The Thunderbolts are faced with a monumental task: protect innocent lives from an enroaching army, or be overwhelmed by a sea of barnivorous amphibians.
The Good
This book deserves a badge of merit for somehow managing to make a "Giant-Sized Man-Thing" joke, and pulling it off within the context of the story. I applaud you, writing team.
I like the way they resolved the frog people threat: it wasn't forced in the way that we thought there was no hope of them winning, nor did their victory seem "too easy." Granted, Man Thing is a force of nature, but even he can feel vulnerable sometimes.
I like the way that each team member cut loose without having to reiterate that they could go rogue at any minute: it's not something we need shoved down our throats every issue.
Songbird is quickly becoming one of my favourite superheroines, simply because she's smart, powerful, capable and courageous. I applaud the creative team for moulding her into something awesome, even though her hairstyle did scream a bit "Scene!" at the beginning of the series.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, I guess.
I liked that the two Thunderbolts teams were re-unified after a couple issues of having their own separate stories. While it's nice for a little while, eventually it becomes evident that the book doesn't have enough room to accomodate two different narratives. I'm happy things are kind of back to a status quo.
The Bad
For some reason, the end of this issue seemed very "Secret Six"-ish to me; having Fixer break off from the Thunderbolts with a group of villains seems very out-of-the-blue. As a guy who knows little about Fixer's past besides from what I've read in this series, I did not know of his prior ties to Baron Zemo, nor did I know he had kept them intact.
The whole storyline seemed a bit rushed, and could have used an extra issue to expand upon. Since we know that this "new team" won't be getting a book of their own any time soon, we can only really assume that some portion of the story will be spent trying to get them "back"; sound familiar to anyone?
The Verdict
Thunderbolts, like Uncanny X-Men, is a Fear Itself tie-in I've been enjoying immensely. It's consistently producing great stories, even if their "big gun" names (Luke Cage who?) aren't present. That's what I like to see: consistent quality.
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