The True Origin Of The Thunderbolts!!

Look, whomever owns Hostess these days--it's time to bring back these ads in our modern comic books!!

BONUS--We could have Saga Hostess ads, where someone claims they don't like fruit pies, and Lying Cat says...

Yes, I'm a regular Darrin Stevens.

Now someone make this happen!!

From Thunderbolts #9 (1997)

Hawkeye Is Better Than Green Arrow--Proven With SCIENCE!!!!!

Some people, it seems, disagreed with my statement yesterday that "there is no possible universe in which Green Arrow will ever be as cool as Hawkeye."

Well, not to stir a tempest in a teapot, but my statement was empirically, objectively, logically and certifiably true.

 VS.

Let's go to the science, shall we? [FYI, we're going with comic book incarnations here. Which actually levels the playing field a bit, as MCU Hawkeye blew up Loki with an exploding arrow]

ORIGIN:
Oliver Queen is the original 1%-er, a billionaire. Not a particularly good one, as he's lost and restored his fortune more times than DC has announced and changed plans for a Wonder Woman film. He became a hero because that's what billionaires did back then.

Hawkeye was an orphan who ran away and joined the circus. Literally. And was taught to be a marksman by a super-villain.

Easy win for Hawkeye.

COSTUME:
People like to make fun of Hawkeye's purple outfit.

And that's OK. Because the thing actually looks pretty good in the hands of a good artist:

And most people forget about this one:

PHWOOOOAARRRRRR!!!

I'll take that over ersatz Robin Hood any day.

OTHER POWERS:
Green Arrow fires arrows. And more arrows.

Clint Barton, however, also was...

GOLIATH.

Another clear decision for Hawkeye.

HOTTER GIRLFRIEND:

I'm not sure that this is a valid criteria, but let's play anyway.

Sure, Oliver has had, in some continuities, a long-term relationship with Black Canary.

Of course, despite having a hot girlfriend, Green Arrow has had multiple (multiple) infidelities, and a string of illegitimate children (apparently he never packed the condom arrow). And Dinah dumped him (more than once).

And I really think you're selling Hawkeye's hot girlfriend/wife short:

And let's not forget--Clint Barton has probably the ultimate tie-breaker:

So, yeah...Black Widow AND Mockingbird. Pretty clear win for the Hawkster.

SIDEKICK:

I'm pretty sure that this hasn't happened to Kate Bishop yet:

Another win for Hawkguy!

GREATEST TRIUMPHS:

Well, Hawkeye once beat the Collector, all by himself, after all of the other Avengers had been captured.

Oh, yeah, and Hawkeye also once beat the Grandmaster all by his lonesome, after all of the East and West Coast Avengers were all killed (they got better).

Meanwhile, Green Arrow had a tough time with this guy.

This is getting repetitive. A win for Hawkeye!!

LEADERSHIP: 

Hawkeye was chairman and founder of the West Coast Avengers.

Hawkeye was leader of the Thunderbolts for quite awhile, getting super-villains to go straight, and turning them into effective heroes.

Green Arrow once led...well, he once...well, erm...as near as I can tell, Oliver Queen has never been in charge of anything (except for failing businesses). He's more interested in reflexively arguing with whomever is in charge...

I think you know where this is going...

RANDOM POINTS:

They both died and came back. A toss-up, unless you want to give Ollie demerits for being revived by the Hal Jordan Spectre.

Hawkeye went back in time to ye olde West, and fought Kang with the Two-Gun Kid.

Green Arrow had an Arrow Cave and an Arrow-Mobile and an Arrow-Signal...and obviously the world's biggest case of Batman envy.

Green Arrow's beard, man...that chin hair...

Green Arrow has killed crooks. A lot. Big demerits in my book.

Well, none of that is enough to sway the final results: Hawkeye 1,000,000,000 and Green Arrow 0.

Sorry, Green Arrow fans--it's science!

Prediction--Justice League Like Lightning?

I made this prediction on Twitter a few weeks ago. But now that the house ads have started running, I want to make sure I'm on the permanent record here:

The "Justice League 3000" will turn out to be the surviving members of the Crime Syndicate, beaten in Forever Evil. They've fled to the future to pose as reborn heroes, pulling a Thunderbolts.

Tune back in a few months for the I-told-you-so's.

Friday Night Fights--Greek God's Revenge Style!!

We'll give you the moral of today's Friday Night Fight up front: don't get a Greek God pissed at you.

You see, back in the halcyon days of the Stern/Buscema/Palmer Avengers, Erik Josten (Powerman/Smuggler/Goliath/Atlas) and his fellow Masters of Evil slipped Hercules a rufie and beat him into a coma.

So when Herc got wind of the fact that Josten had been posing as a hero in the Thunderbolts, well, it was time for as little payback:

As Herc fells the rest of Thunderbolts who leap to Atlas' defense...











BAM!!!! Hercules don't do no redemption!!!!

Spacebooger has pecs as good as Hercules, he just doesn't like to show off...

Kurt Busiek, Mark Bagley and Scott Hanna show that it ain't so easy trying to be a good guy in Thunderbolts #22 (1999)

Now is the time for you to go and vote, and specifically vote for me. Why me? Well, as you've just seen, Hercules doesn't accept apologies...so you gonna tell him you're sorry you didn't vote for me? Thought not...

Maybe He Should Have Checked Wikipedia First...

Hawkeye's got a problem in Secret Avengers #23.

