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Thunderbolts #33

Writer: Kurt Busiek
Penciller: Mark Bagley
Inker: Scott Hanna
Letters: RS & Comiccraft's Troy Peteri
Colors: Joe Rosas
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Editor in Chief: Bob Harras

Ogres in the shadows

Deep Within Mount Charteris in the T-bolts base Moonstone is using her psychiatrist abilities on Jolt. Jolt starts to recount a story of when she went to her own school as a normal kid. We find out back then she had a birthday coming up while the scene shifts to elsewhere in the T-bolts base where the others are tracking down the 'elf' living in there HQ.

Hawkeye, Songbird, Atlas, and Charcoal are trying to catch the one living in their base by using containers full of food, books, and medicine. Charcoal wonders if its going to be that easy having found one of the hideaways of the 'elf' and the walls were scorched and scarred by blaster fire. Hawkeye thinks he hears someone coming as the story shifts back to Jolts story.

Jolt arrives at her home where all her friends are gathered with her parents singing happy birthday as a stray blast from a sentinel blows up the apartment. Jolt is thrown a distance while her friends and parents were lying in the rubble two floors down. This happens during Onslaught while the sentinels were fighting spider-man and destroying much of the city.

Back with the rest of the T-bolts the 'elf' in the base is taking away the containers for himself as songbird goes to trap him with a solid sound wall while Charcoal sneaks up from the other direction but gets blasted by the mystery figure. He then escapes the solid sound wall with some device on his hand.

Jolt then continues telling her story about how she was still numb but wanted to help out the heroes fighting the sentinels. She rounded up all the kids she could find and anyone who had been separated from their folks and took them to the basement of school. A blast rocked the school but in time they all managed to dig themselves out. But when they got back to the surface the neighbourhood was devastated and the Rat Pack was wandering around scavenging and kidnapping any survivors. Jolt tried to keep the kids safe but eventually they were captured and then she was. They were all taken to Arnim Zola the Bio-Fanatic and used for genetic experiments. The others captured all died except for Jolts who became faster, agile and charged with bioelectricity and became a thunderbolt.

Jolt was living out her dream and her life was so far different then it was from before with nothing to remind her of the nightmare she had lived through. Jolts normal like was destroyed, everyone she loved had been killed so she has been playing superhero to avoid dealing with it. While Jolt finished with session a bit relived she admits Moonstone's a good psychiatrist even though she is manipulative and self centred. While Moonstone wonders what's happening to herself remembering Deanna Stockbridge the spoiled young daughter of Moonstone's parents employers.

Meanwhile Atlas decides to take a different approach to the fleeing mystery figure in their base rather then chasing after him. Atlas talks to the shadows where the figure fled thanking him for the Atomic Steed make big enough for himself to draw the stranger out of the shadows. He steps forward into the light but none of the thunderbolts recognize him.

Later in the T-bolts main gallery it's revealed he's an old super villain called the ogre. Hawkeye congratulates Atlas on his quick thinking that worked well but Atlas doesn't feel so well. Since he has neglected to tell the team that about Man-killer laying low in a sports bar and how he thought he thought he saw Techno.

The Ogre then tells a story about being an operative of a secret cabal called Factor Three that fought the X-men. He also talks about the various groups that have used the HQ in the past before the crimson cowl other than Factor Three like Sons of The Serpent, Hydra and August Masters and his private army. The Ogre hidden from all of them but when he tried to make contact once they tried to kill him.

He knew the complex better than they did so he evaded them lived in the deepest recesses of the base where he scavenged its stores for food and other supplies. Ogre didn't like it when the Crimson Cowl and her masters of evil moved in arrogantly like they owned the mountain and brought in new machines and computers so he helped moonstone by leaving her a key in her cell so she could break free from the masters of evil. When the Thunderbolts took over the base Ogre thought they were different then all the other groups and nice so he fixed stuff for them.

Hawkeye offers the Ogre a place as the T-bolts resident engineer. Ogre accepts and Hawkeye suggests he get his stuff from the lower levels and find a room closer to the rest of the thunderbolts as alarms sound in the base. Ogre informs the T-bolts that he's programmed the Comm equipment to scan for news on subjects of interest to the thunderbolts, that was adapted from the technology of the atomic steeds.

The Thunderbolts find is a report of a daylight robbery by someone who calls himself the Beetle with a new design of armor. Songbirds quite shocked as the Thunderbolts rush out in their ship.

Ogre retreats to the lower levels where he was to get his stuff only to get knocked unconscious by Techno. In one of the deepest sub-basements in the complex Techno puts Ogre in cryogenic storage. Oddly enough there is also another body it looks like beside the one Ogre is being put into.

Techno takes a small cell-sample from Ogre and has his onboard computers change his whole into that resembling the Ogre. Ending with the words...

"...And I'm back where I belong. And best of all the Thunderbolts won't suspect a thing!"

Comments: What a fantastic issue for sadly Kurt Busiek's final issue. The issue didn't make a big point of this was his last issue by having the story suffer and doing something spectacular it just kept on going like it was a regular issue even introducing two new plots. So it looks like the change in writers is going to be almost seamless, which is nice knowing how some other creative team changes have been handled.

Finally find out why Jolts been acting the way she's been about school and it turned out to be more interesting then I thought it would. This definitely gives you her full origin now and how awful it was for her. With all her loved ones being killed and then everything that happened afterwards pretty horrible stuff.

Finding out who the 'evil' in the base was definitely not whom I would have expected but its what the title has been built on with another obscure x-men villain Ogre from X-Men#28 in 1966. I thought that Techno was top candidate for the mystery one living in their base but it nice to see him at the end. This is one of the plots I will really be following to see who he's working for, what his agenda is and all those neat things. He probably can pretend to be anyone now like he did with Ogre, which should prove to be interesting. Poor guy the Ogre though, thinks everything is going fine and then gets knocked out by Techno and won't be seen again for who knows how long Techno pretends to be him. Also interesting that when he's put into cryogenic storage there's another body in cryogenic storage I wonder if that could be Techno's human body or what? (It's also in the image above.)

The new beetle, was interesting about time they come up with one of those, since he was always one of my favourite villains but never seemed to do that well except for deadly foes of spider-man if you consider that well. The design of the armor looks too chunky though and not as effective. I would think that someone would make one a new design that looked sleeker even if the chunkier design is to keep more weapons inside of it. Not so sure that Abe is the one who's in the new beetle armor, I don't think that would make much sense, stealing money for the commission is something I don't see, but this title has been full of surprises. A spider-man one panel appearance drawn by Bagley in this issue too which was nice to see even if it was in the other costume. This issue will probably turn out to be one of my favourites and the future does look bright indeed.

Thunderbolts and all associated characters are the property of MARVEL COMICS TM&©2003.

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