Laughter In The Face of Death: Thunderbolts #15 Review

I have clearly not been responding well to Marvel’s Infinity crossover, and I’m beginning to understand why that is, beyond a general orneriness that comes from covering something like five major crossover events in two years, with one of those events being Fear Itself.

Infinity is about a lot of things: interstellar war, tactics and strategy on a large scale, betrayal, and the lineage of kings and tyrants, with mass extinctions of a variety of races and alien species hanging in the balance… but i’s not so much about people. Sure, we have Captain America acting all inspiring and Captain America-ey, and we’ve got Namor acting all stoic in the face of apparently giving up to Thanos’s goons, and pretty soon we’ll have Doctor Strange being all bummed and guilty for leading the bad guys to Thanos’s son… but otherwise it’s all Skrull generals talking about the glory of battle and Krees calling humans upright apes and Builders talking like hippie douchebags with Classical Lit degrees and a suicide pact.

Ships and strategy and explosions are fun, but without the human element, a lot of Infinity has felt like watching dudes playing a tabletop game of Starfleet Battles: kinda interesting, but not the kind of spectator entertainment likely to convince me to turn off the Red Sox game. Which is probably why I’ve responded better to the extraneous crossover books that have dealt with the invasion on Earth. Sure, it’s hard to call an alien invasion of Earth a “small” story, but particularly with the way Jonathan Hickman has pulled all the heavy hitters off the planet, leaving only lower-powered heroes to deal with everything, crossovers like last week’s Mighty Avengers #1 feel more personal.

As does this week’s Thunderbolts #15. Which starts as a story about The Punisher dragging the team on a personal mission to wipe out one of New York’s crime families, only to be interrupted by the violent invasion of New York by the forces of Thanos.

And, as with Mighty Avengers last week, it’s one of the more relatable and entertaining chapters of Infinity so far.

The bulk of The Thunderbolts are stuck in traffic, trying to track down stoolies who might know how to track down the Paguro Crime Family, when Deadpool takes off to get some pizza (like the man said, New York must suck for Mexican food). As Punisher, Elektra and Venom use a variety of methods, ranging from sex appeal to intimidation to the liberal use of high explosives to try and track the crew down, Red Hulk and Red Leader wait in a submarine in the East River (or maybe the Hudson River; I don’t know much about New York City beyond the rumored inferiority of their Mexican food) Red Leader sees thousands of unknown spaceships approaching New York on the scanners (and also sees Mercy reacting to the sudden panic like a porn star in a cocaine refinery), but decides to keep this information to himself. Just as the main crew gets a solid lead on the Paguros’ location, they hear and explosion and see giant spaceships over Manhattan. Given that this is the Marvel Universe: must be Wednesday.

So yes, this issue is an Infinity crossover, but part of what worked for me was that the events of the crossover just sort of happen toward the end of the issue, while all the various characters are going about their normal business. I like this kind of thing; after issues upon issues of master plans and long-term strategy over the attack by Thanos, it’s fun to see and remember that, for most people who would be caught up in this kind of thing, it would just happen, while they were doing their normal shit. And sure, for The Thunderbolts, “their normal shit” involves tuning up goons and obtaining fast food products while posing as Spider-Man, but the effect is still the same: human and relatable. Or at least more relatable than tracking enemy space dreadnaught movements across the galaxy.

And unlike in many of the other Infinity crossovers, there is some humor here. Sure, wherever there is Deadpool, there is humor – Deadpool’s initial reaction to seeing giant spaceships overhead was particularly fun – but we get at least one little gag from pretty much every member of the team, from big slapstick (if you count the application of a timed explosive as “slapstick”) by Punisher, to Red Leader’s dry reaction to seeing the incoming targets on the radar. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a larf riot or anything, but if there’s one thing that Infinity has been lacking in, it’s almost any humor whatsoever. So it’s nice to see some here.

The art by Jefte Palo, however, just isn’t to my taste. It’s not bad or wrong by any stretch of the imagination, but it is very European in style – think Aeon Flux and old Metal Hurlant, with sharply angular bodies and faces, in an almost minimalist style. The limbs are all long and sharp, and the fingers are squared off, which, again, is fine, but as a long-time American comics reader, it’s not a visual style that I really dig. Still and all, his pacing is good and the panels are easy to follow… but man, that “cheesecake” shot of Elektra trying to seduce some goons into her van looks to me like she was built from barbed wire.

Jesus, I’m recognizing that this is a weird review, in that I’m getting it all caught up in the framework of the Infinity event more than I am reviewing it on its own merits… but it’s something that I feel like almost have to do. Taken away from the framework of that event, this would be a very strange issue of Thunderbolts; a team with Punisher, Elektra and Red Hulk on it should, on its face, be dark and violent, and not nearly as generally fun and funny as this issue is. Without the greater context of this deadly serious attack by Thanos, the tone here might seem out of place. But as a fringe piece of this plot-driven, bombastic crossover, the levity is refreshing and Goddamned welcome. As an issue of Thunderbolts, it’s a little off-kilter. But as a chapter of Infinity? I really dug it.