Thunderbolts, Vol. 1: There Is No High Road

Thunderbolts (2016)

by Jim Zub, Jon Malin (Illustrator), Sean Izaakse (Illustrator)

From the pages of Standoff!
They're a renegade team rampaging across the Marvel Universe under the direction of the Winter Soldier! But are the Thunderbolts heroes or villains-and do even they know for sure?

Collecting: Thunderbolts 1-5

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Comic Book

136 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 2017

About the author

Jim Zub is a writer, artist and art instructor based in Toronto, Canada. Over the past fifteen years he’s worked for a diverse array of publishing, movie and video game clients including Disney, Warner Bros., Capcom, Hasbro, Bandai-Namco and Mattel.

He juggles his time between being a freelance comic writer and Program Coordinator for Seneca College‘s award-winning Animation program.

Reviews

[nati · Rating 5 out of 5]

omg I love these comics, in which bucky is part of a little group. They're so much fun (and I just love bucky)!!!🤩

[fer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essa é a minha primeira vez lendo alguma coisa dos Thunderbolts. Nao amei, mas gostei. Nao gosto mt da arte, dao uma sexualizada desnecessaria nas mulheres, ainda mais pra um quadrinho de 2016, mas nada muito chocante tambem.

Aqui temos o Bucky sendo o lider dos thunderbolts, gostei bastante da dinamica deles cmo equipe. Sempre relaciono os thunderbolts com o esquadrao suicida so que da marvel kkkkk Mas eles sao bem mais bem de cabeça do que o hospicio que é o esquadrao suicida, so sao meio atrapalhados e impulsivos, achei que isso deixa a dinamica deles divertida de ler.

Temos tbm o Bucky praticamente sendo PAI SOLTEIRO da Kobik que é uma menininha com poderes. Tem ate ele lendo e colocando ela pra dormir, muito fofo!!!!

Meus comentarios de sempre sobre o cabelo do bucky: nao amei TA? Achei o cabelo mt lisao aqui, e por isso fica meio sem movimento, ta sempre jogado na cara dele. CADE O MOVIMENTO, CADE AS ONDAS, CADE O CASTANHO LOREAL?

E vamos pro nosso saldo Stucky do quadrinho:
- Bucky tentando MATAR O HOMEM ARANHA pq tiveram uma visao que o homem aranha ia matar o Steve e o Bucky simplesmente POIS vo ter que ir la resolver isso e salvar O MEU UNICO AMIGO QUERIDO QUE EU AMO STEVE ROGERS (gays)

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I imagine there must be Thunderbolts fans out there but for me they are the Marvel super team at the bottom of stack, and this good-enough volume does little to change my mind.


Quick! Name two of these guys...if you can.

[Jaye Berry · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was so ass lol. I found out about this comic from a thirsty Winter Soldier fancam I saw on twitter. They were right he is indeed hot as shit in here but its not giving anything.

There was a prison where they mind controlled supervillains into believing they lived in a nice little town called Pleasant Hill until it went to shit and Bucky busted them out. As Nick Fury is gone, Bucky is now the ~man on the wall~, protecting everyone from cosmic threats. He starts the Thunderbolt team but a mission doesn't end well and they end up as most wanted.

Literally every issue was a guest star of some other group of whoever and I was??? Who tf are any of you people? Even the ones on Bucky's team!! I've never seen any of these people before in my life, they could be walking by me on the street and I wouldn't know a thing.

They were all so stupid too and yet very similar?? Like every single superpowered had the same vibe as the others even when they had some random ass power like oh this one is named Grid what can he do? Knock out electricity!!! Pls... It seemed like half of them could blast energy out of their hands too and the fights between them were so boring and hard to make out.

The fights didn't even make sense either like Bucky is just a strong super soldier but he was fighting against people with energy blasts and not dying?? He had big gun though so I guess he's okay.

All their costumes were bad but that probably also lends to the awful art. Apparently this was very 90s comic inspired and boy do I believe it. Everyone had weird ass anatomy were they were bulky as shit with giant guns and exploding laser hands. I don't like it and it was insanely annoying how the single female character was so sexualized. The men were shirtless a lot too but you can tell this was 100% for the male gaze, including the buff bulky dudes. No one draws men so gross beast looking except for other men bye.

I really like Bucky and the cosmic energy child though. I feel like it could have done a lot if it wasn't stuck in the middle of this flop.

