Thought I'd take a break from learning to animate in Blender and talk a little comics!
I grew up in the late 80s and early 90s with mostly X-Men and some Spider-Man comics. They were great! But as I was going through my teenage years I didn't buy a ton of comic books and those I did buy were a bit more 'sexy' and indie. Though I did continue to buy Daredevil comics some. He was my original 'favorite character' and still is among my favorites today.
It wasn't until the mid 2000s that I really went back to superheroes and Marvel comics in general. I was a big fan of Bullseye as a villain in Daredevil. So when I started seeing him in this group called Thunderbolts and reading about this huge event going on called Civil War I got pretty excited.
By then however, Thunderbolts was already on issue #110 or so! I somehow missed this series for almost a decade? I would soon learn that the team was totally different now than it was originally. But I was super curious so went back to the beginning.
The Thunderbolts first appeared in Incredible Hulk 449. As far as anyone knew they were just a group of new superheroes! Because most of the mainstream heroes just disappeared thanks to Onaslaught (if my memory isn't too far off.)
Shortly after this they were in a Spider-Man team up issue that most people just forget. Then they got their first issue that reveals their big secret.
[Spoiler] They're actually b-list villains in new costumes pretending to be heroes!
A lot of people think the Thunderbolts is just a Marvel rip off of DC's Suicide Squad. But they only turn into that later. The original team and story is mostly a brand new concept. Sure it is still villains as a team to be like heroes. But the original plot is actually them doing it on their own, on purpose, to take advantage of the missing heroes and gain public favor. It isn't until later when they're all outed and such that it becomes a Suicide Squad type situation.
I enjoy it both ways. To me the Thunderbolts run from day one until it ended as Dark Avengers #190 was some of the best story telling and fun in comics that exists. It dug up characters from the past in ways I had never seen done before. Characters no one ever cared about. And made them interesting and fun to read. Of course later, bigger names started joining the team and being used to sell the book more which was also fun but at the core of the book these early characters still had a presence and drove the story.
The original characters from the book are Baron Zemo (Citizen V,) Moonstone (Meteorite,) Fixer (Techno,) Beetle (Mach 1,) Goliath (Atlas,) and Screaming Mimi (Songbird.)
The state of the comic book world right now is something I could probably rant on for hours, but for the sake of this writing, I'll just say it is very much driven by movie and tv speculation. As of late, I have noticed a lot of talk about the Thunderbolts. Because people are starting to speculate their appearance in the MCU.
I really don't see them doing justice to this team. I'm afraid they're just going to completely portray them as a Suicide Squad in Marvel and try to cram a bunch of villains people like together... but who knows. Maybe they'll bring in the original team and do it right!
Another thing I'll never get about comic collectors is how "first appearances" can change so often and completely devalue a book sometimes. People will often try their best to make their lesser valued book get more prominent by spreading it around as the 'true first appearance' or saying the currently regarded first appearance isn't enough to qualify, so this other one should be it! Sometimes it catches on. Others it doesn't. I'll never really understand it.
So take this as you want and don't hate me if it turns out to be wrong or changes in the future.
But with all that said, you may want to look into the following books!
Baron Zemo first appeared as Phoenix in Captain America #168. This guy has technically already been in the MCU and is the original leader and creator of the group, therefore has an extremely high chance of being part of any kind of Thunderbolts project or appearance.
If I am not mistaken, none of the rest of the original team has appeared in the MCU at this point. So all the following could either make individual appearances soon in the new tv shows or other movies. Or be new characters if they ever get their own movie or tv show.
My favorite of the original team is Songbird. She first appeared as the Screaming Mimi in Marvel Two In One #54. I would even argue that Songbird plays the biggest role of anyone over the course of the entire series. She is the most consistently used character and does a lot in almost every story line.
If Songbird makes it in, I'd also guess Abe Jenkins will be there too. They are very close. Not to mention the Beetle is one of the more popular of these unpopular characters being used as a villain in many situations from Avengers characters to Spider-Man. He generally abandons the Beetle character for his Mach persona but originally appeared as the Beetle back in Strange Tales #123.
Moonstone is also a very often used character throughout the series. She is super interesting because unlike Songbird and Beetle, she never really shows interest in reforming to be an actual hero. She is a devious sociopath with an extremely high power level. Her first appearance was in Captain America #192.
The techie of the group is Fixer or Techno or Mr. Fix. Not real sure what his original name was. Since Iron Man has basically retired in the MCU, I'm not sure there is a lot of high tech characters left that aren't extreme-fiction type characters. As opposed to Iron Man's more feasible but still fictional technology. If that makes sense... anyway. Fixer would be more of a tech whiz inline with Iron Man type tech. So I'm not sure how they'd work him in but his first appearance was also in Strange Tales, but issue #141.
Lastly we have Goliath or Atlas as he becomes. For such a big character he is probably also the least used and least interesting of the entire group. He could easily be brought into the MCU through the Ant-Man family of characters though. He first appeared as Power Man in Avengers #21.
Well... if you made it this far you have some interest in these great books probably! I of course recommend them. But to be frank, I think the chances of the MCU doing a full on original Thunderbolts team is almost zero. It is much more likely they ruin the team by including a bunch of characters they've already introduced in the MCU, whether they have been Thunderbolts at one time or not, and make it into a Suicide Squad thing. Batroc, Zemo, Ghost, etc... would be likely choices. Which is a bit of a shame in my opinion. If they had some patience and set it all up properly, Thunderbolts could probably be every bit as big as Guardians of the Galaxy or other earlier MCU success stories.
Sorry for the slightly glared and somewhat blurry pictures also. I was just flipping through some books and took pictures of them and decided to write this about them. Hope you enjoyed it!
