THUNDERBOLTS #163.1

Review by: TheNextChampion

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Story by Jeff Parker
Art by Declan Shalvey
Colors by Frank Martin
Letters by Joe Caramagna
Cover by Roberto De La Torre

Size: 0 pages
Price: 2.99

I am so perplexed onto why Marvel is still continuing with the idea of a ‘.1 issue’. The research has shown that the sales has not increased dramatically to have a ‘jumping on point’ issue nor have most of them worked in any way to make it an easy access for new readers. So I was really not looking forward to getting a .1 issue of a series I had no real need to catch up on. (Yes I know I didn’t have to get this, but bear with me I’m going somewhere with this..) When I was done reading this issue though all I had was one thought: “That’s how you do a .1 issue Marvel!”

One of the things that hit me too about this issue is that, boy it’s been a while since we’ve seen Luke Cage hasn’t it? He’s been sorta missing because of the various events for Marvel so the leader of the main team has not been around for a while. In this issue he returns to help try and find the rouge T-Bolts and almost everything he said made me chuckle. He has this no non-sense attitude but he quips so many times here that almost everything had me laughing. Then we have other underused characters for a while with Ghost, and especially Songbird (it’s her issue) and again I do forget just what this series used to be before Parker added dozens of other characters to the mix. The ‘jumping on point’ for this issue seems to be the remaining T-Bolts trying to find the rogue team while Songbird remembers her past with a convenient plot device. But the obvious flashbacks work pretty well here and Parker seems to be setting something up for future issues is apparent. (How big to small it is in the future is left up in the air for now)

Declan Shalvey. Here’s a guy who’s gotten his share of fame now with this title and he feels so underused. Don’t get me wrong every issue he does, including this one, are beautiful to look at. But it feels like he should be having another ongoing series after so much work put into this one series. You get a great opening sequence of the T-Bolts fighting a one-eyed monster and it gets better from there. You have a river of souls, great panel layouts in the dream sequences, and the most badass looking Spider-Man you’ll ever see. (There! Go put this man on Amazing Spider-Man and I’ll buy it!) You’re just not going to find a lot of artists with this type of style and yet it fits so perfectly for this series. If it wasn’t for Kev Walker being slightly slow on deadlines we wouldn’t be seeing such great work today.

I am just as surprised as you are that this is my favorite book for the week. It does everything that a .1 issue is suppose to do though. It reintroduces the characters and gives us some insight into one of them to get us intrigued for future issues. But as a regular reader it got me happy to see underused characters, like Cage, because Jeff Parker is so good at writing them. Add in some outstanding pencils by Declan Shalvey and it might be the best looking .1 issue I’ve seen for this idea. I’m glad I picked this up because if I didn’t I would have missed out on a fantastic issue for an already fantastic team book. Definitely pick this up if you were unsure of it before or if you’re a new reader.

Story: 5 - Excellent
Art: 5 - Excellent

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