Like there was no plot, not even an attempt at it. Just random guest star after guest star. WHY did they agree to join Bucky's team, what was the point? His "mission" was no mission at all when they were just kinda dicking around? They didn't even like him that much or respect him as a leader, especially Moonstone so like why though.

[James DeSantis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thunderbolts is back again, and this time we have Bucky as the leader. Now it's somewhat cool to see Bucky take charge of a team. He did that a little bit with the Avengers team back during Civil War. Captain America was gone. So it's neat to see that happen again. But this time he takes a bunch of criminals or used to be criminals with almost all the original thunderbolts returning (except songbird 🥲)

I feel like this definitely connects right off of an event called standoff, and so it doesn't feel like its own completed story. It's basically Bucky and the Thunderbolts protecting this young girl while on the run, and they deal with people like the Inhumans and Hyperion again. So it's somewhat cool to observe that. But also it feels a little aimless at certain points.

What really works though? Is the character moments, the art, and just the overall flow of the story. The pacing is good, fast, and fun, and that's what you want in the Thunderbolts comic. It is a 3.5 out of 5. But for good reads, I'll give it a four out of five.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've recently become a fan of the original Thunderbolts run. In fact, I'm reading it right now - and have gone past the the Thunderbolts Classics TPBs and into the uncollected back issues of Fabian Nicieza's run with Patrick Zircher on art: it's really great stuff and needs paperback treatment.

This current collection doesn't quite reach the heights of Thunderbolts Classic. But then, it's only five issues in. I'm enjoying the ride so far and hope to read more.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

First, a complaint in how we got here: Captain America: Sam Wilson, Volume 2: Standoff rather pointedly showed all of the Thunderbolts in its magic super villain prison, then they've all reunited here. It's all a little too on-the-nose. It's great to have all the gang back, but it would have been nice to have some explanation of the wild coincidence that got us here. (Issue #6 offers a little bit, with an explanation of the reappearance of Fixer, but that's it.)

Unfortunately, the story that the Thunderbolts have been brought back for is pretty flat. There are no less than three gratuitous crossovers in this six-volume issues: with Crystal's Inhuman strike-squad; with the so-called Squadron Supreme; and with the Miles Morales Spider-Man. All of that largely derails any attempt to give the Thunderbolts a plot of their own, so the idea that they're fulfilling Bucky's Man on the Wall duties is mostly lip service.

The characters aren't much better. They're mostly flat too. Karla and Fixer are scheming. Bucky is determined. Kobik is a muderous innocent. Atlas is a good 'ole boy. Abe is really the only one who gets nuance, since he's really conflicted in working with the new Thunderbolts and losing his hard-won good guy status.

If Thunderbolts is given a bit more chance to breathe, as it was in issue #6, it could become its own comic, but at the moment it's not very memorable and doesn't really stand on its own.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75 stars. Who knew it could get weirder than a giant Bucky fighting an American Godzilla with his metal arm that could liquify at will…
This was weird in a “I wouldn’t be surprised if a 13 year old boy designed these superheroes” kind of way. Not bad overall necessarily, because it also had some really sweet moments with Bucky and Kobik which is more than the MCU have done (give this man a companion please for the love of god).
I’ll still read the sequel to see how it all pans out and to see these two idiotic husbands reunited (the “I’m doing this for Steve” line? Just rude, frankly.)

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, brisk read. Throwback to'90's comics.

[Alex E · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a few questions left lingering after the whole "pleasant hill" event, but the biggest I think is, what happens with Kobik and Winter Soldier.

This book answers that question head on by showing us that Bucky decides to make a Thunderbolts team comprised of people who came out of Pleasant Hill and...you guessed it.. Kobik herself. At first I thought this was a pretty dumb move. I mean, moving around with a sentient cosmic cube with the mind of a 4 year old... I mean, that's literally why the Pleasant Hill fiasco occurred, but then again, whats the other option? Imprisonment in some government facility is the BEST case scenario.

Thus... Thunderbolts! And this book is pretty much the team responding to typical superhero team shenanigans... and it's fine. I think one of the major problems I had with this was the art. It's very much... "Leifeldy". Very 90's and extreme. Not my cup of team.

I would recommend this if you are a fan of 90's comics, as it is written and drawn in a similar style to that.

[Connor · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is not much here. One thing this book does well is introduce the characters and explain the backstory. Other than that, there's not much of an arc and definitely no conclusion. The Thunderbolts get set up in a new base, bicker with each other, fight the Inhumans, and then Bucky leaves and gets captured. I don't think I'm interested enough to keep reading.

