Warning.
Today's episode canday spoilers for the debut of the Thunderbolts team in Marvel Comics in nineteen ninety seven. And if you didn't read that, don't worry because we're just going to tell you everything that happened. Hello, my name is Jason Muceepsion and I'm Mersey Night and welcome to next our vision of the podcast where we dive deep into your favorite Joe's movie comics of pop culture.
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In today's episode, it's a book club episode. But you know what, guys, we're looking through Ip mcgeddon and there's so much going on. We're covering the Lost of Us, we're covering and or we're covering the Thunderbolts. So you know what, if you didn't get a chance, don't want to read this issue, don't worry because guess what we're going to tell you exactly what happens in it. So this is Thunderbot's number one from ninety ninety seven.
All right, Thunderbolts number one, tell us about it, Rosie.
Okay, So in the wake of the Onslaught event where we saw the terrifying villain Onslaugh essentially kill. They are the Dangers and the Fantastic Four. They are dead. Guys can come on for ninety ninety seven. They are dead. And I have to say, I think there's a pretty important point in this comic because we don't really know what the status quo is going to be going into Thunderbolts, So all we know is that people keep saying the Avengers are not going to come and save us, so
who knows. So the Marvel universe is without the heroes it has long depended on. New York is in ruins after Onslaughts attack, and the world is facing a future without superheroes. That is until a mysterious team of heroes shows up on the scene known as the Thunderbolts Citizen V Techno, mac One, Songbird, Atlas, and Meteorite, and Mark Bagley gives these motherfuckers the most nineties looking costumes of all time, and.
So looly really nineties.
You're reading this as a kid, and you're like, oh, this is gonna be just another group of nineties superheroes. Who cares they don't make any impact on me? But the book wants you to know they're important, so they're going to start off by taking down the rat Pack, who are wearing some interestingly Barren Zemo coded outfits, and
the Wrecking Crew, showing that they are incredibly strong. Because the Wrecking Crew are very strong, they have magical artifacts, and the new team, the Thunderbolts, took them down very easily. But just as New York and the world are getting ready to accept their new savers, the issue has a legendary rug pool when it is revealed on the final page that Citizen v Is Baron Helmet z Emo and
the Thunderbolts are actually the Masters of Evil. WHOA. Now, it's kind of hard to explain how this was back in the day, because it was marketed as if this was the new team you needed to know. This was the new hero team you were going to care about. There were no leaks, there were no forums. They're probably very early versions of forums, but not the kind that
would be leaking like this. There were no constant clickbait coverage, so we were really shocked when this happened, and it's a huge establishing point for the name of the Thunderbolts team, which when we go into the movie. We're going to be very interested to see if they keep because the thing that is key to the Thunderbolts is the idea that you think they are heroes, but they are not.
Whereas from what we've seen of the trailers, this is the inversion of that, you think they are villains or morally gray heroes who are now going to become heroes in a true sense. So that would be a direct kind of flip of what we expect from the Thunderbolts.
Let's talk about that. I wonder how much of that, how much of a mistaken identity mm hmmm, dynamic will be involved in the movie based on this. As you mentioned, it's pretty it's central to Thunderbolts.
It's central. So why had such an impact is to.
The issue and and to the ongoing run, which takes some really fun directions, like you know, Zemo, son of a Nazi thirteenth Year zero is you know, pretty keen on kind of subverting heroism and doing evil while pretending to be a bad guy. But the conflict that becomes the most interesting conflict that drives the Thunderbolts is that a lot of his team is like, wait a second, I kind of like being good guy, like it.
Seems kind of good like people like people. It's kind of easier than being villains. We don't have to do as much scheming.
And so I wonder if in the movie there's something there's either that or you know, or or if the team they flip it and the team gets set up almost as bad guys.
I do want if we are rooting for them, but we end up in a situation where we know they were trying to do the right thing, but they end as antagonists. I think that would be really clever and it would make sense. Put on your spoiler earmuffs if you're going into this not seeing any trailers and you don't want to know anything that's happening, because I do think this is something they should have kept out the trailers.
We're gonna spoil. Now we know thanks to the trailers that you know Bob and Sentry are the same person. So I wonder if the thing here is Bob is on their team, working alongside them, and at the end it's revealed like, well, you guys have been working with Century, who is the bad guy you were supposed to be taking down all along, so you must truly be the villains of the piece, and we end up in a situation where they are perceived that way and go into
future stories as antagonists. That would be very brave of them. I think to do that with Bucky.
I agree, especially I I'm going to pitch a haircut on your idea. I wonder if the Countess's idea is we can't control Century. He becomes the Void, he kills people. What if we frame the Thunderbolts for all these deaths.
