It is very strange to read a title where it seems I am supposed to be rooting against the book’s stated protagonists. Has Parker just given up on anyone remotely caring about these characters and instead brings in the Mighty Avengers to be the heroes of the book? Truly to me reading this it seemed clear that US Agent, Stature, etc are the good guys we can root for here and the supposed stars of this book, the Thunderbolts, are treated like the 3rd-rate villains that are in the book just so the heroes have someone to fight. I can’t blame Parker too much for this role reversal, I can’t think of a less interesting or well known group of characters they could have put into this title. So much of what happens here doesn’t make a lot of sense. Early in the issue Vision confronts Paladin and asks him to see reason and give up the Spear of Odin the teams are fighting over. Paladin then tries to kill Vision by hurling the spear at the Avenger. Half an issue later US Agent attacks Paladin in order to snatch the spear away. Paladin responds by saying ‘Hey go ahead and have it. I am really one of the good guys anyway and I don’t want Osborn to have it.’ Nothing happens in the time in between to change the character’s mind, just a bunch of havoc caused by his attacking Vision. The sad truth is the only reason Paladin throws that spear instead of simply handing it over to Vision is that would have ended the comic 20 pages too early. The story telling in the art isn’t really any better. Things are pretty confused here. The characters never seem to be clearly established in relation to each other, they just sort of pop up next to each other in panels as they are needed to take swings at each other. There are many places where the writer seems to insist on having characters tell us what they are doing rather than simply letting the artist show us what is happening. At one point he has Ant-Man telling Stature to “Go small” and her saying “I am. And stop telling me what to do … We may have both been in the Initiative, but now you’re a Thunderbolt!” Bad dialogue and bad story telling. In the last pages it appears to me that Scourge/Nuke has taken control of the spear by having cut off US Agent’s left arm and leg but I am not entirely sure. I can appreciate not wanting to show this in gory detail but once you have gone ahead with having such brutal violence take place in your story you may as well at least make it clear what is going on. It is interesting that I have seen a couple of other reviews of this book now and no one has mentioned or even alluded to this development , the seemingly “big moment” of the whole issue.. Have I just read this wrong, is the art so unclear that people have completely missed it or is it just that no one cares?