Review: Thunderbolts: International Incident.

Once again Marvel has decided that quantity trumps quality and thus has subjected us to another Thunderbolts one-shot written by an unoriginal hack.

The writer is Christos N Gage, which I feel is particularly appropriate because his ability to write the Thunderbolts is roughly in proportion to the number of people who bought an N Gage when it came out. This is the guy who decided that the 3 Issue X-Men tie-in to World War Hulk should be a three issue fight between the Hulk and the X-Men. Way to push the boundaries of the genre there buddy.

What is it with sub-par Thunderbolts writers and their inability to write Venom? Well Mr. N Gage takes it to the next level by being completely unable to write for Norman Osborn either. By now I'm used to Venom spouting clunky exposition and cracking wise in non-Ellis Thunderbolts, but I was compeltely unprepared for Norman Osborn being boring. If you can't think of anything interesting for the Green Goblin to do while in command of a group of government sponsored supervillains then maybe you should return to writing movies about teenaged cavemen.

I've been a fan of the Thunderbolts since before they were good, and let me tell you: the only reason the book is good now is because Warren Ellis is writing it. They might as well call it Warren Ellis featuring the Thunderbolts. Getting a Nokia video-game phone to write a lame one-shot tie-in to the Secret Wars is only going to dilute the brand, scare people off. One-shots are attractive prospects to people who want to try out a new series, so staffing them with Law and Order rejects probably isn't the best business model.

The story is told in the most straight-forward, uninteresting way possible. You would get roughly the same experience reading a Wikipedia summary, except Venom would probably seem a tad more in-character since you wouldn't be reading his dialogue. The book falls somewhere between painfully unreadable and sub-mediocrity. The only way any good could come from it would be if as a result of this comic the Mexican Jesus Handheld Videogame was never given another writing assignment as long as he lives. It also wouldn't hurt to nuke everything he's ever written from orbit. Just to be sure.