Thunderbolts #151

Overall: As the cover of this issue indicates, this is an origin issue for Ghost. After some prodding from Moonstone, Ghost decides to give her his true origin(although he makes sure to omit his name throughout). Basically he was a technological genius who was working on ghost-tech for a computer company. He basically slaved away for the company while the three bosses took all the credit and raked in the dough. Eventually Ghost became burnt out and asked for a vacation, which the three bosses reluctantly gave him. Upon returning to work, a woman who he was obviously attracted to suddenly showed interest in him and the two hooked up, which increased Ghost's productivity. So things were all good until his girlfriend was killed in a gas explosion in her house. This drove Ghost into a deep depression, and with no personal life, he buried himself deeper and deeper into his work. After staying late one night, he managed to hook his mind up to the company computers and saw security footage of the three bosses telling Ghost's girlfriend that if she started up a relationship with him, they'd pay her a huge bonus in money and stocks. Eventually Ghost's girlfriend asked for even more money, so the bosses had an assassin set up the gas explosion to get her out of the way. While Ghost is learning all of this, the assassin who killed his girlfriend blows up his house, but Ghost is saved since he was interfacing with his computer at the time. The explosion, coupled with his working with the ghost-tech ended up transforming him into the intangible creature he is today. From there, Ghost hunted down and killed the assassin plus all three of his bosses and set his sights on all corporations, which he felt were inherently evil. After telling Moonstone his tale, Ghost wanders off, leaving Moonstone alone to ponder what she had heard. This issue ends with Luke Cage deciding to add Hyperion to the T-Bolts in the place of Crossbones, who had been tossed off the team.

Well, before this issue I could care less about Ghost, but his origin story was so well done, I couldn't help but like him. The origin story was well done, and gave Ghost more of an anti-hero vibe, than the pure villain vibe I had been previously getting off of him. It's always nice when a writer can take a character that I really don't care about and give me a reason to care about them. So good job to Jeff Parker on that one. The reveal at the end that Hyperion would be joining the team left me a bit conflicted, since they already have Juggernaut on the team... I'm not sure they needed ANOTHER powerhouse on a team that already has Juggernaut, Moonstone and Luke Cage. But I guess we'll find out with the next issue.

Score: 8 out of 10.In the immortal words of JT, "Boom."