Thunderbolts: Guardian Protocols

Thunderbolts (2006) (Collected Editions) #2

by Fabian Nicieza, Tom Grummett (Artist)

The Civil War gave Zemo a chance to amass a supervillain army - and now he is ready to unleash that fighting force on the Grandmaster, who plans to release an energy force across the planet that will lead to victory in his cosmic game of good and evil. But in this fight, who is good and who is evil? When the dust settles and the Guardian Protocols are enacted, the T-Bolts will never be the same again!

Collecting: Thunderbolts 106-109

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

96 pages, Paperback

First published June 20, 2007

About the author

Fabian Nicieza is a writer and editor who is best known as the co-creator of DEADPOOL and for his work on Marvel titles such as X-Men, X-Force, New Warriors, and Robin.

His first novel, the Edgar Award-nominated SUBURBAN DICKS, a sarcastic murder mystery, is on sale now from Putnam Books.

The Dicks will return in THE SELF-MADE WIDOW, coming June 21st.

Reviews

[Gianfranco Mancini · Rating 2 out of 5]

Messy ending for Nicieza's run. Ellis' next one is far better. :/

[James DeSantis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bombastic but without the heart I hoped for. Basically Zemo had some great moments but the rest was to the end of the world, so big that none of the small personal connections had in the earlier Thunderbolts from the 90s was nowhere near here.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fab cosmic conclusion to by Fabian Nicieza's second run on Thunderbolts! This story first had it's beginnings in the New Thunderbolts collections have have steadily built since. Works well with Grummett's clean lined art and nice bright colorwork is a pleasure to look at. This is old fashioned, classic Marvel super-hero / villain story-telling. A fair dab epic one at that.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nicieza offers a pretty amazing end to the run of the New Thunderbolts. It's a battle against the Grandmaster and beyond that it involves teams and teams of other Thunderbolt villains all helping to save the world. You couldn't make the scope bigger or the stakes higher.

Of course that means this volume is mostly large-scale fighting, and that gets a bit dull on the end.

On the bright side, Nicieza makes sure that he doesn't leave before he returns to the story of Moonstone, who's been absent for the rest of the New Thunderbolts run, so that's a nice return.

An epic story, but not a very personal one.

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Villains turned heroes, led by Baron Zemo try to prevent the immortal known as The Gamemaster from winning a game and destroying the Earth.

I remember a lot of people liked this series back in the day, but for whatever reason, I never read it. Seems like half decent comics. Certainly better than anything today.

[B · Rating 2 out of 5]

Blah. Zemo betrays everyone for power. Things just seem to be really complicated and then other things don't really resolve and they try to return to the status quo.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

It really feels like Nicieza was just getting started on things to come when his run on Thunderbolts ends. I've heard rumblings that he wasn't aware that he would be leaving T-bolts until he found out that Warren Ellis would be coming on. That's gotta suck.

The sad thing about Nicieza's run coming to an end and Ellis coming on is that Ellis does something similar to what he did on Stormwatch: he keeps a few characters and drops the rest (luckily here there is no crossover with Aliens to slaughter everyone.) I will miss Atlas, he's a hero at the end, but most of the Marvel universe forgets about him. Abe and 'Bert become government agents who fade away. Sad.

But Moonstone is back and that's the best thing that could happen.

[Holden Attradies · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do enjoy the Thunderbolts but I have to say pretty much all of the stuff of theirs I've read with Baron Zemo in it has been pretty hard to follow, this one being the hardest. I know part of it is that I haven't read all of the back issues before this and don't know the full histories of these villains, but still I felt through most of this like consistently saying "What the hell just happened and why?".

edit

On second reading this was a lot betrer. kik

[Ondra Král · Rating 2 out of 5]

Konečně dočteno. Jako celek to bylo... divné. Hodně divné. Spousta věcí mi stále není úplně jasná, ale asi mi to nijak nevadí.

Teď se ještě dokopat k tomu a přečíst těch chybějících padesát čísel co nejsou v boocích.

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

A tad confusing storyline about Zemo and the Grand Master in a fight for earth. Very action packed but ot much substance.

[M.T. Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fitting, if a bit rushed, end to Nicieza's Thunderbolts run.

[Andrew Obrigewitsch · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was ok, pretty much your average comic book story, bit cheesy and the dialogue was not the best.

[Ed · Rating 2 out of 5]

I figured I'd wrap up the arc started in Civil War. This was enjoyable enough but nothing special.