Fascism has been lingering under the surface of society for decades, a sort of vitriolic disease that the country – and the world at-large – has never been able to fully recover from. In recent years, though, we’ve seen an alarming growth of hatred no longer willing to languish in the shadows. Whether it be a bunch of jack-booted buffoons staging protests outside Disney World, or former President (and current hopeful) Donald Trump openly seeking support from white nationalists, the bad guys aren’t just saying the quiet part loud – they’re practically screaming it in the public’s face.
Courtesy of Marvel.
It’s no wonder, then, that there has been a resurgence of anxieties in comic books – it is, after all, a medium created under those same anxieties. Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, and Geraldo Borges’ new Thunderbolts series attempts to remedy that ongoing anxiety by way of clever, anti-fascist wish-fulfillment; its first issue saw the precision takedown of Marvel’s prime Nazi, the Red Skull, to endorphin-pumping effect. It was impossible to leave that issue without feeling somehow energized as much by its unsubtle condemnation of hatred as by the non-stop fireworks of Borges’ wicked sci-fi action. In its second issue, Thunderbolts attempts what seems like the natural first step of dismantling a network of systemic hatred: it follows the money.
Of course he was a content creator. How else to grow an evil following? Courtesy of Marvel.
With a major tone shift from hard action to glamor, the issue sees the team dressed to the nines and infiltrating the Hellfire Club in classic, James Bond-esque black-tie espionage. Though the Club’s new leadership, Wilson Fisk, gives lip service to disavowing the actions of the Red Skull and his ideology, the Hellfire Club is a place where sinister money has been going to party since the 18th century. It seems unlikely that Nazi gold didn’t filter through its shady halls back during the war, so why should the modern-day be any different?
Courtesy of Marvel.
With all its sexy, gowns-and-drinks allure, Thunderbolts taps into that easy formula without being reduced to it, losing none of its snappy action. This is a team, after all, made up of cybernetic arms and symbiote assassins. There’s a touch of the modern, the contemporary, as well as the ridiculous: there’s a man with a black-hole vault in his chest, for god’s sake.
There is no instant fix to the frightening, real-world climate of oppression. There isn’t an easy, skull-faced tyrant, and no way to follow that blood money back to its hateful nest. But that doesn’t mean we can’t delight in hatred’s overthrow, can’t yearn for a satisfying resolution. Thunderbolts takes aim at very real concerns and delivers a shot of adrenaline to uplift the reader against those concerns.
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