Happy 4th of July, Jack Flag

When the patriotic vigilante Jack Flag showed up in Thunderbolts post-Civil War a few years back, I imagine many figured the red, white and blue-haired hero with the American flag Grifter mask to be a cobbled together Warren Ellis creation dreamt up for the purpose of giving the T-Bolts a disposable “good guy” to demonstrate their new status quo against. I was among those who not only recognized Mr. Flag, but both gave Mr. Ellis a serious kudos for raiding Marvel’s truth depths obscurity and smiled a bit to see the return of a character from my youth who both seemed ridiculous at the onset and yet to possess some intangible coolness about him.

The year was 1994, I was 12, and it was tough to ignore the dude with the jingoistic dye job wielding what appeared to be a boom box leaping at me from the cover of Captain America #434, particularly with his name emblazoned graffiti style to the side. The introduction of Jack Flag was part of the year-long “Fighting Chance” storyline by Mark Gruenwald and Dave Hoover that saw Steve Rogers’ super soldier serum begin failing on him and Cap embark upon a mission to settle his affairs before he had to hang up his shield.

“Fighting Chance” was an extremely 90’s storyline that certainly seemed to sit in the shadow or the Death of Superman or Knightfall, taking another iconic hero and doing the previously unthinkable by laying him low and potentially putting him out to pasture. There were some eye-rolling moments like Cap’s battle vest or his Iron Man-designed armor, but because it was Gruenwald, who loved the character like few others and always tried to have fun with whatever he did, there were quite a few bright spots and cool stories too. One promising aspect was exploring how the idea of the America hero had changed with a new Super-Patriot, the ultra-violent Americop, the female-empowering Free Spirit and, finally, Jack Flag.

Jack Harrison was introduced as a guy who was a member of Captain America’s computer hotline network—a Gruenwald creation established in the 80’s as a sort of nationwide Bat Signal or network of informants for Cap—and alongside his brother Drake decided to take a more active role, forming a citizen patrol. Hard times fell on the Harrisons when Drake got crippled attempting to break up a robbery and then the Serpent Society moved into their hometown, buying off local law enforcement and forcing folks out of their homes, including Jack’s parents. Inspired by Cap, Jack began wearing a costume and went after the Serpent Society; he ended up not only helping his hero and Free Spirit take down the Serpents, but helped save Steve Rogers’ life when his super soldier serum finally crapped out.

For a few issues after “Fighting Chance” wrapped, Jack Flag and Free Spirit hung around as Cap’s support squad and possible successors, but then vanished after Mark Waid took over for his own acclaimed run, shuffled off to limbo with hundreds of other characters from the 90’s.

As I mentioned up top, Jack Flag returned over a decade later in the pages of Thunderbolts, where Norman Osborn had just taken over the team and populated it with super villains who were responsible for enforcing the new Super Human Registration act. Jack surfaced as a street level hero who continued to do what he felt was his duty despite it now being against the law because of his innate goodness as well as a lingering obligation to and admiration for Captain America, who had opposed the Act and then apparently been assassinated. He saves an innocent girl from a gang attack and then is swarmed en masse by the T-Bolts.

Two things from this story are a testament to strengths in the Jack Flag character I didn’t even really know existed despite getting a tingle of excitement at seeing a trivia question I knew the answer to resurface on the national stage: First was that he represented the type of unfettered hero with a Cap-like strength of character Ellis needed to hold up against his new Thunderbolts and demonstrate how nasty and immoral they were. The respect Ellis showed by having Jack tear through his more powerful pursuers, including Moonstone and Venom, before being felled and paralyzed by nothing less than a Bullseye sneak attack makes a statement of legitimacy for somebody who could not have been reasonably considered anything but D-list to this point.

Second, cover artist Marko Djurdjevic and interior artist Mike Deodato do not change Dave Hoover’s original costume design even a little bit, they just do it up in their respective ways and show that it was a bold, memorable collection of stylistic choices; I kinda want to start a Jack Flag sketchbook.

Most would assume that would be it for Jack Flag—and for a character who only had a few appearances to his credit prior, taking on some of the Marvel Universe’s bigger bads and getting nailed by Bullseye while doing the right thing wouldn’t be a shabby send-off—but he would return in of all places Guardians of the Galaxy, courtesy of my pals Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning. When Blaastar attempts to take over the Negative Zone prison where Jack is being held, despite being wheelchair-bound, he leads the other inmates to resist the alien tyrant, impressing Star-Lord in the process; Peter Quill gets Jack the heck out of jail and has the science whiz types on Knowhere fix up his spine so he could join the Guardians.

It always blew my mind a bit reading Guardians of the Galaxy and realizing that among cosmic powerhouses like Drax and Adam Warlock there was this footnote of a character from when I read Captain America as a kid standing shoulder to shoulder, but so much of the joy in reading DnA’s work is they love comics minutiae as much as any fan and jump at the chance to elevate characters with potential. They made Jack a fairly integral member of the team, even having folks who would know like Kang tout his grand potential in the universal scheme of things.

That a guy who called Captain America’s hotline in the 90’s and took the time to evenly separate three bizarre colors into his hair would eventually become an intergalactic champion for good is pretty much as good a representation that anything can happen in comics as you’re going to get; it’s also proof in point that the best creators in our industry not only make their own mark, but are never bashful about going back into the seemingly infinite backlog of those who came before to mine everything they can from the most forgotten of creations.

