You mean the exploding boomerang thing?
Last issue I gave this series a break, I was really legitimately hoping for something good and something I would actually enjoy reading or could even just look forward to every week. Instead I was incredibly annoyed and found the first issue one of the most annoying things I've ever read. I still wanted to give the series a shot, I mean, first issues more often than not disappoint, maybe the second issue will make it all worthwhile.
Nope. This issue even more annoying. If the last issue was "one of the most annoying things I've ever read", then I don't know what the hell this issue is. I wanted a book I could look forward to, or something just to enjoy taking time out to devote time to reading... and this is so damn far from an enjoyable book. This is barely even a readable book, I wanted to give up 5 pages in because every voice in it is beyond frustrating to the point of losing the will to even think about continuing to read it. Boomerang, Shocker and Speed Demon are characters I've enjoyed in the past, here they're just annoying caricatures that belong in a bad newspaper strip.
In terms of plot progression, there's absolutely zilch. I'm not exaggerating, there's really nothing different covered here that wasn't done last issue. It's all about Boomerang. I love Boomerang, but I hate Nick Spencer's Boomerang. I also hate Nick Spencer's Shocker. And his Speed Demon. And his Beetle. And his Overdrive. And I don't even like Overdrive. Every character here is the same aggravatingly pathetic pastiche who seems to have been painfully forced through a printing press to come out sounding exactly like something out of a throwaway scene in the pages of Matt Fraction's Hawkeye. This book also has a random cameo by the Punisher, except it's not the Punisher, it's Chameleon (again! just like last issue!), but they had to trick us into thinking Punisher was in the book so more people buy it, because there's certainly no character work or quality writing going on here.
The part that really annoyed me however was the final pages where we discover Boomerang's new parole officer is MACH-VII (apparently we skipped MACH-VI...which apparently made him decide to just go back to his MACH-IV armor and call it MACH-VII). I love MACH-IV - sorry MACH-VII - and the idea of him becoming a lame object of unfunny ridicule is not something I am remotely looking forward to in the slightest. In fact, it's something that's just shrouding me in a dark void of dread and apathy, which mixes with all the frustration and anger the rest of this monotonous book has given me to make quite an unpleasant cocktail. But what really is eating me up is, it's obvious Marvel don't care for the Thunderbolts or anything done in Thunderbolts and never have. That's why Atlas, Baron Zemo, Blizzard and Radioactive Man (and over 50% of the characters of this book) all suddenly returned to being villains off-panel after leaving the book. So, I don't for a second doubt exactly what is going to happen. MACH-IV - sorry MACH-VII - is obviously going to fall off the wagon and we're all going to have a completely unnecessary character debasement written in this terrible style with absolutely no characterisation whatsoever just a plethora of the same exact gag being hammered into your skull repeatedly to the point of all the bone tissue fracturing and shattering inside your head and your brain ceasing all function.
There's absolutely nothing going on here just annoying repetitive jokes about how lame these villains are and how hilarious that is. Oh, and reminders of how great Hawkeye apparently is. See, I don't read Hawkeye, but people like it because it was a surprise. It was fresh and a bit different to everything else Marvel put out there. I'm not saying it's innovative but it took a different approach than other Marvel books. So, naturally, Marvel want to just completely emulate that, ignoring the appeal is it's uniqueness, and hammer out crap like Superior Foes of Spider-Man which is just a very poorly written attempt to copy the feel of Hawkeye. Oh, and it's not funny in the slightest.
