Thunderbolts #42

For a team that's broken up, the Mighty Avengers are sure showing up in a lot of places. It's probably a good thing they're not together, adding in Pym, Quicksilver, and Hercules to the Avenger ranks would have meant the Tbolts didn't have a chance. As it is, Vision, Stature, Cho, and US Agent are doing just fine against the similarly reduced Tbolts. It doesn't help that the Ghost seems actively disinterested in involving himself in the conflict, Ant-Man just wants out, and Paladin is acting strangely. The only real believers on Osborn's shadow-team are Scourge, Mr. X, and the Grizzly, and even they don't seem that with it. The US Agent/Scourge fight was great. I love that Jeff Parker kept US Agent's past as a right-wing hero intact and let him stay a hero too. We may not like the Agent's politics, but he has the US' best interests at heart, whereas Scourge is clearly just a nutbar. US Agent's anger at the stars and stripes tattoo was very cool. I also loved the Grizzly/Stature fight. Grizzly actually does well for a while, but Stature's closing line was genius "If you can't remember 'Stature,' you can just tell everyone that Thor took you out" as she crushes Griz with a Thor statue. Nice banter! I'd love to see Parker take on the Avengers in a regular assignment. He gets US Agent better than most other folks.

Wellinton Alves morphs his style to fit in perfectly with the Thunderbolts house style. Perhaps it is the colorist, but this doesn't really look the same as his work on the Nova title a few months ago. He does a nice job with the characters' faces, Stature and US Agent really carry the book nicely with their reactions.

Good