“The past doesn’t go away. So you can either live with it forever, or do something about it.”

The nineties, as we’ve discussed previously, were a pretty damn bad time to be a Marvel comics fan but there were still bright spots here and there. One of these was The Thunderbolts, a new superhero team that was introduced in The Incredible Hulk. They were presented as a new team stepping up to replace the Avengers who were all believed dead after the events of Onslaught (in actuality, they were all in a parallell universe being drawn by Rob Liefeld).

Sometimes dead’s better.

Anyway, the Thunderbolts then returned for their own series written by Kurt Busiek. It’s a pretty standard superhero team story right up until the shocking twist at the end of the first issue.

The Thunderbolts were actually villains, a team put together by Captain America’s enemy Baron Zemo to pose as superheroes while he consolidated his grip on the underworld. Of course, they eventually decide they actually like being superheroes and turn face, and since then the Thunderbolts team has basically been, well, Marvel’s Suicide Squad let’s not dance around the issue. It’s a team for former supervillains to try and reform and be good guys. The version of the team that today’s movie is based on comes from the mid-2000s Dark Reign…

” Mouse stop the review right now!”“What? Why?“Me and the other maps are boycotting this movie! Artie Rosen created the Sentry, and yet his estate hasn’t been paid a cent in royalties!”“Artie…oh crap. Guys I’m sorry to have to tell you this. Artie Rosen doesn’t exist. He never did.”“What? But then who delivers gifts to good little maps on Rosenmas?”

Okay, okay. Detour. Let’s talk about the Sentry, one of the first original Marvel superheroes of the new millennium and the subject of one of the most ingenious pieces of guerilla marketing I can recall. If you want a full breakdown of the history of the Sentry hoax, this has got you covered but here’s the cliffnotes version: Marvel basically fooled the comic reading public into believing that there was an artist named Artie Rosen who worked with Stan Lee back in the late fifties who had recently passed away. And in Rosen’s possessions his wife found sketches for a lost superhero that he had supposedly been working on with Stan Lee. This, of course, would be the comic book equivalent of the finding of the Lost Caravaggio. They even got Stan Lee himself in on the scam. In reality, this was all marketing to build up hype for the release of The Sentry by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee, a mini-series about a superhero who was erased from the history of the Marvel universe and who no one remembers. It’s a good story, not an all time classic, but it’s a fun read. We get to see Bob Reynolds interacting with different Marvel heroes in different eras, drawn and written in the style of the time. But here’s the thing. The series ends with Reynolds realising why everyone forgot him: he and his arch-enemy The Void are the same person and every act he does as the Sentry is balanced with an evil act committed by the Void. Therefore, the only way to protect the world from the Void is for the Sentry to go away again. So the series ends with Bob once again wiping the world’s collective memory of his existence and going back to his normal humdrum life. All well and good. But then…

Brian Michael Bendis reintroduced the Sentry as a member of his New Avengers team. And this is where Bob Reynold’s troubles really began, and how he began his journey to become one of the most mishandled characters in Marvel’s eighty year history.

Here was the problem. You may have heard Sentry described as “Marvel’s Superman”.

No. No no no. The Sentry makes Superman look like a coughing baby. The Sentry makes PRE-CRISIS SUPERMAN look like a coughing baby. The Sentry is so powerful I have to break up the list of his powers into two separate screencaps:

Also, he plays the ‘cello.

Like, fucking LOOK at that list. This guy is the physical embodiment of “fuck you I win”. You put him on any team and he renders every other member instantly useless. He should be able to solo the entire rogue’s gallery of the Marvel universe in a single afternoon. Bendis got around this by establishing that Bob was suffering from severe depression and agoraphobia and would only come out of his room to save the world if everyone was super nice to him. This admittedly, led to some pretty awesome moments, like Sentry’s iconic battle with the Hulk during the World War Hulk storyline.

Over the years, Bob’s mental problems got worse and worse and it was an admittedly effective source of tension; what happens if God stops taking his meds and snaps? But that just reduced the character to a ticking bomb and that’s not really sustainable over the long haul. Either the bomb has to go off or the audience realises that the bomb is never going to go off. What the character needed was a stable status quo, a default baseline. And every attempt to give him one failed. Everything about Bob was constantly being re-written every time a new writer got his hands on him, particularly his relationship with the Void. Writer A says the Void never existed and was all in Bob’s head. Writer B says the Void was the angel of death from Exodus. Writer C says he was a loving family man. Writer D says he was an abuser who cheated on his wife. Was he once a lab assistant, a junkie, or made the Sentry as part of the Weapon X programme? Flip a three-sided coin, bucko.