[Louis Skye · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aside from Bucky, I didn’t know or care for anyone else. Very repetitive story beats. Other characters aren’t interesting or nuanced. Sole adult woman is needlessly sexualized. Good art though.

[Child · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read the individual issues. It's my first contact with the Thunderbolts and I don't really know what's going on half of the time. I'm just following Bucky Barnes across the universe, wherever he goes.

[Tabitha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bucky is 80% honorable intentions, 20% guns and Steve will defend him to the entire world based on absolutely no proof. All is right with the world.

Not the top comic I've ever read, but solid and entertaining.

[Trike · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s okay, but this really feels like those dumb ‘90s-era comics where everything was supposedly grimdark and edgy yet the status quo never changed. This is exemplified by one scene in particular that is both gratuitous and cheesy. There’s a Cosmic Cube that has taken the form of a 4-year-old girl. Another character whose name I’ve already forgotten has mega-super powers granted to her by an alien gemstone and she says that anyone who wields the gem gets to call the shots and lead the team because she’s the most powerful. The kid then plunges her hand into the woman’s chest and takes the gem, skipping around and proclaiming herself team leader. Meanwhile the woman is now lying there bleeding to death, vomiting up blood, with a hole in her chest. Bucky talks the kid into giving the stone back and healing the woman, which is what happens. Super bloody and violent, then complete reset. It’s violence without consequences. Then they proceed to kill off a score of nameless aliens, dispatching with various methods such as squishing them to death (by the giant Atlas) or shooting them in the face (by Bucky). Which causes the Inhumans to show up, but none of them get killed because they have names. It’s dumb.

The art also looks like the stuff from that era, clearly inspired by Jim Lee, Whilce Portacio, etc. That’s not a compliment. The Fixer looks like a carbon copy of Forge from the X-Men, complete with red headband, and they have identical powers. In several instances it’s nearly impossible to follow the flow of the action. Is anyone nostalgic for comics from the Dark Age? I suppose there just be some but I can’t imagine why. There’s no resolution to this story but I’m not interested in continuing. However, *unlike* the superhero comics from the ‘90s, this team is entirely white.

Apparently Marvel is making a TV series about the Thunderbolts, but again I can’t imagine why. The big twist is already out there so that’s not a hook, and the idea of villains turning heroic has already been explored in two terrible Suicide Squad movies. Maybe I’m being too pessimistic based on this lackluster comic. Someone could probably make an interesting show out of these elements.

[Silas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been a fan of the Thunderbolts since their original appearance, so I was interested to see how some of these characters' stories continue. Coming on the tails of Avengers: Standoff, this book deals with some of the unresolved issues from that book, as well as continuing some of Bucky's Man on the Wall business (which seems to be fading out, really, but they still mention it, anyway). Unfortunately, it is marred by some really uninspired art, and a weird new character design for the Winter Soldier (which, as an old fan of Generation X reminds me of nothing more than Chamber mixed with Emplate), as well as bland redesigns for Moonstone and Mach X, both of whom had better designs in the past. The stories are relatively interesting, and cover a few different areas of the Marvel universe, which I appreciated (I like when things appear to exist in the same world), even if some of the bits with Kobik were a little bit silly. The good story with a few less great elements combined with the lackluster art that changed in the last issue makes this a somewhat average book, but interesting enough that I want to read the next volume.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haven't read a T-bolts book in awhile. This one takes place during the events of Civil War 2. The team is lead by the Winter Soldier. They were broken out of a prison run by a sentient Cosmic Cube. The team made it to a safe haven and have been trying to do good deeds to clear their name and turn the Thunderbolts bad name around. They run afoul of the Inhumans, the Squadron Supreme, S.H.I.E.L.D., and Spider Man. They have a rough time and the inner strife and attitudes are rampant here. I really enjoy the little girl persona the Cube has taken on, which is its own set of issues. She wants to help and the Winter Soldier tries his best to keep her safe and protected when in truth she can simply change reality, she is so powerful.
The art in this is great. There is no social justice agenda here by the writers and artists. This is good, solid superhero versus super villain (heros?) comic fare and it is refreshing and just fun to read. I may need to delve deeper into Thunderbolts books and see what I've missed. Really fun read!

[Britt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh, this could've been good, but it just...wasn't. I love the idea of a rag-tag team of morally ambiguous folks going on missions, but this just didn't attempt to tell an overarching story.