They're bad guys anyway, and I think maybe that's where we might end up at the end, where they defeat the centry work that makes a defeat defeat they you know, defeat the Void and stabilize Bob slash the Century, but all the destruction that happens in New York and the casualties then become the official story, then becomes the Thunderbolts.
Did this? Yes, that actually makes a lot of sense. Could see them on the run, could see that bond as a team tested. We also know that the Asterix, which has been a big part of the marketing and at first seemed like maybe was less of a marketing thing and was more of an actual Disney wasn't sure if they were going to call it that, but it
has become a key part of the marketing. I definitely think we could end up in a world where these by the end, they're like being called the Dark Avengers, or they're being called, you know, something different than the Thunderbolts, but the Thunderbolt's name would make a lot of sense if it goes that route. Jason, that's a that's a
very good take. I think that could definitely happen. And this is very interesting as well in a historical sense, which go back and listen to our who are the Thunderbolts episode if you want to hear Jason really dig deep into this in a really fantastic omnibus. But one of our discord users, Giant Asian Man, who I've met fantastic comic book lover, he asked a question that was basically like the book came out of the shadow of
Marvel's bankruptcy filing. Obviously the issue was planned and in the works, but did that have any effect on its reception? So I'm going to do a little brief answer to that that yeah, touches on it, And the answer is, like the bubble had already like the early nineties when Image was founded nineteen ninety three, ninety ninety four, we're talking about eight million sales for X Men issue one, you know, the Chris Climont, Jim Lee issue Image Comics,
the death of Superman. These are huge stories, but around the mid nineties it just absolutely tanked corporate greedfully supplanted
kind of creative ambition. The comic book retail sector, which had been inflated by years of gimmick covers and variants and foil covers and all those things we loved as kids and fake promises of their collectability kind of popped in nineteen ninety six and this massive store closers ensued, and a foolish gamble from Marvel, which again we have a lot of fun talking about on that whose Standerbot's issue saw The publisher turned to Rob Eifeld and Jim Lee,
who had left found Image Comics, and they were given the Avengers and the Fantastic Four with the freedom to start a new storyline outside of ongoing Marvel continuity, and the Onslaught crossover that we mentioned provided basically an in story excuse that resulted in Heroes reborn, a misguided initiative
that only further deflated confidence in the publisher. During that time, cap Irom Manthor and the Fantastic Four were off the table, So in the throes of impending bankruptcy and ownership they Marvel began to experiment and the most shocking and long lasting of that was this Busiac and Bagley Thunderbolts, which they were kind of able to do, this completely wild swing for the fences. And as we've seen now you know, we're in a situation where we're almost you know, decades later.
It had such an impact that we are having this adaptation question mark influence question Mark. It's gonna be interesting to see where it led.
Yeah, do you think the reveal that Shield was Hydra steals a little bit of this thunderas of the the original idea of the thunderbolts, Like if they couldn't obviously I think do a one to one adaptation. I think because you know, we've already done one of the most crazy twists in the MCU, which is that shockingly Shield for a number of decades was secretly a neo Hydra, neo Nazi organization run by Hydra at the highest levels.
I think you make a great point. I definitely think that's an issue they ran into, and I think that's why we're getting this kind of reimagined later stage Thunderbolts. And there has been times in the last few years where now the Thunderbolts are more of this kind of like a suicide squad for Marvel, which I think is what they are kind of pushing them towards in this.
So yeah, but I think the Hydra Cap kind of hydro Nazi stuff was so well done in the movies, and then we even got that great throwback in you know, endgame where Cap says like, Hail Hydra when he's in the lift, so he doesn't have to have the fight like, so we even get that, So yeah, I do think
that makes it harder. But I also think that we are in an interesting situation with the MCU where we are now in a time when the MCU isn't maybe being looked at as kind of creatively bankrupt, just as the way the comics were being looked at by then, So could this be that return. I do think that with the new trailers we've seen with Florence Pugh jumping off the second tallest building in the world like nine times getting her Tom cruise on and the kind of
a twenty four branding. I think they want us to see this as a new era for the MCU, not just in storytelling, but also in the way the movies are made. So it could be interesting to see if Thunderbolts acts and has that same impact as the comic did all those years ago.
Let me ask you this, this being you know, I think one of the most impactful in a kind of plot shape and marketing way impactful issue to Marvel's success in the twenty first century. Do you have any like what would be your favorite runs and or issues, let's say your Mount Rushmore of nineties Marvel. Oh, and where would Thunderbolts land on that Mount Rushmore?
