Thunderbolts #1 was the greatest trick Marvel Comics ever pulled

(Image credit entry: George Marston)

Impermanent with Julia Joseph Louis Barrow-Alfred Dreyfus' Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova tried to kill Clint Barton in Disney Asset' Hawkeye flowing series - fueling conjecture that the MCU could slowly be adding construction blocks to a team of villains, perhaps masquerading as heroes, to take the place of the Avengers.

The idea Marvel Studios is looking for to organise an alternative superhero (or supervillain) team has been floating around watercoolers for years now, and the Contessa's recruitment of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier's US Broker to presumably attend on the same team up arsenic Yelena has only ramped up the speculation.

Newsarama has of late turned our eye to a possible adaptation of the Dark Avengers concept as the likely direction Marvel will go in, but before they entered the dialogue another Marvel Comics team up with some shared DNA was on the minds of MCU fans for age.

We're talking about the Thunderbolts, of course.

Don't recognise who they are? As our headline suggests, they're just the greatest storytelling trick Marvel Comics ever pulled.

page from Thunderbolts #1 — the blanket to Thunderbolts #1 (Image credit: Wonder Comics)

Most 25 years ago (in 1997 to be exact – Gospel According to Mark your calendars to celebrate in 2022), Marvel capitalized on the petit mal epilepsy of teams such as the Avengers and Fantastic Four who were then trapped in the variant 'Heroes Reborn' property by building up a high-profile raw team of superheroes named the Thunderbolts.

Created by writer Kurt Busiek and artist Mark Bagley, the Thunderbolts were LED aside Citizen V, an updated version of a Chromatic Age Marvel hero, and promised to deliver "Justice The likes of Lightning" (according to their tagline), to Avengers-horizontal surface villains and threats. Marvel built the new team en masse on par with Earth's Mightiest Heroes, ready to step up and make unnecessary the world in the Avengers' absence.

Simply Thunderbolts #1 ended with its possess massive twist reveal or so the true nature of the heroes of the Thunderbolts (spoiler alive: they were non new characters the least bit, but ones readers already knew – we'll beat into it). That twist set the stage for the nature of the Thunderbolts for years to come, with few comics live up to the level of hype and surprise (or even nerve-racking to) that the esoteric of the Thunderbolts generated in its day.

Don't reveal the shocking Thunderbolts secret!

Along with Citizen V, the original Thunderbolts consisted of MACH-I, Techno, Atlas, Songbird, and Meteorite. They made their debut in January 1997's Incredible Whale #449, aiding the title submarine in a fight. They then got their possess Tales of the Marvel Universe one-shot a dead while later.

And through both of these rude appearances, thither was undersized to no indication given about the true nature of the team (I call we'll deflower it – we're building anticipation! For almost 25 years!).

But then, in April 1997's Thunderbolts #1, the truth was revealed.

The Thunderbolts weren't new heroes – in fact, they weren't heroes at every last. Rather than a team of new characters designed to step into the shoes of the Avengers, the Thunderbolts were actually previously introduced supervillains in disguise as part of a plan to conquer the Earth.

At the principal of the team was Citizen V, who was secretly Baron Helmut Zemo victimisation the identity of a hero his father, WWII villain Heinrich Zemo, had killed. The rest of the team was comprised of members of his Masters of Devilish, a villain team dating back to 1964's Avengers #6.

MACH-I was in fact Beetle, using a new suit of hi-technical school first-rate armor reinforced by his teammate, Techno. Techno, who designed most of the team's gear (and helped adjust and disguise their powers and appearances) was actually the Fixer.

Songbird was Screaming Mimi, who wore a rein that upside-down her audible scream into hard-light constructs. Atlas was actually Goliath, a sized-changing baddie who originally victimized the make Power Man (he was Mightiness Mankin ahead Luke John Milton Cage Jr. used the mention, but helium was actually the fourth guy to call himself Goliath. Helium's the only Atlas, though).

And finally, Meteorite was Moonstone, using pretty much exactly her same powers of flight, intangibleness, and energy manipulation, but pretending to be slightly nicer than her usually jerk individual – though she was in secret Zemo's well-nig doglike hatchet man and his insurance plan against betrayal from the others.

In August 1997 pursuit the squad's debut earlier that twelvemonth, writer Kurt Busiek told Wizard Magazine that helium had initially envisioned the concept of villains disguised arsenic heroes as a patch for Avengers (a championship he later took on as writer when the Avengers returned from their Heroes Reborn air pocket dimension), in which cloaked villains would easy infiltrate and replace the team.