So only one character gets any development (MACH-X) because like every other issue is a crossover stuffed with other teams (Shield, the Inhumans, some sort of Squadron?, Miles Morales). It was trying to do too much and also somehow too little.

Maybe I'll check out another Thunderbolts run as I like the general concept, I just found this to be lacking in story. What was there was fun (like the idea of Bucky and the Thunderbolts replacing the watcher on the wall was good), but it was mostly character cameos and lots and lots of violence.

2 stars - it was ok.

[Rosaria Battiloro]

This was a quick and fun read, not a big fan of the throwing back at he '90s ridicolous art stlye (yes, Rob Liefeld, I'm looking at you!), but still the panels are easy to read (yes, I'm looking at you " Bucky Barnes: The Mand on the Wall" run!)!

Am I the only one who doesn't like Kobik?? I mean, I'm not great with kid/children characters in general, tbh, but this feels like super annoying to me! I know she's supposed to act like a 4 yo, but, dam, it's a really noisy and irritating 4 yo! Only the good saint heart of our poor martyr Bucky Barnes could keep up with her, that's a fact!XD

[Villain E · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow. That's some '90's artwork right there. Hints of Rob Lifeld and Whilce Portacio.

After Standoff, Bucky takes Thunderbolts veterans The Fixer, Moonstone, Atlas and Mach-X and gets them to help with his Man on the Wall mission. He's also hiding Kobik, the cosmic cube girl, who has the impuls control problems of a little kid. As a team, they run afoul of SHIELD, the Inhumans, and Squadron Supreme.

This was okay. It had some good moments. It would have been better with art which could communicate facial expressions.

[Beelzefuzz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the art for its '90s-arific style. Whilce Portacio meets some Rob Leifeld everyone is streaky and a little disproportioned. I never started caring about any of the characters except the little girl, but she was not able to carry the team book. I will not come back to see what it turns into unless there is a rerostering.

[Jonathan Carlson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a perfect return to what made the original Thunderbolts team so great. They’ve never been able to top the chemistry of this roster and I loved every bit of fan service this run handed out. I only wish that it wouldn’t have had such an abrupt ending and just when things were getting so interesting too!

[Lillian Francis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up for Bucky but my favourite issue didn't even have Bucky in it; it was Abe (Mach -X) and Atlas going out for beer.

Read at face value without getting pulled into any of the crossovers that seemed to make up a lot of the book which gave the actual story lines an unfinished feeling.

[B · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a fun idea to get the gang back together (nostalgia for the mid-90's seems a little much on paper, but . . . ), even if it's not clear the Bucky + Kobik story belongs together with this.

And I remember liking Volume 2.

Here, though, the gang just mostly hangs out without too many interesting character moments. There's not much momentum to the story.

[Brannigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not a huge fan of team books. You either get too much time focused on the characters or not enough. This one had a nice balance of character development with action and a nice plot. I didn’t read the Avengers Standoff Pleasant Hill storyline but the writer did a great job giving me the barebones breakdown so I didn’t feel lost.

[Liz Levandoski · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be honest, I only pick this up because it has the Winter Soldier. At the time when this came out, I was not reading comics yet, and I personally don’t know much about the story line leading up to this. That said it is a great read, at arts good, and it’s definitely one of the easier runs I’ve tried jumping in on.

[Maigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was NOT expecting to love this series as much as I did from the first page, but wow! It sucked me in and hasn't let me go. I started with 'Old Man Hawkeye' as my first introduction to the modern Thunderbolts, but it's really nice (and fun) to see them in their element and to know their characters better. This certainly won't help tamper down my infatuation with Bucky Barnes, however.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

Shallow and uneventful. Something compelled me to try this series, maybe I wanted a Bucky led Thunderbolts to be cool at the very least, but it's full, lifeless, sure feels like it's stuck in the past, and kinda drab to look at too. There's a few small moments I liked, but that's about it on what I enjoyed. A forgettable book that's not worth others time.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oof, this was bad. Pretty much the only thing good about it is Bucky being cute with the godlike-powered "kid." The cast is boring and five minutes after finishing I could not tell you anyone else's names, and the team guestspots are even worse. Really glad the library doesn't have the next volume so I don't masochistically order it.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was alright. Not a fan of Kobik, and the artwork through me off. I didn't quite get their point, and the storyline wasn't singular and seemed to bounce around all over the place. I want more Winter Soldier, but I can do without the rest of the Thunderbolts.