Thunderbolts #143

What a fantastic wrap-up to another great era of the Thunderbolts. Jeff Parker picked up Andy Diggle's fantastic take on this team and saw things through perfectly. I don't think we could have asked for better resolutions for most of these characters. And not only did Parker do a great job with the T-bolts, his use of the Mighty Avengers was dead on too. In fact, I think Quicksilver vs. Mr. X might be my favorite moment in Quicksilver's whole Marvel career. The two preening, prideful characters had a great, if quick, showdown. Just perfect.

I love the way Parker handles the tweener characters. Paladin finally wises up and acts like the guy I remember, and gets himself a nice new status quo as a wandering hero at the same time. Ant-Man decides that he's going to try to be better, setting up his role in the new Secret Avengers title. Headsman may have died a few issues ago, but all his equipment went to his similar-looking brother. I love it, same deal as Beerfest, I hope. (For those that haven't seen it, a character dies, then he's revealed to have a twin brother so similar that they decide to not speak of the dead guy again.) Vision's analysis of the Ghost is spot-on too, he really is a "conflicted" individual, calling in the Avengers to stop Osborn on the same day he tried to kill Iron Man.

Parker's last line for Luke Cage gives me hope that the next chapter in this remarkably consistent series will be as good as we expect. Cage is tired of taking down villains, now he's going to try and bring them up. Awesome.

Miguel Sepulveda has a soft style that works really nicely in both character and combat scenes. I still can't stand his take on the Ant-Man suit, but that's going away. After reading this issue, I bet Sepulveda would have a really neat take on John Byrne's pale Vision from the 90's...

Excellent