns forth in order to clarify his thinking process and just how he sees this present team. With this character usually seen as a huge presence in many iterations of Hulk, does Soule actually delivers a nice rendition of the character as well as a pleasant issue with this one?