You see, Captain America is trying to put Flash Thompson, the all-new, all-different Venom on the team. And Clint isn't very happy about it:

True, Hawkeye...Captain America would know absolutely nothing about being "saddled" with former villains on his team...they could never be "assets"...

And you, Hawkeye? You would never, ever, ever want to lead a team that had reformed notorious super villains. That's obvious...

Hmmm...maybe when he's done writing issue-length Hawkeye hissy fits, Rick Remender could read up on a little history of the guy leading the team. (In fairness, I was much happier with Remender's handling of certain other characters...more on that later in the week)

You'd think that with Hawkeye coming up in the Avengers movie, Marvel would want to make him look, you know, heroic and all. But between this and last week's Avenging Spider-Man, there seems instead to be a concerted effort to make Clint Barton into an unlikable, reckless, arrogant, incompetent ass who's neither very good at heroing or at leading teams.

If so, mission accomplished, Marvel.

Dork Avengers

Questions, I have questions...

A) Man, if Bendis really wanted to write Thunderbolts stories that badly, why the hell not just write Thunderbolts? Why drag Norman Osborn et al into a whole new and unnecessary Avengers book???

B) Why the elaborate charade?

Remember, the premise is, the public saw Osborn being a hero against the Skrulls, and the public clamor caused the president to put him in charge of H.A.M.M.E.R. and the Avengers.

Well, the rest of the Thunderbolts team was there too, right? Moonstone was there, Bullseye was there, Venom was there. They fought and killed Skrulls live on TV. Wouldn't they then be regarded as heroes, just as much as Osborn?

So why the pretend game? Why pretend Moonstone is Ms. Marvel, or Bullseye is Hawkeye, or Venom is Spider-Man? Why would the public accept Osborn as the Iron Patriot, but not the rest of his team??

C) Spider-Man.

Let's check in with Peter Parker, and see what's up in his life.



Oh, right. He's wanted for suspicion of being the "Spider Tracer" serial killer. The police are shooting to kill on sight. The general public believes he's a killer, and is frightened to death of him.

Hmmm.

So having Venom disguise himself as a perceived serial killer is an advantage how??

Yet, in the very same city, here's the press and the public, wildly cheering for the man identified as Spider-Man.

So, the police and the people and the papers (especially the DB!!) have magically forgotten their vendetta against Spidey why?

Or has Osborn somehow pardoned Spider-Man, and the message just hasn't gotten through to the NYPD yet?? So instead of tweaking Spider-Man, he's actually doing him a favor?? And we can expect to Peter Parker receive some of this love in his own mag??

Or, more likely, is it that Bendis just doesn't give a damn what's going on in anybody else's books? That he can't be bothered to have his charade make sense because, dammit, he wants Venom to be an Avenger, and the storyline in Amazing Spider-Man can just go frell itself?!?

D) Ares and the Sentry?!?!?

Look, Bendis clearly has some deep liking for these characters, as they're the only ones he kept around from Mighty. But in heaven's name, why?!? In the Sentry's stint in New and Mighty Avengers, and Ares' in Mighty, have either one of them done anything even remotely interesting, or even memorable?!? If you like these guys so much, Bendis, why the hell don't you have them actually do something?!?

So what does the first real event of Purple Reign give us? Gussied up Thunderbolts, used in ways that make no sense, and a 7-page preview of Secret Warriors that had ALREADY been run in the Dark Reign: New Nation special. There's $3.99 well spent.

I guess it really is a dark reign...

Clips from Amazing Spider-Man 584 and Dork Avengers #1

Deus Ex Vita Forma Inlex

Caleb has done a fine job of ripping Secret Invasion #5, so I don't want to belabor the point too much. There are, however, two things I've got to say:

First, as Caleb notes, we FINALLY finish the confrontation between the Skrull Captain Marvel and the Thunderbolts that started way back in Skrullapalooza #1 (remember...5 issues in, and only 20 minutes have elapsed. Wondrous pacing).

Anyway, my question is this--since the Skrulls' haven't announced themselves to the world yet...and these Skrulls are supposedly completely undetectable (except by Reed Richard's magic ray gun, which he hadn't invented yet)...my question is this:


How does Norman Osborn know that Mar-Vell's a Skrull? What, he assumes that Mar-Vell is a shape-shifting alien with Mar-Vell's powers, instead of the usual mind-control option? Osborn's not telepathic, but even if he were, these guys can't be detected telepathically. Is he just guessing? Or is it just that Bendis can't be bothered to remember his own premise when he want a "dramatic" scene to play out? Some would call that cheating.

Secondly, we've established multiple times that ALL Stark tech and ALL S.H.I.E.L.D. tech are down. All communications are down, the internet is down. S.H.I.E.L.D. itself is lousy with Skrulls. Bendis has established this time and time again. So how do we get Maria Hill out of her tense (and by tense I mean 3 issue-long 2 minute conversation...) situation:

Yup, all Stark and S.H.I.E.L.D. tech is down...except for this one thing, which we suddenly reveal (without prior hint or clue) has somehow magically not been compromised, and we unveil this only at the moment when it can save Maria and kill the Jarvis Skrull. Life Model Decoys to the rescue!!

That's not only cheating, that's piss-poor story-telling. (And yes, I get the irony of beating the Skrulls with undetectable doubles...but since it blatantly contradicts the situation Bendis has laboriously set up, it's nay so much irony as cheating...plus, the Skrulls brilliantly took down everything Stark/S.H.I.E.L.D., but somehow forgot LMDs??).

Bendis: he loves you...just not enough to play fair in his story-telling.