Norman Osborn steals the show.
Norman Osborn is completely %$#&ing crazy and I'm enjoying every minute of it. Again I have to say that a lot of writers don't do Norman Osborn justice, but Warren Ellis is amazingly good at writing crazy. I can honestly say that I haven't enjoyed Osborn this much in years. He hasn't even made a single appearance in the series as the Green Goblin yet, and quite frankly I don't care. The Goblin could never show up, and it wouldn't hurt this series one bit.
Because of Norman's obsession with Spider-Man, you know that a showdown between the Thunderbolts and the New Avengers can't be that far off. When (or if) that happens, I hope it's in the pages of Thunderbolts. As much as I love Brian Bendis' writing, I want to see this happening under Warren Ellis' watch with Mike Deodato, Jr. penciling it. If they could make a huge fight between the Thunderbolts and Jack Flag seem amazing, imagine what they could do with them going up against the Avengers.
When most people are complaining that comic books are either stretching out stories to much (decompressed storytelling), or they have no character development at all... Warren Ellis seems to have found the perfect pacing for this series so far. He's only 4 issues in, and already we have 3 or 4 intertwining plot threads and each issue tries to give different members of the team a little spotlight... and in most cases it's so the reader knows what's going on in their heads. This issue was Penance, and it was great to see what he's currently going threw, and what Osborn thinks of this team member.
We have another such moment with Andreas Strucker that was very interesting, as we not only learned what's in it for him... but it also led us right into another plot thread. With everything that's going on between the Steel Spider, American Eagle, Jillian Woods and within the T-Bolts themselves you'd think a reader would feel overwhelmed by all this, but you don't. The great passing and timing makes everything fit in perfectly without confusing you.
This is easily one of the best books (if not THE best book) to be directly influenced by the events in Civil War.