I think that I think that for the actual like story of it, and kind of I would say, like the for me, the notion of the Thunderbolts is cooler than necessarily maybe the execution though I do remember deeply like feeling like it's so important and great. But I do think that for me, I can't help it, like as a nineties kid, like the number one has to
be that X Men number one. I just remember so deeply it coming out with that trifl cover and the connecting issues, and obviously I was like not reading it when it first came out because I would have been like three, But I was probably reading it two years later when I was five or six, and I just thought it was the coolest thing in the whole world. So that would definitely be up there for me, even though ironically as an adult I now know it kind of ended my favorite era of X Men, which is
Chris Clamont's X Men. Other ones I do think the Infinity Gauntlets and stuff I Marvel work is yeah, unbelievable, and the fact that it's basically like George Pez and then Ron Limbs, so it's like people that I just love so much. Infinity. You got Infinity Gauntlet ninety ninety one, Infinity War ninety two, Infinity Crusade ninety three, which I think is fantastically underrated and should definitely be checked out.
Other ones that I really love, I would say that now, especially post Spider Verse and the impact, I would say Spider Man twenty ninety nine is up there for me. It's I think it's such a different, cool vibe. And
when you did your omnibus on it. It really like inspired me to go back and kind of look at it and explore that just how different it was to anything that we'd ever really seen before, and the tone and it's so extreme and so nineties, which is one of my favorite things about the kind of that era.
I definitely did not think that twenty ninety nine, that Spider Man twenty ninety nine would have the impact that it has.
I thought it was cool.
I definitely don't think we'd still be talking about a Spider Man twenty ninety nine thirty years later.
Yeah, right, that's kind of crazy. Also, really any for me, I'm a big I'm a big lover of the X Men, so all your kind of like you know, New Warriors and stuff like that. If we're talking, Yeah, like those eras I think were really good. Also, I would say aesthetically, and something that I've still loved since then to this day is Tom McFarland's Spider Man. I think that is
some of the best Spider Man we've we've ever had. Also, that is, you know, something that we've talked a lot about, but you're talking about some of the really great you know, comic you're talking about like the Marvel Nights stuff. Some of that started in the early, like the late nineties, you know, when they were trying to work out what would happen. So, like, you know Christopher Priest Black Panther, which is just such an iconic reimagining of.
The character that's up there.
That's definitely I think that was like a game changer. I would also say this is controversial. I'm sorry, guys, I just but I do. I loved the Clone Sago when I was a kid with Ben Riley. Like, I know it's hated, I know the choice is hated, but I think that had a huge impact on me. And I remember that being another comic where when it was kind of revealed this idea that Spider Man had never been Spider Man. I was so shocked.
I just true, it's crazy.
It's a crazy reveal. Okay, so what are yours?
I would go? I would go Generation X just Y X slash Mutant spin off with a bunch of new fun very nineties characters included I Love You, Chamber, Jubilee, et cetera.
I would go Christopher.
Pries Black Panther because I think it was Yes, we don't have the Marv the MCU version of T'Challa and the Black Panther about that, and then I think, I think the Infinity side, the George, I'll just call it the George Peress Saga, Infinity Saga and Ultronunlimited.
Those two, oh, those two are soga. Yeah. I would also say you touched on something with gen X because Chamber is one of my old time favorite characters, and also, like Chris Pachallo, like what an artist like to me, the nineties kind of stuff, and that was during the Phalanx Covenant storyline, which is so inherently nineties. But yeah, I think I think those are some good some good reads if you guys want to want to check out some other nineties stories that honestly still inspiring the MCU.
I do find it very interesting that we're in an era now where those nineties comics, which at the time you know, did sell so much, like think about Venom. Venom is another they hated and hated Redesclined, But now they are shaping these billion dollar the Studios Hope franchises in a way that I think nobody could have ever really seen. And I think that is a really interesting space to be in, especially when a lot of those creators are still active. Jim Lee is still there still
at DC. You know. Rob Liefeld still there, just relaunched Young Blood, you know, Mark Civestriet is still just keeping it going over it to number one, volume one, like fifteen, Like, you know, it's definitely a really interesting time. And to have a Thunderbolts comic Thunderbolts movie come out that is essentially like weighing on the notion of like is it gonna be the movie that saves the MCU? Like, yeah, Wolverine Deadpool. It made a billion dollars, but it did
not set the MCU back on any track. You know, it was almost the Elseworld's type story. So it's interesting to be in this situation again and see see how it shakes out.
Well, what should we read next? What should we be watching next? Let us know the discord. That's it for this episode. Thanks for listening.
I have a good day well.
X ray Vision is hosted by Jason Gitsubsion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Jewell Smith and Aaron Kaufman. Our supervising producer is a Boo zafar Our. Producers are Carmen Laurent and Mia Taylor. Our theme song is by Brian Basquez.
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