For Everyone Who May Have Been Thinking About Reading the New THUNDER Agents Series...
...don't. I just recently purchased five of the eight issues (non-consecutively) that have been published, and so far I'm pretty thoroughly unimpressed.
THUNDER Agents, for those who came in late, was a comic published in the '60s by Tower Comics and drawn (perhaps written, too? I don't recall offhand) by industry icon Wally Wood. It came about when Wood and one of his cohorts were bandying about ideas, and hit upon the concept of, essentially, combining the Justice League with the Man From UNCLE. The result was a series about The Higher United Nations Defense and Enforcement Reserves Agents, a team made up of employees from all levels of the Higher United Nations, given devices that granted them superhuman powers in order to fight a mysterious madman called the Warlord - and later, an evil organization called SPIDER. The original THUNDER Agents was a classic-style, high-energy, "let's-have-an-adventure" sort of book that would feature things like Dynamo (the team's strongest, and probably most iconic, member) fist-fighting with a T-rex, or (SPOILERS!) the Warlord turning out to be a reptilian mutant from the center of the Earth.
So when DC did their relaunch, of course, they decided that what was needed was an edgy, more realistic take on the team. So now, while the team is still made up of people who are given devices that give them superpowers, the powers those devices grant are slowly killing them. Because that's fun, right? And instead of a light-hearted story of high adventure, we get a first issue that opens with the previous (unnamed) team of THUNDER Agents being killed in a fight with SPIDER goons. We get a first story arc that lasts six issues (because you've got to fill out that paperback collection, son!), and most of those six issues are taken up with either the team's handlers talking amongst themselves, or flashbacks to the backstories of the newly-recruited replacement Agents. Oh, and I guess the team's on some kind of mission during this story, too, but that kind of takes a backseat to the development of great, multi-layered characters like "African guy who likes to run." And apparently, having your bad guy be a lizard-man from Earth's core isn't realistic enough for modern comics, so the new leader of SPIDER is basically just the guy from The Social Network. And he bought the remains of the original organization so he could use their tech to ask the world's leaders an incredibly pretentious question ("Why did God harden Pharaoh's heart?"). Thrilling.
The cover to THUNDER Agents #2. Looks cool, right? Yeah, nothing remotely like this happens in the issue.
The worst thing the series does, though, is something I touched on earlier: most of the "screentime," as it were, goes to the team's non-superpowered handlers. The majority of each issue that I've read so far is taken up primarily by these two bullshitting, frequently about how they feel bad about recruiting people to this team just so they can get killed. (Then maybe you should stop fucking doing it.) Because who would want to read a comic book about, say, Iron Man, when instead you can read about the adventures of Tony Stark's secretary, Mrs. Arbogast? Thrill as she answers the phone! Will it be a legitimate business call? Will it be a telemarketer? Or could it be one of Tony's passel of illegitimate children? Find out this month! (I'm kidding, of course; I doubt Mrs. Arbogast is in the current Iron Man book, and if she is, she probably has her own powersuit by this point.) I think it's safe to say that what we have here is yet another modern comic book writer with zero interest in writing a superhero comic, but who lacks the integrity to say "no" when made an offer - so instead, he just takes a superhero book and tries to turn it into something else, with predictably-unreadable results.
So, DC, you can keep publishing this book for as long as it's profitable to do so, and you can keep calling it THUNDER Agents for as long as people are willing to keep buying it under that title - but this is absolutely not a THUNDER Agents book. There is not a single thing about this title that captures the feeling or spirit of the original series. Like so many of your other titles, this is a bleak, depressing slog with no heart, no imagination, no energy, and worst, no joy. So, I suppose, it fits right in with your current slate of comics. Honestly, I'm surprised Geoff Johns isn't writing it.
Now, to make us all feel a little better after that, here's a pretty sweet drawing from John Byrne of the original THUNDER Agents fighting the Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android:
Awwwwwwwwww, yeah. Now that's what I'm talking about!
THUNDER Agents, for those who came in late, was a comic published in the '60s by Tower Comics and drawn (perhaps written, too? I don't recall offhand) by industry icon Wally Wood. It came about when Wood and one of his cohorts were bandying about ideas, and hit upon the concept of, essentially, combining the Justice League with the Man From UNCLE. The result was a series about The Higher United Nations Defense and Enforcement Reserves Agents, a team made up of employees from all levels of the Higher United Nations, given devices that granted them superhuman powers in order to fight a mysterious madman called the Warlord - and later, an evil organization called SPIDER. The original THUNDER Agents was a classic-style, high-energy, "let's-have-an-adventure" sort of book that would feature things like Dynamo (the team's strongest, and probably most iconic, member) fist-fighting with a T-rex, or (SPOILERS!) the Warlord turning out to be a reptilian mutant from the center of the Earth.
So when DC did their relaunch, of course, they decided that what was needed was an edgy, more realistic take on the team. So now, while the team is still made up of people who are given devices that give them superpowers, the powers those devices grant are slowly killing them. Because that's fun, right? And instead of a light-hearted story of high adventure, we get a first issue that opens with the previous (unnamed) team of THUNDER Agents being killed in a fight with SPIDER goons. We get a first story arc that lasts six issues (because you've got to fill out that paperback collection, son!), and most of those six issues are taken up with either the team's handlers talking amongst themselves, or flashbacks to the backstories of the newly-recruited replacement Agents. Oh, and I guess the team's on some kind of mission during this story, too, but that kind of takes a backseat to the development of great, multi-layered characters like "African guy who likes to run." And apparently, having your bad guy be a lizard-man from Earth's core isn't realistic enough for modern comics, so the new leader of SPIDER is basically just the guy from The Social Network. And he bought the remains of the original organization so he could use their tech to ask the world's leaders an incredibly pretentious question ("Why did God harden Pharaoh's heart?"). Thrilling.
The cover to THUNDER Agents #2. Looks cool, right? Yeah, nothing remotely like this happens in the issue.
The worst thing the series does, though, is something I touched on earlier: most of the "screentime," as it were, goes to the team's non-superpowered handlers. The majority of each issue that I've read so far is taken up primarily by these two bullshitting, frequently about how they feel bad about recruiting people to this team just so they can get killed. (Then maybe you should stop fucking doing it.) Because who would want to read a comic book about, say, Iron Man, when instead you can read about the adventures of Tony Stark's secretary, Mrs. Arbogast? Thrill as she answers the phone! Will it be a legitimate business call? Will it be a telemarketer? Or could it be one of Tony's passel of illegitimate children? Find out this month! (I'm kidding, of course; I doubt Mrs. Arbogast is in the current Iron Man book, and if she is, she probably has her own powersuit by this point.) I think it's safe to say that what we have here is yet another modern comic book writer with zero interest in writing a superhero comic, but who lacks the integrity to say "no" when made an offer - so instead, he just takes a superhero book and tries to turn it into something else, with predictably-unreadable results.
So, DC, you can keep publishing this book for as long as it's profitable to do so, and you can keep calling it THUNDER Agents for as long as people are willing to keep buying it under that title - but this is absolutely not a THUNDER Agents book. There is not a single thing about this title that captures the feeling or spirit of the original series. Like so many of your other titles, this is a bleak, depressing slog with no heart, no imagination, no energy, and worst, no joy. So, I suppose, it fits right in with your current slate of comics. Honestly, I'm surprised Geoff Johns isn't writing it.
Now, to make us all feel a little better after that, here's a pretty sweet drawing from John Byrne of the original THUNDER Agents fighting the Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android:
Awwwwwwwwww, yeah. Now that's what I'm talking about!