Thunderbolts #165

Here's a series I dropped during the Osborn/HAMMER days and picked up on a whim after the end of Siege. And boy am I glad I did! This series is always solid, and rarely a letdown. Will that continue? Here's hoping.

Thunderbolts #165:

What Happened: The evil Thunderbolts, still stuck in Austria, 1943, decide to assist Captain America and Namor against the Human Torch clones Baron Zemo had managed to cobble together. The T-Bolts are still a bit unsure as to what they should do as to not alter their own history, but figure killing the Torch clones would be acceptable. To that end, Satana takes Namor back to T-Bolt Tower to heal him(as well as have sex with him), Centurius, Fixer and Moonstone head to Baron Zemo's lab to rescue the Human Torch(as well as locate the power source they had scanned from Zemo's base strong enough to send them forward through time), while the rest of the team stays with Captain America to deal with the Torch clones. Eventually Zemo evacuates his base in a rocket, with some samples from the Torch, but is confronted by Moonstone. Moonstone pulls Zemo out of the rocket and takes the sample, telling him she'd allow him to leave unmolested provided he sires a son and named him Helmut... HA!!! Zemo agrees to those terms so Moonstone lets him leave. From there, the Torch clones get mopped up while the Torch himself is reunited with Cap, as is Namor, who had undergone his sexual healing. The T-Bolts tell Cap and his weakened Invader teammates to stay back while they destroyed Zemo's castle(in actuality set up their machinery to make the jump in time). This issue ends with some German bombers destroying the laboratory to make sure none of Zemo's secrets were retrieved by the allies, leaving the fate of the T-Bolts unknown.

The Good: What's not to like here? As I stated in an earlier review for this series, this series is the rare case where I actually like every character appearing here... Usually in a team book there are a few characters I wish weren't there, but that's not the case here. I loved Moonstone telling Zemo to have a son and name him Helmut, since she was worried that if time were altered and Zemo never had his son, her life would be totally different. Satana having sex with Namor was totally unexpected, but not out of character for Satana(or Namor I guess) seeing as that she's currently under the sway of her darker side... It would be awesome if some sort of repercussions came from that fling.

The Bad: The heroes were never really in trouble... I mean Cap and the Thunderbolts against a few deformed Torch clones isn't exactly a fair battle. While Zemo lost the samples he gained from the Torch, I don't get why he'd never try to replicate what he did here... I get that he made his clones directly from the Torch's cells, but you'd think if he was smart enough to do that he'd be able to create the cells from scratch in time. The cliffhanger wasn't that exciting since we know the T-Bolts didn't simply explode in Zemo's castle. While I'm enjoying the bad Thunderbolt's adventures in the past, I'm curious to see what the good Thunderbolts of the present are up to.

The Verdict: And the parade of above average comics continues! Once again, this was another solid issue of this series, which has been solid for the longest time now. This series is now to the point where before I read it I know to expect a good, strong story. That's about the best compliment I can give a series. Sure, I don't recall giving this series many 9 1/2 or 10's, but I'd be more than happy reading a series where almost every issue is an 8 or 8 1/2 with little fluctuation either way.

Score: 8 out of 10.HA! Can you imagine what Zemo had to be thinking here!?