Thunderbolts is not Suicide Squad (and vice versa)

I read From The Marvel Vault: Thunderbolts last week, a neat little one-shot presenting a lost tale of Nomad written by Fabian Nicieza from the time he was the regular writer on Thunderbolts and pulled recently from Tom Brevoort’s drawer to see publication for the first time. The main story was good, but it was a quick missive from Thunderbolts co-creator and original writer Kurt Busiek on the letters page thanking the fans for their years of support that grabbed my attention.

Like the proud parent he deserves to be recognized as, Busiek pointed out that Thunderbolts has been going strong nearly 15 years now over the course of 150+ issues and with only one brief break in regular publication of an ongoing series. Considering the book began in 1997, hardly fertile breeding ground for long-running comic book success stories, that’s quite an achievement. Thunderbolts is among the most enduring mainstream creations of the 90’s—I’d rank it above Superboy, at least on par with Kyle Rayner, maybe a notch below Deadpool—a fact even more impressive given the unique niche it has staked out.

For those who don’t know, the original premise of Thunderbolts was that the Avengers and Fantastic Four had seemingly been killed during the Onslaught event, so a new team of heroes rose up, only to be revealed—to the reader at least—in one of the most shocking last pages of a first issue ever—as the Masters of Evil in disguise, pretending to be good guys with the promise by Baron Zemo of some future scheme in mind.

I’ve said it before, but books starring bad guys are generally a hard sell, and they were even in the 90’s. Quick character-building villain-centric minis are great, but sustaining an ongoing with a protagonist who’s a nasty person the audience can’t sympathize with, no matter how cool they think he/she/they are in the abstract, is usually a recipe for early cancellation or unfortunate watering down of the character core (Venom and Deathstroke in the 90’s being the prime example of the latter).

Thunderbolts has managed to last as long as it has in no small part because though it started out as a book about lying villains, it grew organically into the story of people who had made mistakes trying to do better, as the bulk of the team turned on Zemo, having gotten a taste of being heroes and wanting to go for the real deal. It wasn’t another case of psychotic Eddie Brock or mercenary Slade Wilson suddenly getting a conscience for sales’ sake, it was genuine and not always surefire attempts at redemption from well-chosen small time villains off the B-list or lower who were never mass murderers to begin with and were believably cast in their role. Everybody loves an underdog story, and in many that’s what Thunderbolts has been for the past 15 years.

Obviously when you’re thinking about “villain books” that have done well, another that immediately springs to mind is the fondly remembered Suicide Squad, a series I’ve made clear is one of my all-time personal favorites. In the grand scheme of things, the prime Suicide Squad ongoing lasted a little over five years and shy of 70 issues, but if you look back at the mark it left on fans and creators and how influential it has been in the intervening period, you can see that its success was measured by something beyond longevity.

Suicide Squad did not take the Thunderbolts approach in conquering the issue of a cast you didn’t necessarily want to cheer or sympathize with, as Deadshot and Captain Boomerang certainly never really seemed to be seeking any sort of legitimate redemption and even though Amanda Waller was ostensibly the Professor X of the Squad, no question she was—and remains—a total “rhymes with witch” (as well as one of the most unique and awesome characters around). Instead, the circumvention route of Suicide Squad was to make no apologies for how reprehensible much of the featured players were and also give you a rotating handful of identification figures who would inevitably get driven out by how awful these people were (Nightshade, Nemesis, Vixen), go over the edge from being surrounded by madness (Rick Flag) or do their best to grin and bear it while recognizing they couldn’t do much to change things (the stalwart Bronze Tiger). Of course you also had the gimmick that any character could go at any time—hence the name—and the reliably strong writing of John Ostrander, who oversaw things from beginning to bitter end.

Given that Thunderbolts and Suicide Squad are perhaps the two most prominent villain/pseudo-villain-centric series in comics history in terms of length and esteem, it’s not a shocker that they will draw the occasional comparisons. If Marvel and DC did another Amalgam event tomorrow, it’s a safe bet we’d see the Thunder Squad or Suicide Bolts led by Baron Waller. It makes sense, yet despite the fact that there are surface similarities—two teams of super criminals fighting on the side of good under some duress with a lot of interpersonal drama—really once you scratch that, the two concepts couldn’t be more different, and as a fan of both, I’m certainly happy for that because both work well.

At its core, Suicide Squad is a cynical book. It’s brilliant, but in the same way shows like The Sopranos or The Wire are (or so I am told, having never regularly watched either—don’t hit me!). It has many messages, but a pretty central one is that playing by the rules doesn’t always get the job done and sometimes criminals and killers can succeed where heroes would fail because they’re willing to go dark places.

By contrast, despite the fact it originally starred a group flat out called the Masters of Evil and has traveled to some pretty dire instances itself over the past decade and a half, Thunderbolts always has been and likely always be optimistic underneath it all. Its message is that even though not everybody can change for the better, enough can—and want to—that redemption is a concept worth believing in.

Even when it appeared Thunderbolts was becoming outwardly more like Suicide Squad, there was something about that redemptive theme buried at the core that I swear pulled the book back. Warren Ellis had a great run that indeed centered on more dangerous figures like Norman Osborn and Bullseye being put to work by the government and doing some truly heinous stuff, but look even there how many times unlikely heroism took center stage, be it Jack Flag overcoming the odds, American Eagle standing his ground, or Songbird fighting the system from within. I swear Busiek wove something into the DNA of Thunderbolts that even when you set out to tell the most deranged stories possible, a trickle of that inspirational underdog tale is going to sneak in and work its magic.

It’s really tough to make a villain book work in comics, but both Thunderbolts and Suicide Squad found their own path, and given how much I dig them both, I can’t wait until somebody shows me a third way.