Kinda shallow but entertaining ride
The current time travel arc in Thunderbolts has been very divisive among fans and it's seemingly never-ending pace has seen the title shed a few sales and Marvel desperately trying to reinvigorate it as Dark Avengers after this story arc...but with this story I'm sure a lot of long-time Thunderbolts fans couldn't help but have high expectations for.
It's new vs. old as the current time-displaced Thunderbolts go head-to-head with the original Thunderbolts. As great as it is seeing Boomerang square up to Baron Zemo or how awesome it is to see Hyde repeatedly mashed into the ground by Atlas, it comes across as a kinda shallow but entertaining ride. There isn't much character work in here, we get some minor Fixer character work, a fun Boomerang scene with his past self and then a short Moonstone moment at the end but other than that the whole issue is kinda punch punch smash smash.
I'm sure it still all comes down to the fact that with the exception of Boomerang, Moonstone and Ghost (who does nothing this issue sadly), I just have absolutely no feelings for the current Thunderbolts team. It is great to see Atlas back in the book and I will never complain about having Abe Jenkins in any book, but there's nothing really groundbreaking that can be done with regards to those characters. We know the next 10+ years of things that will happen to Abe and Erik so what we get is a story depending on the cast of current Thunderbolts who, to be quite honest, just aren't doing it for me.
Declan Shalvey handles the art chores this issue as opposed to one of my favorite artists Kev Walker (who seems to be reserved for the "present" and frankly much better Thunderbolts stories). This past week though I've been doing my research, looking on his blog and stalking him on Twitter and I'm beginning to realise Shalvey's art, despite being overshadowed by Kev Waker's art, is damn fine in itself. Also, I think I kinda am crushing on him because he likes the exact same music as me. I don't even know how many of the stars I'm giving this book is based solely on that.
Overall, this is a fun book but like with most of this time-travel stuff I just am feeling uninvolved. It's great seeing the original Thunderbolts (and as I said even better seeing Hyde get his ass handed to him by Atlas), but there's not a whole lot really going on in this issue. It's safe to say that the high expectations for this issue were sadly not quite met.