Thunderbolts #24

[iamrman]

It’s the Masters of Evil, yet again!

Hawkeye tells Citizen V to piss off, because rescuing civilians is the priority.

Comments

[beyondthefringe]

A female Crimson Cowl? A female Citizen V? When will this woke genderswapping of proud male legacies end????
/sarcasm mode off/

I appreciate how randomly obscure some of this iteration of Masters of Evil are, especially once we see the full size of their operation.

I also like seeing the Thunderbolts operating as heroes and how they rise to the occasion. Even Karla. She may be awful, manipulative, untrustworthy, prone to changing sides, short-sighted and unethical, but in this run we still get to see the occasional flashes of potential decency. Busiek really has a knack for delivering three dimensional, fleshed out characters, and making even the most unlikely of villains interesting.

And I love Bagley's art. Love it, I say.

[zachbeacon]

"woke genderswapping"

Everyone knows the REAL Crimson Cowl is a robot and any Transformers fan will tell you robots are male by default.

Next thing you know they're going to force a SECOND black guy into this comic.

/also sarcasm/

The giant MoE team hit a lot different in the days before "what if the Sinister Six had Twelve to 60 members?" and I'm not sure it'd work as well now but it sure worked then.

I never really liked Karla but Clint was clearly a good influence on her and its a shame that she backsides as soon as they part ways.

Its so weird how many people have turned on Bagley's art after Ultimate Spider-Man. I know art is subjective but I just don't get the dislike.

[iamrman]

I wasn't even aware that Bagley's art was disliked.

[zachbeacon]

It isn't as extreme as the JR Jr backlash and it might be one of those things that only exists on the Internet.

(Like the way I keep seeing people online saying Ghostbusters 2 is a bad movie when I have NEVER heard anyone say that IRL.)

As near as I can tell the claim is that he only has a handful of character models. Even if that were true* ... it still puts him ahead of all the artists that have two; one male and one female.

*I distinctly remember people claiming the Wonder Woman he drew in Trinity looked like Ultimate Mary Jane with dark hair. I just don't see it

[zachbeacon]

Batman returns!

Er, I mean “Citizen V Strikes Back”. The joke totally works if you’ve read the previous issues in their entirety. Probably. I thought it was funny 20+ years ago.

(The joke is – that in a previous issue – Bagley draws the new Citizen V as a shadowy figure that looks suspiciously like Batman.)

I think I’ve hit on why these scans have meant so much to me. These were coming out when getting on the internet was still a chore so I’ve maybe shared some of these thoughts with the one high school friend who read comics and then no one else until just now. Of course, now I have the benefit of hindsight.

Also, I just like the series a lot.


Karla’s frustration that Clint isn’t as stupid as she thought he was is both funny and one of the reasons I think future affections are genuine.

Crimson Cowl complementing Atlas’ intelligence and “I am…the TRUE Citizen V” are both pretty funny if you know about the secret identity shenanigans to come. Can we all collectively treat these two like spoilers even though it’s been almost 25 years?

This was published after the annual so I guess we’re skipping over the Citizen V gender reveal party. I mostly think this is notable because Mattie Franklin was also passing as her male counterpart at around this time.

I read this long before I saw Jaws but the cliffhanger still worked for me.

[scorntx]

Spoilers are sometimes those things that are a little subjective.
Not when it's ones like "The Thunderbolts are actually the Masters of Evil", but ones like who Crimson Cowl actually is might be pretty spoileriffic for those who aren't in the know.
Partly because she's not the biggest name in villains, and also because there's at least one fake-out.
(... err, spoilers?)

[zachbeacon]

Yeah, this era of Thunderbolts has some pretty constant twists and I just feel like some of them need to be preserved to maintain an authentic reading experience.

Granted, things like who the new Scourge is are so out of left field that I don't think it really matters to people just reading Thunderbolts and other things (like half of the next big arc) are so telegraphed that we've all been talking about it for a while.

[mazway_75]

I do love Clint here with Citizen V and coming into his own as a leader.