School’s in full swing, mid-term season, so I decided to combine these two issues together for a quicker review. Let’s get back to the Superior of the Venom titles currently, as we look at the attack on New York, the fall of Attilan, and how it effects Frank Castle’s mission to wipe-out the Paguro family.

Thunderbolts: Infinity Parts Three and Four (Of Five)

Writer: Charles Soule
Artist: Jefte Palo
Colors: Guru eFX
Letters: Joe Sabino
Cover Artist: Julian Tedesco
Editors: Jordan White & Nick Lowe
Editor-In-Chief: Axel Alonso

 Our Team of Thunderbolts: Frank Castle (The Punisher), Elektra Natchios (Elektra), Flash Thompson (Venom), Wade Wilson (Deadpool), Thunderbolt Ross (Red Hulk), Samuel Sterns (The Leader), Mercy (Mercy)

One Bar? Come On: The issue picks up with the cowardly Nobili family alerting the Paguros of the Punisher’s attack, in exchange for safe haven from Thanos’ forces. The Punisher, Venom, and Elektra are right on their tails, but when they call for back-up, they discover they are own their own.

Because across the city, the submarine headquarters base of the Thunderbolts is torn apart by Super-Giant, who is after the secrets of The Leader’s “internet hive mind”. Mercy ends up saving him, but afterwards flees from the sub and begins to feed on the terrified civilians.

The Leader is in desperate need of a reboot before his body deteriorates away thanks to Super-Giant. Rulk manages to find him a cell-phone that allows him to temporarily reboot his mind with the internet, though only enough to stop the deterioration of his body. They team-up to lead Mercy away from panicking civilians, using her to attack the mother-ships of Thanos’ assault on New York.

Back at the Paguro base, the team is tearing through the bad guys, despite the Paguro throwing everything they have at them. Venom is overwhelmed and lets the symbiote take over, but things get complicated when the Terrigan Mists of the Attilan Bomb turn the Nobili family into Inhumans.

And Deadpool finally gets his pizza.

The Punisher, his Pet Monster, and the Bitch by the exit: Charles Soule continues to improve Daniel Way’s run here, doing a lot to establish Deadpool as ‘tragically heroic’ and adding more to this evolution of The Leader’s power. The Leader’s entire being runs off his brain and the more you tamper with it, the more harm you bring to him (and Ross has being tampering with it since the get-go, so I expect this to come up again). He can recharge/reboot it with his “second brain” though, which exists in the coding of the internet. Comic book logic, sure, but it’s interesting to see what can be done with this.  And Deadpool once again is the hero here, killing the aliens who attempt to steal the ‘wishes’ from a coin fountain and then paying for his technically ‘free’ pizza, that he was craving for so long in a particularly warming scene recalling the bus sequence from Issue 15. And despite all this heroism, he’s still hated by those who recognize him for Deadpool and not Spider-Man.

Deadpool and Rulk/Leader do a lot to drive this story forward, largely in part because the Punisher’s mission is kind of… boring. We get some nice interplay between the characters and it’s nice to see Flash go a little crazy with the symbiote, but nothing really happens until the end of issue 17. The Thanos invasion part of this tie-in was kind of useless, but the twist with the Terrigan Bomb altering the (quasi) villains of the piece was unexpected and could lend a lot to make this mission stronger. I would have liked to have seen more than just three people turn, but… well, the team killed nearly everyone else in the vicinity.

You Can’t Steal People’s Wishes: Artwork wise, these issues are a disappointment. Jefte Palo doesn’t do anything all that original, the fight scene are kind of boring, and his faces really start to blur together. That’s not to say it isn’t without it perks; Elektra has a fun interrogation scene involving her sais, Venom looks fantastically terrifying, and the aliens are wonderfully… alien looking. But in 44 pages of artwork, I can only think of maybe five pages that I consider well done. These style is really loose and doesn’t work well in the fight scenes at the Paguro’s; it never looks like Elektra actually hits anything with her blades, same with Frank and his bullets. The colors are the same old, same old, not much to say there.

Verdict: This is a short review, because nothing really happens in issue 16 aside from Super-Giant destroying the submarine. Issue 17 does a lot to help build the story up, adding to the Leader powers and introducing the Terrigan Mists into the equation. With one issue left, they have both Mercy and the Paguros to deal with, though it seems unlikely they’ll get around to dealing with Mercy; the next arc is called No Mercy and it involves Ross bringing Johnny Blaze on to the team to deal with Mercy. Still, this could be one big bang of an ending and I look forward to what comes next.

Pros:

• Everything with Deadpool
• Adding to The Leader’s character
• Great Dialogue
• Terrigan Mists

Cons:

• Boring Mission
• Wasted Opportunity with Thanos’ Invasion
• Generally Weak Art

C+ Above Average