Within an impressively short period of time the character had been reduced to an unsalvageable mess and was killed off, only to be periodically brought back as a super-powered threat that needs to be killed off again. But, as someone who always had a soft spot for the character, I was happy to hear that the Sentry was going to be making his debut in the MCU. Surely they’ve learned from past mistakes and are finally ready to do this character right?

Well, let’s see.

So Yelena Belova is not doing so good. She is, as we saw at the end of Black Widow, working for Valentina Allegra De Fontaine. De Fontaine runs a massive, shadowy government organisation responsible for paranormal experimentation, black ops, assassinations, kidnapping and torture called the “C.I.A.”.

“Wow, Stan Lee. How did you come up with these crazy concepts?”

Yelena has been feeling deeply depressed ever since her sister died and after blowing up a lab in Kuala Lumpur that was working on something called “Project Sentry” she goes to visit her “father” Alexei who’s now living in Washington DC and running a limo driving service. They have a touching scene where she tells him that she just doesn’t know what she’s doing with her life and asks him when he was truly happy. He tells her that it was when he was protecting the USSR as the Red Guardian (I swear to God, I could have sworn he was the Crimson Dynamo, all these commie supervillains just bleed into one for me). Yelena calls into Valentina and says that she wants a more public facing role and Valentina tells her that’s cool, she’s just got one last murder mission for her, don’t worry, it’s wafer thin.

See, Valentina’s been getting her metaphorical chestnuts roasted in Congress over all the superhuman experimentation she’s been accused of doing. Facing impeachment, Valentina is doing a little spring cleaning, gathering all incriminating evidence and putting it in a big vault in the desert. Valentina tells Yelena that someone is trying to steal from the vault and tells her to take the thief out. However, Yelena quickly discovers that she’s not the only one there and that it’s basically the black ops version of when your rideshare app glitches and ends up ordering four different taxis to the same house. And with the same result.

Yes, fight! Fight for my fare!

The other three assassins are John Walker (the “George Lazenby” of the Captain America mantle who now goes by U.S. Agent), Ghost and Taskmaster, who actually shows up in a somewhat comic accurate costume! Fantastic! I’ve mentioned before that Taskmaster is one of my favourite Marvel characters period and I can’t wait for this version to redeem the huge missed opportunity that was her appearance in Black Widow and she’s dead never mind.

Why do you hate me, Marvel? Oh, right.

Now, we’ve already encountered Ghost and the MCU version is so different from her comics counterpart that she might as well be an OC, so let’s talk about John Walker. Walker was initially conceived as the supervillain “Super-Patriot”, a dark mirror image of Steve Rogers’ Captain America. The writer of the Cap comic of the time, Mark Gruenwald, had been getting a lot of pressure from fans to make Captain America a more violent, gun-toting kind of superhero. Gruenwald responded by having Steve give up the Captain America identity only to be replaced by Walker. Essentially, he did what the writers of Batman would do a few years later with Jean-Paul Valley, introduce a new character who gives the audience what they think they want in order to show them why they’re a bunch of idiots who need to shut their pie-holes and let the professionals cook. However, even after Steve returned to the shield, Walker has remained a steady presence in the Marvel universe. More than most, his characterisation tends to fluctuate wildly depending on who’s writing him, what’s happening in the country at the time and what commentary the writer wishes to give. He can be “decent guy with a heart of gold who maybe needs to listen to some different podcasts” or he can be “Hitler had some good ideas”. The MCU version largely steers clear of overt political commentary and instead chooses to tell a story of an ordinary man who was given an impossible job (being Steve Rogers) and was crushed by his own failure and became deeply bitter and cynical, and he was probably the one really good character from Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Anyway, along with the four augmented killing machines there is one more person trapped in here: Bob, a mild-mannered stoner in a surgical gown with no military training or experience and no memory of how he got there.

