Thunderbolts #164

Thunderbolts has been a series I'm quite glad I picked up again after Siege ended. It's been very solid under the steady writing of Jeff Parker, and even the Fear Itself tie-in junk couldn't derail things too much. Case in point this issue, which spun out of the Fear Itself issues while continuing the storyline that was going on prior to Fear Itself... Most writers simply stop everything, do a crossover issue, and then go back to their regular storyline like nothing ever happened. Now watch, I'll have thrown out all these compliments and this issue won't be any good!

Thunderbolts #164:

Summary: Stuck in 1943, the evil Thunderbolts manage to convince Captain America and Namor that they were actually a secret group of allied heroes sent by the US to assist the Invaders in freeing the captive Human Torch. Fixer, Moonstone and Centurius manage to convince Cap and Namor that the “American Thunderbolts” weren't Nazi spies, so the two groups decide to hook up to track down Baron Heinrich Zemo, the father of the current Baron Zemo, as well as uber-evil Nazi scientist. Cap and Namor leave to prepare to assault Zemo's stronghold to free their teammate, while the T-Bolts debate what the hell they should do with the whole time paradox dilemma they find themselves in... Fixer is afraid that their actions could possibly lead to the death of the WWII version of Baron Zemo before he had his son Helmut, one of the founders of the T-Bolts. With no Helmut Zemo, Fixer feared the timeline could be horribly damaged and the T-Bolts dead. Centurius feels that it was more likely that the T-Bolts created a divergent reality when they went back in time, meaning their actions didn't matter one way or the other. Ultimately Fixer decides they had to go after Zemo since he had a large power source in his castle which may be able to help the T-Bolts get back to their proper time period. As for Cap and Namor, they radio to the T-Bolts for assistance when they are attacked by Zemo, who had managed to create an army of flaming Nazi monsters from the Human Torch's android body.

Thoughts: I know I've said it before, but I love alternate dimensional stories, such as the one taking place in this comic. I enjoyed the interactions between the T-Bolts two resident geniuses(Fixer and Centurius) as they each argued the pros and cons to helping Cap and Namor, as well as the possible effects on the timeline. On top of that, we had Red Skull and Baron Zemo in all of their evil Nazi glory, dissecting the Human Torch and plotting against Hitler. That's the thing about Zemo 1 and Skull, they are the perfect villains, because they are completely evil/unlikable. They make the traitorous T-Bolts in this issue look like good guys. Bottom line here was that this was another great issue of this series.

Score: 8 1/2 out of 10.Now THAT is about as evil a comic character as you'll ever find.