Nick Fury’s team of trainees rob a Swiss bank, stealing its holdings of all of Baron Von Strucker’s $1.2b in assets. Strucker responds by asking Norman Osborn to shut Fury down, in exchange for “two favors” to be named later.
Osborn sics his Thunderbolts team on the Secret Warriors.
Surprisingly, the Tbolts get the drop on Fury, and Osborn is able to shoot Nick in the head and capture Black Widow and Songbird (who are on the run from the Thunderbolts in the events following Thunderbolts #135), as well as Phobos.
Of course, it’s not Nick–it’s one of his Life Model Decoys. The real Nick is having breakfast with former SHIELD Agent John Garrett.
Going after Nick Fury presents a problem for Ares, who recently agreed to let Nick raise his son, Phobos, who is a member of the Secret Warriors. There are several nice moments here–like when Ares stands by while his son uses his fear powers on Osborn. One thing Marvel editorial has done really well across the Dark Reign titles is to show, consistently, how Norman Osborn doesn’t command loyalty–just obedience. His troops are full of double-agents, traitors, and people who just won’t work that hard.
ScreenshotThe Thunderbolts-versus-Secret Warriors story extends across all of these issues, with some great “set piece” battles and excellent continuing, long-form espionage and story seeding.
Yo Yo “Slingshot” Rodriguez, whose arms were ripped off several issues ago, gets two bionic ones. Nick Fury recruits John Garrett as a spy and begins rebuilding his insider connections in the White House.
Issue #10 resolves the big Thunderbolts storyline, but also introduces the “Council of God Heads,” told through flashbacks, which offers a deeper history of Ares and his son Alexander.
Geek fun: Hickman pulls in pantheons from decades of comics. If you like God stories, this is a great one.
It’s used to back-story how Nick and Ares are actually working together and to ultimately lead to Alexander being judged by the Gods as worthy to be the Greek pantheon’s official God of Fear. Ares, however, reveals that he is just a demigod and in order to become a full God, he will have to kill his son.
This continues to be a dense story that’s still a fast read, and one of the best books of 2009.
English (US) · 