Yelena quickly realises that everyone here is a loose end for Valentina and that they’ve been sent here to die. They barely manage to escape when the room they’re in turns out to be a massive incinerator and agree to work together to escape the vault.

Meanwhile, Valentina’s assistant Mel is approached by Bucky, sorry, by the FUCKING CONGRESSMAN FROM THE GREAT STATE OF NEW YORK JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES.

I don’t know why this is so funny to me.

Bucky is working on Valentina’s impeachment and he gives Mel his card and asks her to call him if she grows a soul in the next fifty minutes or so. Mel is honestly one of the elements of this movie that doesn’t work for me. No disrespect to Geraldine Viswanathan who is really good in the role but Mel is presented as this idealistic young woman who got into politics to do good and slowly realises that her boss is a monster but…at this point in the story she is already deeply complicit in some truly heinous shit. Like, she knows Project Sentry killed loads of people. She arranged for the Thunderbolts* to be burnt alive in the Vault. These are not little forgivable oopsies.

So Mel tells Valentina that the Thunderbolts* (they’re not called that yet, but please just let me make my life easier) survived and are now working together. They see Bob on the CCTV footage and figure out that he is one of the test subjects of Project Sentry who was supposed to have died and yet is very much alive. Realising that Project Sentry was successful, Valentina scrambles a strike team to capture him and kill the others.

Meanwhile, Yelena and Bob start to bond a little as they both realise they’re struggling with depression. So, cards on the table: I like this movie. Maybe that’s the soft bigotry of low expectations. Maybe after the recent run of MCU flicks I’m just happy to watch something that doesn’t feel like a bunch of re-edited studio notes. Something that has, y’know, characters? Themes? A point? You know, a motion picture. One of those. But yeah, I do actually find myself invested in this movie and Bob and Yelena’s struggles against the Void. I think a lot of people can relate to that. I know I can.

Hello Mouse. Remember me?“Oh hello suicidal thoughts, I’ve been meaning to thank you.”Uh…what?“Oh yeah. Thanks to you I got help, started writing a novel as self-therapy, got an agent, quit my job and now I’m living a happy and fulfilled life with my family earning a living doing something I truly love.”What?! Oh my God! I failed utterly! My whole existence is a joke!“Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I got an idea.”“You should go to the roof.”

The T-Bolts fight their way out of the Vault but Bob sacrifices himself to distract the soldiers and is seemingly shot dead…before getting right back up again like Chumbawamba before they vanished into obscurity. The other three escape into the desert where they’re picked up by Alexei who got a job as Valentina’s limo driver and overheard her plan to kill Yelena (hahaaa, none of that is plausible). Anyway, they’re on the road now, Alexei invites himself on to the team. Suddenly, they’re attacked by some of Valentina’s men but are rescued/captured by the pride of New York’s 9th Congressional District.

You think that’s cool, wait until you see his municipal taxation plan.

Valentina takes Bob to the Watchtower, her new headquarters which she has had the gall to set up in the old Avengers Tower. Valentina pours on the oil with Bob, love-bombing him and telling him that he’s going to do great things. But when Bob’s hand brushes hers she’s forced to relive a traumatic memory from her childhood. She’s so horrified that she almost pulls the plug on the whole thing but Bob assures her “I can control it”.

Valentina moves on with her plan to unveil Bob to the world as a replacement for the Avengers but Mel is terrified by the idea of someone as emotionally and mentally unstable as Bob wielding that kind of power and puts in a call to Bucky.

Bucky has been interrogating the Thunderbolts and, once he realises that they’re telling the truth, they suit up and head to New York to stop Valentina. But, they’re too late.

Valentina sics Bob on the Thunderbolts and the resulting fight scene is frankly terrifying. Bob is not simply “holding back”, he is working very, very hard to make sure he doesn’t accidentally kill anyone. It’s obvious that he could so easily murder everyone in the room with his pinky finger and that I think is the essence of the Sentry’s appeal as a character. He’s not superhero fiction. He’s horror. He represents the terror of something so powerful that you only live because it lets you.

The team gets handed their asses and has to retreat. Valentina tells Bob to finish them off and he replies that they’re no threat to him so he’s not going to do that. We then get a great exchange of dialogue.

: Why should a god listen to…

: I think you’re throwing around the G word a bit too freely.

