Thunderbolts (comics)

The Thunderbolts are a team of superheroes in the Marvel Comics universe who were initially a team of supervillains posing as heroes in order to exploit public goodwill. The Thunderbolts were created by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, although the team's initial membership consisted entirely of pre-existing characters and the their first appearance, in The Incredible Hulk #449 (1997), was written by Peter David and illustrated by Mike Deodato.

The Thunderbolts were initially a new incarnation of the Masters of Evil, a villainous counterpart to the heroic Avengers. The team was formed by Baron Zemo and its other members were the Beetle, Fixer, Goliath, Moonstone and Screaming Mimi. However, before the team had a chance to attack their enemies, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four disappeared and were presumed deceased. Zemo saw a chance for his team to exploit the absence of the superheroes by masquerading as heroes, and then betraying them once they had worked themselves into a position of trust and power. In particular, Zemo wanted access to the Avengers' and SHIELD's files, which he could use himself and then sell off to the criminal underworld. To this end, the team was called the Thunderbolts (a name that Zemo found "pseudo-fascist, but friendly"), and its members adopted new codenames. Zemo became Citizen V, the Beetle became MACH-1, the Fixer became Techno, Goliath became Atlas, Moonstone became Meteorite, and Screaming Mimi became Songbird.

The team succeeded quite well as superheroes, to the point that most of its members began to think of themselves more as heroes than villains. They were shortly after joined by Jolt, an Asian-American teenage girl who believed that her new friends were really heroes. Soon after, Techno's neck was snapped; he was believed killed, and his mind transferred into an android body formed from his high-tech equipment. (It was later revealed that this robotic body was a copy of his mind, and that his body had survived but was paralyzed.) The team's true identities were uncovered once the Avengers and Fantastic Four returned - ironically, the ruse was revealed by Zemo himself, who had sensed that his allies were getting to like being heroes and wanted to ensure their loyalty. The Thunderbolts turned on Zemo (minus Techno, who remained loyal), but Zemo and Techno used a mind control to turn the Avengers and Fantastic Four against their former teammates. The Thunderbolts freed the other heroes and together defeated Zemo and Techno; Atlas, unbeknownst to his teammates, helped the wounded Zemo escape, while Techno fled under his own power. During the chaos, Meteorite altered her costume and changed her codename back to Moonstone.

As the Thunderbolts prepared to turn themselves in to the assembled heroes, they were teleported to another dimension. After helping the natives of that dimension quell a revolution, they returned to Earth, where they found themselves fugitives. They were joined soon afterward by the African-American teenage boy Charcoal and then by Hawkeye, who had himself been a supervillain before Captain America recruited him into the Avengers. Hawkeye convinced his teammates that he could get them pardoned if they turned in MACH-1, who had once committed a murder as the Beetle. After mulling over the notion and saving the world from the mysterious Crimson Cowl's new Masters of Evil, they agreed and MACH-1 turned himself in to the authorities.

Not long afterwards, Techno secretly took up occupation in the team's headquarters, under the guise of the team's mechanic, the Ogre, who he had placed in suspended animation. MACH-1 was freed from prison, and Techno altered his facial appearance and armor and changed his name to MACH-2. The new Scourge of the Underworld then came to pose a great threat to the team. He first shot and seemingly killed Jolt in a diner, then travelled to South America and killed Baron Zemo, and finally entered the Thunderbolts' home and deactivated Techno. (In actuality, all three survived in some form: Jolt's electrical powers let her return to life in an energy-based form and Zemo's mind was transferred first into the comatose body of the real Citizen V and later into Techno's mechanical "Tech-Pack", which had also cybernetically replaced the broken segment of Techno's real body's spine.) The Scourge was ultimately revealed to be Jack Munroe, who had previously gone by the aliases of Bucky and Nomad, and who was being mind controlled by government agent Henry Peter Gyrich, who was himself under the control of Baron Strucker. In bringing down the Scourge, the Thunderbolts teamed up with the Redeemers, a group of superhumans who used the former codenames of Thunderbolts members and who each had a personal grudge against the individual Thunderbolts, and whose membership also included Techno, once again calling himself the Fixer.

After their victory, the Thunderbolts were given a choice by the government: if the team disbanded permanently and MACH-1 and Hawkeye went to prison, the rest of the team would each receive a full pardon. They accepted, and Jolt and Charcoal, who were the only two Thunderbolts with no criminal records, were assimilated into the Redeemers under the leadership of Captain America and then the Zemo-possessed Citizen V. The Redeemers, save for Jolt, were slaughtered by the supervillain Graviton, and the Thunderbolts were reformed to defeat him. In the process, however, several of the team members present (Citizen V/Zemo, Fixer, Jolt, Moonstone) were transported to Counter-Earth, the world to which the Avengers and Fantastic Four had vanished when the Thunderbolts had formed. They encountered a group of their counterparts, whose members included that world's counterpart of Zemo and the Phantom Eagle, a man who wielded a moonstone identical to that used by Moonstone. Zemo's disembodied mind, which had been transferred into Fixer's "Tech-Pack", was then transferred into the alternate Zemo's body, while Moonstone stone the Phantom Eagle's moonstone for herself.

Meanwhile, Hawkeye escaped from prison alongside several supervillains, and was reunited with MACH-2 and Songbird. They formed a second group of Thunderbolts, along with Plant-Man (new codename Blackheath) and several former members of the Crimson Cowl's Masters of Evil: Condor (now Harrier), Gypsy Moth (Skein), Man-Killer (Amazon), and Cyclone, who did not change his codename. Harrier and Cyclone defected, and the remaining Thunderbolts were finally reunited with their lost teammates to battle and finally defeat the Crimson Cowl. Hawkeye, Amazon and Skein left the team, leaving Zemo to resume leadership once more. They then fought and then teamed up with the Avengers; during this affair, Iron Man assumed the identity of the Cobalt Man and infiltrated the team.