Thunderbolts #117 Review

THUNDERBOLTS # 117
Written by Warren Ellis
Art by Mike Deodato

Wow. After the long break, I was a bit iffy on whether Ellis would be able to keep me engaged in this story. However, Ellis blew the doors off with this issue and I believe it's easily the best of his run.

This issue sees Doc Samson, psychiatrist and former Hulk ally, coming to the base on behalf of Tony Stark to see what the current situation with Penance is. Ellis does an excellent job with him and this is probably the first time Samson has appeared bad ass, as far as I can tell. As Samson meets each former villain, Ellis projects the various mental images Samson has in regards to how he feels about each villain. This results in some awesome, "SAMSON SMASH", style scenes, where Samson imagines wailing on Norman Osborn or Moonstone, people he knows are villains getting a free ride in the current post-Civil War Marvel Universe. You can look for some of these panels in this week's Moments of the Week.

As for the actual Samson and Penance meeting, there was some actual character development for Bleedball. Up until now, I don't think Penance has had more than a panel or two in each issue and I had begun to wonder if Ellis just didn't know what to do with him. I enjoyed the final, "let's go have some beers and talk about this like guys" moment between the two and look forward to the follow up next month. The only concern is that this doesn't seem to line up with what's going on in Jenkins' Penance: Relentless mini-series in any way, shape or form. Ellis' version is far superior, despite Jenkins having "created" Penance, so I'll just ignore Relentless in favour of Ellis' version like I had originally planned.

On the new Scourge of the Underworld [note: all the new villains captured last issue are victims of the previous Scourge] side of things, it looks like most of the captured villains have mental powers of some kind and are planning an assault from within Thunderbolt Mountain. It seems like they have been manipulating people from within their cells since they arrived and at the end of this issue, they have Norman Osborn either seeing things, in this case his Green Goblin mask in his desk, or have somehow managed to have it planted there physically by someone else. Not sure who's behind this group or what their overall goal is aside from killing the Thunderbolts, but this arc is progressing nicely and I'm dying to find out more.

Before I finish, I have to applaud Ellis for his work with Songbird and Radioactive Man this issue. I felt they were sort of side characters in this book recently, when once they were the stars of it, and it appears Ellis is addressing that with this fun bit of interplay between the two that really hearkens back to the previous creative team's work with the characters.

Verdict - Must Read. The book is worth it alone for the "SAMSON SMASH" and Radioactive Man's, "The Glowing Love God" line when Songbird makes fun of his former diaper-like costume. Add in the excellently paced issue that progresses the storyline while featuring a lot of character moments and you can't go wrong with this book.

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