T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents Archives, Vol. 1 by Wallace Wood

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents Archives, Vol. 1 Reviews

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  Louie the Mustache Matos

  Published the year I was born (apropos to nothing really, I guess I am trying to say we are old,) T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents might have flown under the radar as other comics companies flourished. Tower Comics must have known they had something special, when their only sellers were the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents comic and their spinoffs (Dynamo and NoMan). I trust that Tower was looking forward to amplifying the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents universe, but they never got that chance. The company went belly-up in 1969. As is the case with successful properties, many people/companies attempted to cash in on what was a potential goldmine. (Wow, when I get a simile stuck in my head, I milk that thing like a cow. Sorry.) Anyway, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents has attempted many revivals, has undergone several custody battles, and even though Carbonaro was the winner, there are still people fighting over scraps that make it very difficult to believe we will ever see a new generation of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. That makes me sad, but it makes me at least glad that we have these Wally Wood, Gil Kane, Len Brown treasures. (When I write treasures, there is no hyperbole in that word, IMHO. These comics were fantastic.)
• 
  Brannigan

  I’ve always heard about THUNDER Agents and knew I’d need to give them a read. I have always enjoyed Wally Wood’s art and so I sat down to give it a go. For a Silver Age book it’s very good and is still very enjoyable. That said if you are not familiar with the Silver Age style and target audience you might find the book simplistic and slow. I would suggest everyone at least read the first volume to see what it’s all about.
  
  Briefly it’s a sci-fi/covert team book. There’s three main hero’s with tech that gives them their powers a belt, cloak and helmet. Each issue is broken into about 4 small stories where each of the three have individual adventures and then come together at the end. There’s also a non powered team that goes on mini adventures in the first volume but from what I understand the creators drop them soon.
  
  I enjoyed it all enough to read the next few volumes and will share how it goes soon. I can’t recommend buying these unless you’re a die hard fan instead find a friend or Library to borrow from.
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  Sylvain Lafrenière

  Was very innovative when it was created. Still a good read, but a mirror of it's era.
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  Dominick

  Odd superhero book spearheaded by Wally Wood. It features a fair bit of good art from several 1950s/1960s greats, notably Wood himself, but the stories are . . . underdeveloped, I'd have to say. There are clearly scenes and sequences that could and presumably should be more impactful than they are, notably one story in which a character sacrifices himself to save his teammates. It's hard to be too affected by this because it happens in only the second story about the characters, so they have developed little in the way of identity as yet (not that they develop much more of an identity by the end of the volume), but after the big sacrifice, nobody makes so much as a reference to it again, so it becomes basically a non-event. Perhaps this is in keeping with the book's conceit that being superheroes is a job for these guys, rather than the almost obsessive calling it tends to be for most such characters, but it also means that opportunities for drama are squandered. This is perhaps even more noticeable when the femme fatale villain Iron Maiden takes a bullet for hero Dynamo, to flat effect. Interesting, possessed of potential, but generally uninspired.