Heroclix Team Awesome: Thunderbolts #1 Review

Editor’s Note: One last review of the comics of 12/5/2012 before the comic stores open…

Let’s get the preliminaries out of the way: the chick with the purple hair who doesn’t speak and is the only apparent member who isn’t asked to volunteer in Thunderbolts #1? That’s Mercy. She debuted back in Peter David’s and Todd McFarlane’s run on The Incredible Hulk – issue 338 to be exact, a couple of issues before the arc collected in the Ground Zero paperback. If I recall correctly, she shanks people who she thinks are down on their luck… and she thinks everyone is down on their luck. You’re welcome.

Thunderbolts #1 is yet another Marvel Now book that is, despite Marvel’s protestations, a complete reboot (but, but, Marvel doesn’t reboot! Which is why The Punisher is still a superpowered avenging angel! And he’s still a black guy!). We’ve gone from the team being the standardized government-sponsored team staffed by former supervillains hoping for redemption that it’s been for years (but don’t let it make you bitter; if you miss that idea, DC’s still publishing Suicide Squad), to apparently just General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, former Hulkbuster and current Red Hulk, out on his own, building a team out of the darker, more edge heroes of the Marvel Universe. You know, like DC’s Team 7.

So now our Thunderbolts are apparently Red Hulk, Punisher, Deadpool, Elektra, Venom and Mercy, which is a lineup, except for Mercy, that should be familiar to anyone who has seen twelve-year-olds playing Heroclix (although you probably heard them referred to as “The Asskickers,” or perhaps “Team Awesome”). However, this lineup is being written by recent Deadpool writer Daniel Way instead of a runny-nosed punk jacked up on Red Bull and his first boner over imagining Elektra naked, so we can expect a little more from this team, right?

Truth be told, I can’t quite tell yet.

Ride The Lightning And Try To Survive: More Marvel Now Teasers

With the Baltimore Comic-Con coming up this weekend (which we will not be attending, as even a one-in-a-million chance of being shotgunned by Omar Little is too damn much), apparently Marvel’s trying to amp up the excitement leading into it with another batch of Marvel Now one word teaser images, as they did just before San Diego Comic-Con.

Two of the teasers have been released so far this week. And what are Marvel’s words of the week? You know, other than “send” and “money,” “buy” and “Hawkeye,” or “retrieve” and “Brubaker?”

Find out after the jump!

Body Dysmorphia: The Incredible Hulk #8 Review

In most of the ways that matter, The Incredible Hulk #8 is not a bad comic book at all. It’s a decent opening to a story told from Hulk’s point of view, where Banner makes moves neither Hulk nor we are privy to, with a reasonably effective guest spot by The Punisher, an interesting, if short-lived new villain, and fun violence inflicted in new and exciting ways. There’s a lot here that works.

However, the stuff that does work is somewhat hamstrung by a couple of significant weaknesses, including a general plot that is taken from the annals of Breaking Bad, if Giancarlo Esposito’s mother was actually an Alsatian Wolf Hound, and, well, the artist. In short: Steve Dillon is an excellent artist. An excellent artist who should be tazed in the groin before he even thinks of drawing The Hulk ever again.