Thunderbolts was one of Marvel’s most popular original series in the ‘90s, and that team has consistently had their own comic for nearly 20 years. Marvel doesn’t currently have a Thunderbolts comic, but that may change within a few months.
Marvel’s newest teaser image is an obvious homage to Thunderbolts’ original tagline “justice, like lightning.” The new image also uses the poses from Mark Bagley’s Thunderbolts # 1 with a slightly changed tagline “Injustice, like lightning.”
For comparison, here’s the original cover for Thunderbolts # 1:
The teaser image strongly suggests that a new Thunderbolts series will arrive after the upcoming Avengers: Standoff crossover. Only one character on the cover isn’t obscured by shadows, but he isn’t an established creation. That means he may make his first appearance during the Standoff storyline. The rest of the team’s members will likely be revealed later.
As originally conceived by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, the Thunderbolts were seemingly a group of rookie heroes who stepped up when the Avengers and Fantastic Four were missing and presumed dead. But in reality, the Thunderbolts were secretly the Masters of Evil, who used their new heroic identities as a cover for their darker agenda. Later iterations of the team included reformed supervillains who really wanted to become heroes and even a black ops team of antiheroes.
There’s no creative team currently announced for the new Thunderbolts, but Citizen V was spotted early in the All-New, All-Different Marvel promotions, which strongly suggests that he will be appearing in this book.
Are you excited about the return of the Thunderbolts? Let us know in the comment section below!
