Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Thunderbolts Vs. The Secret Society of Super-Villains



Ever since I was a kid watching The Legion of Doom on Super Friends, I have always liked seeing villains joining together to make teams of their own.  It's cool to see so much power amassed together and the conflicts that arise when a group of evil, self-serving personalities attempt to work as one.  The Thunderbolts took the concept one step further by having the villains pose as heroes, and explored the effect that had on all of them - making it one of my favorite Marvel series.

26 comments:

  1. AWESOME!!!! Great cover, great characters, great title.

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  2. Anybody remember the name of the electrical looking villain between Luthor and Sinestro?

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  3. that villian bigjeffoh is agamemno from dcs silver age event he used his power to switch minds of heroes and villians

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  4. It is Agamemno. Search for him and you will see right half of cover vs New Seven Soldiers of Victory. Now we need a second cover showing left half of that cover vs Marvel characters.

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  5. The first villain team that I can remember seeing in comics was the Circus of Crime, back when they crashed the Wasp/Yellowjacket wedding. I've had a soft spot for them ever since...

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  6. Now this, THIS I'd love to actually see go down. Baron Zemo VS. Lex Luthor. Good stuff.
    Next should be Zemo's Masters of Evil VS. Lex's Injustice League/Legion of Doom

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  7. @Glenn Host: Thunderbolts #172 featuring this (the original) grouping of Thunderbolts vs. another (future? current? IDK. I stopped reading the 'Bolts when Busiek left.) grouping of Thunderbolts (Mr. Hyde, Santana, Boomerang, etc.)

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  8. Oops. I misread your comment, Glenn, and thought it was asking where the left half of this cover came from. Using the other half of the DC cover, which is what you were actually suggesting, would be fun, although I certainly wouldn't label that group 'The 7 Soldiers of Victory'. Maybe 'Characters we have to use to keep their trademarks active' instead.

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  9. Jay's right. As far as I'm permanently concerned, the true Seven Soldiers will always be the ones re-introduced in the JLA (v. 1) centennial three-parter. And probably the only reason _they_ aren't taking down the SSOV is because they're still stuck at toy-size in the Queen of Fables' castle (@ STF #1852)!

    That being said; I don't know who to root for in this particular super-clash. On the one hand, I don't want the SSOV to win. But, as they have Amazo on their side (with the combined might of the whole Silver Age Justice League), I don't see how they can lose.

    Then, again, I don't want the Thunderbolts to win because of their initially hidden agenda Conquering the world from within (the guise of superheroic respectability)! Yet, Baron Helmut Zemo is quite a tactician. He once even fooled SHIELD into thinking his father had been cloned as a woman! So, I've no doubt he could one-up Amazo by exposing the android to kryptonite. The only downside to having Superman's powers!

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  10. I'm being nitpicky, I know, but these were the villains from the Silver Age miniseries, not the SSoSV. They did have a few members in common, though, and the membership of the SSoSV changed so often that this could have been the lineup at some point, but never in the comics.

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  11. Thanks to those folks who recalled "Agamemno".

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  12. @Bob Buethe: On the original cover they were called the "Injustice League" in a text box. But I don't think any of the Injustice Leagues ever had a logo, so I can't blame Ross for using the SSOV's.

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  13. This is the Earth-STF SSoSV, so it all makes sense.

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  14. I'm glad I wasn't the first to try to identify Agamemno; I absolutely don't remember him, and I would've said that that was Mongul -- especially since I'd just been thinking about that personage this morning.

    (Does anyone recall a Silver Age story where Superman had to minimize how much he used his powers lest he endanger the Earth -- the how and why of that, I do not remember -- and so Mongul, Luthor, Brainiac, and another villain whom I don't recall stepped up to do all his rescues for him?)

    @ Cary: Maybe Ant-Man or Doctor Strange should come along and rescue the Seven Soldiers.

    OT: Thanks to someone else's comment a couple of weeks ago, I now have "DC Meets Loony Tunes" and "DC Meets Hanna-Barbera" on order at my library, and will be able to read them upon arrival. Apparently DC's really gotten into the swing of combining their characters with those of other WB-owned properties. I only just learned that there's a second volume of DC/HB stories, and some new DC/LT comics on the way later this year.

    I wonder, though, why not DC Meets Animaniacs? I mean, what if Yakko, Wakko, and Dot Warner were to choose the Joker as their "special friend" for the day? What if one of the Question's investigations led him to Pinky and the Brain? What if the Goodfeathers ran afowl (yes, I did go there) of Hawkman? What if the Doom Patrol had to deal with Jenny Go Boom? There are so darn many interesting possibilities!

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  15. @BG: or failing all that, how about the Atom meets Agent Tom of T.H.U.M.B.?

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  16. Bob Greenwade,

    I believe that the story you are referring to was from Action Comics 417 and 418. The four villains in that story were Luthor, Brainiac, Grax and Marauder who was some kind of space viking(!?). This story was from 1972 which was pre-Mongul.

    In the story, the villains convince Superman that every time he performs a super-deed he creates a destructive super phantom version of himself. It was pure DC silver age madness which is to say, it was the kind of story that made me fall in love with comics to begin with.

    As a matter of fact, I found the cover of Action Comics 417 so compelling that I HAD to buy it. This was the beginning of me becoming a serious comic book collector as opposed to a casual comic book reader. These two issues also introduce me to Metamopho who had back-up stories in both.

    I hope that I'm right and that this helps, Bob.

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  17. With all due respect to Anonymous, I'd prefer to see the Atom with Inch High Private Eye which is totally do-able since Inch High is a Hannah-Barbera character.

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  18. @Sonofjack: hey! You've seen one trench-coated guy half the size of a baby's thumb, you've seen them all (lol).

    @Glenn and Harry: Agamemno?! Heh! I could've sworn that was Amazo.

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  19. amazo has the red skull cap and wonder womans lasso clone with green body suit

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  20. Cary: https://comicvine.gamespot.com/silver-age-showcase-1-the-7-soldiers-of-victory/4000-140034/

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  21. You're gonna have to translate that, Glenn. I keep getting "Internal Server Error 500" when I type in that address.

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  22. Cary, try this one:

    http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Silver_Age:_Showcase_Vol_1_1

    or Google "Silver Age Showcase"

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  23. TJW: Thanks for the tip. I'll look for that.

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  24. COVER OF THE MONTH!

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