King in Black: Thunderbolts #1

[cyberghostface]

"When The Kingpin put this team together it was clear this is not a team with a long life expectancy, unfortunately. And when you are fighting a threat like Knull, who is basically evil Iggy Pop but with space dragons, having a guy dressed like a rhino and a guy who calls himself 'the leaper' doesn't set you up for the big win. But who knows? Maybe The Thunderbolts are the ones that beat him. Or maybe space dragons eat all of them. Only time will tell." -- Matthew Rosenberg

Comments

[zachbeacon]

As much as I liked the Jeff Parker run, I hate that the Thunderbolts concept has been reduced to "Marvel Suicide Squad" by nearly every writer who followed Fabian Nicieza.

I did enjoy Rhino noping out of the whole thing. He's likely not going to be much help against an alien invasion but no one else here (aside from Moonstone-Lite) has the power to make him do anything he doesn't want to.

[iamrman]

How long before the whole team gets killed off in a needlessly brutal fashion?

[scorntx]

Well, Taskmaster's in a movie (if it ever actually comes out), so he could stand there making rude gestures at Death all day long.
Marvel seems to want to make Star the New Hotness, so she's probably safe for the moment.
I can't believe anyone, even Rosenberg, would be evil and / or stupid enough to kill Batroc. (... maybe. But given the way everything else Rosenberg's written has gone...)

Mr. Fear's the most at risk though.

[iamrman]

To be fair, Rhino, Taskmaster and Batroc are the only ones I actually care about.

[aperturedreams]

I mean given that the first page opens with them all being dead...probably between 1 and 2 issues

[iamrman]

I can't say I'm surprised.

[beyondthefringe]

Three issue mini.
Two (introduced solely for this story) get killed in the first issue, another simply nopes the fuck out.

I'd lay odds on Star, Batroc, and Taskmaster surviving. Mister Fear doesn't have the necessary plot armor.

[mastermahan]

That's the downside to being a legacy villain. That's the third* Mister Fear, and he once died because he forgot he wasn't wearing a jetpack and jumped off a bridge. He's only alive due to retcon.

He's also the guy fighting alien monster with fear gas. It's amazing he's not dead already.

*(Number one accidentally created fear gas while trying to animate wax figures so he'd have a conquering army. Number two is Machinesmith. It's a weird legacy.)

[donnblake]

These scans contain disappointingly low levels of Batroc awesomeness. Is that reflective of the book as a whole?

[bradygirl_12]

The Luke Skywalker declatarion: "We're here to rescue you!" :)

[beyondthefringe]

The whole "no masks" thing really baffles me.
I mean, what the hell is Rosenberg going for here? I mean, was anyone actually begging to see Taskmaster's real face hanging out when his entire look is basically "dude in a skull mask"?

Also... this week alone, Taskmaster is serving as a Thunderbolt, getting his ass beat by Power Pack, and running around the world in his own mini. I get that he's a cool character and a reliable name, but he's as overworked as Wolverine and Deadpool.

I wouldn't mind it if he said "Oh yeah, every so often I pay a particularly promising student of mine to dress up as me for jobs I don't care about. It's like a graduation test."

[deh_tommy]

Do Power Pack and his miniseries take place during King in Black like this does?

[beyondthefringe]

Nah. I don't know where the Outlawed! storyline fits in with Knull, but presumably these three appearances aren't simultaneous. But watching Taskmaster both lose to Power Pack and outsmart the Squadron Supreme and Black Widow really hammers home just how inconsistently villains get treated. Sometimes they're genuine threats, sometimes they're one punch wonders. Sometimes they go toe to to with Thor, sometimes they get outsmarted by Moon Girl.

Unless Tasky's arrest in Power Pack is HOW he ends up working for Fisk in the Thunderbolts... Hm.