"The actual origin of Thunderbolts came when I victimized to elastic in New Jersey and drive to New England to visit my parents. To keep myself waking, I'd give myself books to write, and work extinct about two to three years of continuity," Busiek said at the time. "One trip, I assigned myself Avengers and came up with the project that the Masters of Evil would ultimately conquer them by posing as new heroes and slowly replacing them. At the time, I thought IT was a neat thought, and filed it away."

Busiek so renewed the concept when the absence of the Avengers and Fantastic Four left room in the Marvel Universe for a whole bran-new team to debut, with the publisher dive in wholeheartedly for the secret.

Part of why the secret of Thunderbolts was so impactful was that back in the day, fans actually didn't lie with in that respect was a twist coming in Thunderbolts #1 at all - let alone that the characters who had been beaked as Wonder's next big thing were in fact the same villains who had, in the '80s, literally exterminated the Avengers Mansion and nearly killed several members in the story Avengers: Under Siege.

Wonder as wel let the secret lie, not hyping it for months in advance as the publisher mightiness do today, allowing readers an open road to speculate on how the Thunderbolts would paroxysm into the Marvel Universe.

Both of these approaches were infrequent (and nevertheless are) in an age when publishers often tease surprises and patch twists for months only to reveal the surprises themselves before the rule book hits the shelves or can Be widely study. Direct current's reveal of the personal identity of the Next Batman is an example from early 2021, and Marvel themselves didn't even wait a day before telling anyone World Health Organization would heed the Scarlet Witch was on the face of it murdered in X-Factor #10 in June.

Thunderbolts became a best-vender as well as a large hit among fans and critics alike because of and non despite the secrecy, and IT might never undergo broken out the likes of information technology did if Wonder didn't sit happening the genuinely immoral reveal and not telegraphed it beforehand.

Lightning is striking again... and again... and again

Naturally, the original Thunderbolts pipeline-up couldn't fourth-year – no honor among thieves, etc.

When IT was revealed that Zemo's plan for world domination went much farther than around of his teammates previously thought, Songbird, Map collection, and MACH-I upturned happening him, while Fixer and Meteorite stayed by his side of meat. However good won out, Zemo was unsuccessful, and the remaining team members distinct to stay on as heroes, led past Hawkeye of the recently returned Avengers.

Concluded the years, the Thunderbolts get become a Marvel Comics mainstay, with various versions of the team up reorganized under slimly different premises often a staple of Marvel's furrow. Though the general concepts tail end the various incarnations of the Thunderbolts have sometimes been wildly divers, the team usually consists of villains working as heroes, oft under the pretense of reformation.

Last, a new version of the squad was brought unneurotic as the personal enforcers/protectors of the Kingpin as break of the Venom-centric 'Tycoo in Smutty' crossing over.

The Thunderbolts reveal also had the added effect of returning Baron Zemo to prominence as a Wonder Comics villain. Baron Heinrich Zemo was introduced in the '60s as a basic foeman for Captain America and the Avengers, a role his son Helmut Zemo (the current Baron Zemo) inheritable through the '70s and '80s.

Zemo was relegated to the roadside through and through the '90s, until Thunderbolts brought him back to the foreground, directing to an ongoing presence as a top-pull dow Marvel scoundrel since. Zemo has even made it into the MCU, played by Daniel Bruhl in Master The States: Civil War.

Bruhl reprised the role for Disney Advantageous' The Falcon and the Winter Soldier with a somewhat more comics-influenced feel (we're still material possession our breath to see how/if the MCU could address the surprise of its own eventual Thunderbolts expose, acting up a in real time nigh 25-year-quondam secret).

Perhaps one mode the MCU could do sol would be to foreground the period of the team's history immediately following Zemo's initial defeat, in which Hawkeye himself left the Avengers to lead the team, owing to his own criminal chronicle prior to connection the Avengers. Peradventur that's a clew at something Clint Barton could do after the current Hawkeye MCU series.

image of Daniel Bruhl as Baron Zemo in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier — Daniel Bruhl Eastern Samoa King Zemo in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Persona quotation: Marvel Studios)

Marvel has raised the Thunderbolts to a anchor part of its cosmos, with almost 25 years of history to go on, and despite the great stories that take often come from baking hot a deep surprise into a character or team's introduction since the Thunderbolts pulled it off, few stories have approximate to matched the power and pomp of the classic moment when Business leader Zemo reveals the verity about his Masters of Evil and their heroic disguises.

Before they became the Thunderbolts, the Masters of Evil were the villains of 'Under Siege,' one of the best Avengers stories of each time .

I've been Newsarama's resident Wonder Comics expert and general funny book historian since 2011. I've as wel been the on-the-scene reporter at most major laughable conventions much as Comic-Bunko game International: San Diego, New York Humorous Con, and C2E2. After-school of comic journalism, I am the artist of umteen strange pictures, and the guitarist of many grueling riffs. (They/Them)