Thunderbolts Vol 1 Faith in Monsters by Warren Ellis & Mike Deodato

There’s no such thing as good or evil, but there may be a right and a wrong…

There’s a high concept at work in the newest iteration of Marvel’s Thunderbolts comic. When it becomes illegal to be one of the good guys, do the bad guys, by definition, become the good guys? Warren Ellis wants you to see that the answer is kind of, but not really.

Thunderbolts: Faith in Monsters, written by Warren Ellis with art by Mike Deodato, Jr., is a truly post-Civil War superhero comic. For those who haven’t been following their superhero comic news, the Civil War in Marvel comics was a seven issue miniseries that truly changed the status quo. At the end, vigilantism in any form was made illegal, and anyone using superpowers is required to register them with the government and receive training like any officer of the law. Those who do not register are criminals and are treated as such by the authorities.

A direct result of this paradigm shift leads to the formation of the new Thunderbolts team, a group of former super villains who now track down these unregistered superheroes to bring them to justice. The team includes such A-list characters as Bullseye and Venom, and also several lesser known characters: Moonstone, Songbird, Radioactive Man, Swordsman, and Penance. The team’s director of operations is Norman Osborn, the former Green Goblin. A bad, bad dude.

This book oozes cool on every page. Periodically, we see Norman Osborn interviewing one of the super villains/heroes. The interviews with Bullseye are particular chilling. These are the people defending your nation, folks: A man who just likes to kill, a man with an alien symbiote that wants to eat your brains, a woman who’s willing to give a psychopath the wrong medication to give herself a better chance at promotion…

Deodato’s art fits this book like a glove. Darker and moodier than a lot of superhero work, his pencils here suit the very nature of the characters. This isn’t Spider-Man and Superman. I haven’t been a huge fan of Deodato’s artwork outside of the Bruce Jones Hulk stuff, but I’m second-guessing myself after Thunderbolts. His work here definitely makes me want to go back and give his other stuff a better look.

The only negative I can attribute to Thunderbolts is its frequent reference to Marvel continuity. While I think this is actually one of the strengths of the book, I can see this causing some confusion among newer fans. But to those willing to accept that they may not catch every reference, know that what Warren Ellis is doing here is admirable. He’s weaving together eight characters with very dense histories. There are references to Frank Miller’s Daredevil run and obviously to Civil War, and he certainly doesn’t skirt away from acknowledging the Thunderbolts stuff that has come before. There are even references to the Spider-Man clone saga.

I could talk about the little touches in Thunderbolts all day, (seven characters, just like the Justice League, just like the first Mighty Avengers team; the use of tilted panels to express insanity; the insertion of parody advertisements; etc…) but suffice it to say I highly recommend checking this book out. If you’ve any fondness for superheroes at all, you can’t get much better than this in the market today.

My favorite part:

“This ain’t super hero registration. This is making the skies safe for flying whitey.”