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THUNDERBOLTS #76
"Bare Knuckle"
Neutral (3/10)
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Marvel Comics
Writer: John Arcudi
Artist: Francisco Ruiz Velasco
Letters: Dave Sharpe
Editor: Andrew Lis
Price: $2.25 US/$3.75 CAN |
This issue of Thunderbolts will be compared to many things: The last 75 issues of the series, which declined steadily in sales but started out exceptionally popular and still had a devoted following; Fight Club, which the new incarnation of the book was compared to in marketing materials; and X-Force, which had a similar (and pretty successful) total makeover under the aegis of Axel Alonso. Unfortunately, on all counts, the book falls short. It's not as entertaining as even the weakest issues of the previous series, it's certainly not as edgy and funny as X-Force, and you might be able to stretch and say it has something in common with the Fight Club trailer, but the nuances and intelligence of that movie are completely lost on this book, which is little more than an excuse for random characters we don't care about to beat up on one another in fairly uninteresting ways.
I wanted to like the book, quite honestly, in large part due to the art of Francisco Ruiz Velasco. Velasco already did a book about underground fighting with his Battle Gods: Warriors of the Chaak for Dark Horse, and I'd send anyone who had an interest in this book to that trade paperback instead. Thunderbolts has characters who are really not all that interesting, visually (the exception being one guy who goes down in two pages) or otherwise, and there's really no explanation for the whys and hows of this underground arena, quite a contrast to the colorful and engaging characters of the Lucha Libre in Battle Gods. The art and colors are certainly pretty enough, but the book just looks a little flat.
Of course, it reads even more flat. Arcudi has an interesting point-of-view character, the epitome of a palooka, an ex-con working construction and trying to get past his time in jail. Unfortunately, the character is not even remotely sympathetic, as we're meant to empathize with the poor guy having to use his super strength to haul construction equipment on his lunch break or having to live with his nagging mother, but I found him to be basically an unmotivated complainer. Which, to be fair, makes him an ideal candidate for the desperation of underground fighting, but it doesn't make him terribly sympathetic or interesting in this first issue.
Because a lot of time is spent setting up Daniel Axum, the lead, and Armadillo, a completely revamped (and less interesting) version of a third-rate Marvel character who will presumably be Axum's foe in the ring, not much time is spent on the setup of the underground arena itself. While the basics of an underground fighting arena are clear enough thanks to real world analogues like illegal cock and dog fights, I sure would have liked, in this first issue, to get some sense of where this arena came from, who's behind it, how long it's been around, anything of that nature. Or, for that matter, why the title "Thunderbolts" is related to it at all... X-Force was a complete break with the previous history of the title, but the reason for the book's name was still apparent from the get-go.
Despite a general lack of interest in the new premise, I'll be the first to admit that Thunderbolts probably could have used a shakeup to fit more in line with Marvel's general editorial ethos. I'm just not sure this take was the one to go with, and after reading the first issue, I'm even less sure. Thunderbolts #76, with its macho posturing, could well be an enormous in-joke that I just don't get or at least don't find funny, or it might just be a failure of concept and execution. Either way, it's not a real strong opener for the new look of the series.
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