Thunderbolts

Talk about a title that has traveled far from its origins--back when it began, Thunderbolts was a brightly-colored, cleverly-plotted product of its era, the late nineties. Created by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, the title launched off an untried premise--what if a group of the world's most powerful supervillains joined together and tricked the world under the guise of a new and amazing team of superHEROES?

It played out just about perfectly. Busiek wrote the series with a heavy dose of vintage seventies Marvel soap opera and dynamism, and if Bagley's art is somewhat a product of its era, it's still got enough classic stylings to stand up today.

Then the title...wandered...for nearly 100 issues, including a name change and some bizzare "fight club" incarnation that I didn't even bother to read.

Now it's back to a version of its original premise--villains playing heroes--only the writer is Warren Ellis, and the concept instead plays off the twisted steps taken by our own government in the post-Civil War Marvel Universe. Played off as a group of redeemed baddies with huge public support (including TV coverage and merchandising), these villains-turned-heroes aren't really good guys at all, just mercenaries working for the US as a way of slithering out of their prison sentences.

It's a dark flip-side version of the original series pitch, and it works because Ellis is in great form with these slimy characters, each of them with their own secrets and manipulations. Moonstone, as always, has huge potential to cause trouble, and Norman Osborne as the team's ostensible leader is all kinds of crazy. Well, the good kinds, anyway.

It's grim, and gritty, but also sharply acerbic and well developed. It's nothing like the series that sprang out of nowhere back in 1997; it's a 2007 series, with all that implies, good and bad. Ultimately, it's a great read, and that's all that matters.