: Well, you said I’m all-powerful, stronger than all the Avengers combined, which includes at least one god, so…

It’s a lovely escalation of menace. It’s one thing to think “oh he’s going mad with power” but then he calmly and rationally explains his reasoning and it’s airtight. Valentina decides to pull Bob’s kill switch, and in return he almost kills her but he’s killed at the last minute by Mel who picked up the kill switch from where Valentina dropped it.

Down on ground level Yelena angrily leaves the others behind but Alexi chases after her. She breaks down and angrily chews him out for not reaching out to her after Natasha’s death. He apologises, she tells him how shit her life is going and that she hates who she’s become. He comforts her, and they have a really nice reconciliation (that Florence Pugh is going places, I tell ya what) and then they realise that there is a Vantablack man in a cape hovering over the city.

So, having tried to kill Bob, Valentina only succeeded in awakening the Void and proceeded to start turning ordinary New Yorkers into Hiroshima shadows. The Thunderbolts try to save as many people as they can but Yelena realises that Bob can’t be stopped and succumbs to the Void.

She finds herself trapped in her own worst memories but eventually fights her way through to Bob, who’s cowering in a bedroom listening to his father abuse his mother. The other Thunderbolts find them and together the gang decides to face the Void together. They find the Void in the lab where Project Sentry was first created. The Void effortlessly restrains the Thunderbolts leaving Bob to face him alone.

Bob starts wailing on the Void, knocking him to the ground and beating him over and over.

And it does nothing. The rage does nothing. The self-loathing does nothing. The regret does nothing.

The Void just takes it all and whispers “that all you got?”

It’s only when his friends hold him and tell him that he’s not alone that the Void is beaten back.

Yeah. I cried.

They re-emerge in New York along with all the other vanished people and are about to catch Valentina and give her a very stern talking to when she springs a press conference on them, announcing them as the New Avengers. This means that she’s now their boss and they can’t tear her head off because that’s inappropriate workplace behaviour.

***

I do genuinely feel sorry for all the cast and crew of Thunderbolts*. They worked damn hard and made a darn good movie and in a fair world that should be enough. Of course, this is not a fair world and this thing tanked harder than General Patton during the North Africa campaign. The common response to claims of “superhero” fatigue is that it’s actually “bad movie” fatigue but that argument becomes harder to sustain when genuinely good films like this are struggling to find audiences. Hell, even Superman, a bona fide modern classic (my opinion) is doing numbers that would have been considered anemic for an MCU movie just a few years ago. Yes, building a film around characters from Black Widow, Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Ant-Man 2 was a “bold” move. But I think Thunderbolts* just suffered from bad timing. It took several bad films to tarnish the MCU’s reputation to the point where they were no longer surefire hits. Time will tell if several good films can get them back there.

If nothing else, this is a good start.

Scoring

Adaptation: 19/25

A significantly less cynical and mean-spirited adaptation of the Dark Reign Thunderbolts.

Our Heroic Heroes: 21/25

Purely on basic roster-building principles, this is a weird team. There’s so much overlap in terms of powers, personalities, backgrounds and skillsets. And then there’s the fact that you have four basically street-level guys and gals and their friend who’s YAHWEH in a cape. But it works, mostly. All the characters contribute something to the group dynamic (except Ghost, I honestly think she could have been nixed). And as a Sentry fan I am very excited to see where they’re taking Bob.

Our Nefarious Villain: 22/25

Julia Louis Dreyfuss is very entertaining as a slightly more evil version of Selina Meyer. And the Void is one of the most instantly iconic MCU villains on visuals alone.

Our Plucky Sidekicks: 16/25

What with this being an ensemble there’s not a lot of supporting characters but I do like Holt, the leader of Valentina’s strike team who planned for a lethal assault and is told he has to change to non-lethal at the last minute. Very relatable character.

The Stinger

A few months later the New Avengers are getting torched in the press and are facing a legal challenge from Sam Wilson over use of the name. The team’s bickering is brought to an abrupt halt when they see a spacecraft entering Earth’s orbit with a rather familiar symbol…

And the audience went…

We are SO FUCKING BACK!

FINAL SCORE: 78%

NEXT UPDATE: 18 September 2025

NEXT TIME: Oh yeah, you knew this was coming…