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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
I think maybe there's a way to get him involved posthumously though. Like, maybe Ross ordered the creation of this team shortly before he passed, and whoever's in charge intends to keep the team running to honor the man. Would be a nice interesting legacy for him I suppose.
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."I assume Ross is intended to be the Amanda Waller figure for the team.
Amusingly he did lead an anti-hero group comprised of Agent Venom, Punisher, Elektra, Deadpool, and Ghost Rider.
And there was a whole red thing so Venom and Punisher's white insignia's were made red for the book.
Edited by slimcoder on Jun 9th 2022 at 2:02:10 AM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."In regards to the team members, I suspected Zemo, Yelena, Ghost, the Abomination, and US Agent would be involved, given they seem to be the most likely members to join such a team, especially with Val approaching two of them already. I'm not sure about Taskmaster and Winter Soldier though, especially since the former is basically a shittier copy of the latter made purposely to tie into the Red Room, and I don't think Bucky would willingly join forces with John Walker or Zemo again. Plus, I think he'd be smart enough to know the idea of putting former supervillains into a black ops team is pretty shady.
Edited by MatthewWayne on Jun 9th 2022 at 2:15:35 AM
"I'm Mr. Blue, woah-woah-ooh..."To this day I wonder why they did not just tie Bucky's Sovietisms in with Natasha's, because now we have double the Red Scare for half the effectiveness.
Edited by Synchronicity on Jun 9th 2022 at 4:07:58 AM
Yeah, which is why it's puzzling that they...didn't do that and then just made a dumber explanation for Nat's past. If they didn't want to do the romance they didn't have to; it's just neater logistics-wise.
But then again it's hardly the worst fumbling of a Captain America relationship (justice for Sharon) so eh.
Edited by Synchronicity on Jun 9th 2022 at 4:17:43 AM
Actually it's kinda funny that TWS drops the Soviet ties from Bucky almost entirely. The only real remnants he gets are the traditional red star in his metallic arm and his trigger words being in russian, but otherwise he's made much more "american" (perhaps most noticeably by the film vaguely implying he shot JFK and HYDRA's entire resurgence being tied down to Operation Paperclip) and working under Pierce, a dyed-in-the-wool american bureaucrat and most HYDRA members being american fascists. In the comics, for example, the Winter Soldier's handlers for most of his career were Department X
(a Soviet covert agency) rather than HYDRA.
There's a half-hearted attempt with the Red Room as well (the opening montage shows Dreykov shaking hands with Bush and Clinton for example) but otherwise it stays much more in the purview of the Red Scare.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."He didn't. That writer didn't do the research. General Ross created a version of the Thunderbolts. Not a particularly well-regarded one, but a version. But it was far from being the original version.
The original Thunderbolts were a group of supervillains led by Zemo masquerading as superheroes to disguise their nefarious plans. But things took a turn when some of them decided that they liked being superheroes.
The concept of the Thunderbolts was later reimagined to be... Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but the Suicide Squad. Like, literally just the Suicide Squad. That was Norman Osborn's Thunderbolts. They were a group of supervillains working for the Pro-Regs following Civil War. Equipped with nanite chains that would electrocute them into paralysis if they went off the rails, their job was to hunt down superheroes.
Then, years later, we got to Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross's Thunderbolts. They were a black ops kill squad featuring the likes of Elektra, Deadpool, Ghost Rider, and the Punisher. This run is not very well regarded and I'm pretty sure it only exists because someone thought of the connection between their names and wanted there to be a book about that.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Jun 9th 2022 at 3:09:06 AM
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Not helping matters, the Dark Avengers and Thunderbolts also have a lot of overlap (down to the first cover of Dark Avengers being their silhoeutte revealed by a literal thunderbolt) so Lord only knows what they're going for here.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."I'm convinced that the original Dark Avengers team was just a stealth Thunderbolts team in all but name. They even managed to recapture the original Thunderbolts twist, where instead of posing as a brand-new team of heroes they instead pose as Legacy Characters forming an Avengers team-up. Minor Avengers villain Moonstone just so happened to be in both: for the former she created the new alias Meteorite, for the latter she stole one of Carol Danvers's costumes and called herself Ms. Marvel.
So both are honestly the same exact concept to me, though I think historically the Thunderbolts have ironically been pulled closer into the "knock-off Suicide Squad" vibe (i.e. team of villains forced by the government(?) to do heroics) despite being the older team.
The original Thunderbolts and the original Dark Avengers are the same thing, yes-villains pretending to be heroes. The only difference is the Dark Avengers were supposed to have more clout, in-universe with official government backing and the team name and hero name of established characters. Calling yourself "The Avengers" in the comics means a lot more than calling yourself "The Thunderbolts".
The original Thunderbolts became what they pretended to be, mostly. The Dark Avengers were pretty much always villains through and through with a few exceptions.
Trish Walker, Diamondback, Davos, and Bullseye could all be reintroduced in a Thunderbolts film if they wanted to call back to the Netflix-verse, especially since it kinda seems like it was hinting at some sort of team like that when Madani tried to recruit Frank for wetworks jobs.
As for Zemo, I highly doubt he'd accept that kind of offer here, and John Walker seems like he'd be a better fit for the Dark Avengers.
A big part of early Thunderbolts was the Thunderbolts getting the clout that the Dark Avengers got day 1
Zemo needed the clout for his plan
Forever liveblogging the AvengersNow that I think about it, it could be that the Suicide Squad riff is an easier concept to justify wrangling a bunch of supervillains together.
The original concept is a significant investment, taking a bunch of low-level characters and putting the time and effort to give them loads of development and focus.
Meanwhile the Squad concept is a lot easier, just having a guy in charge bringing in a bunch of characters without too much of a unifying reason to keep them together.
Our most recent incarnation of the Thunderbolts was a Kingpin-backed group introduced in King in Black, which later appeared in Devil's Reign where Kingpin used them as his foot soldiers in the war against the heroes.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Well, I don't think we'll be seeing Thunderbolt Ross, at least, considering his actor died and they haven't been much for recasting roles lately.
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!