Thunderbolts (2013) # 22

"No Mercy, Part 3"

Cover Date: April 2014

On Sale Date: February 2014

Writer: Charles Soule

Artist: Carlo Barberi
Letterer: VC's Joe Sabino
Colorist: Isreal Silva
Editor: Jordan D. White
Editor-In-Chief: Axel Alonso 

Cover Artist: Julian Totino Tedesco

In the throne room of Hell, the Thunderbolts have been brought by Mephisto to defeat the current ruler of Hell, Guido Carosella, and return the throne to Mephisto. Red Hulk balks at the idea of killing someone he knew as a hero, so Mephisto points out that if he does not adhere to the contract he signed then all of their souls are forfeit to him. Ghost Rider explains that they must first fight their way through a group of demons before they can challenge Strong Guy. The Thunderbolts attack the demon horde, but upon realizing that it will take too long to kill them all, Ghost Rider incinerates an allotment of the devils and uses their bones to create a new flaming hellcycle. He tells Ross to get on behind him and they race through the demons to the confront Guido.

On Earth, Mercy has attacked Elektra to find out the whereabouts of Ross and the Leader, whom she had previous made a deal with. The Punisher shoots her from behind, saving Elektra. Back in Hell, Red Hulk and Strong Guy start their fight, with Guido explaining that he's doing good in Hell by releasing souls and he refuses to give the throne back to Mephisto. On Earth, Mercy attacks Castle and crushes his hand before she is stabbed in the back by Elektra.

Ross finally defeats Guido, who abdicates the throne back to Mephisto. Deadpool points out that he owes not only the team, but him personally, so Mephisto opens a gateway that Deadpool enters. Hulk and Ghost Rider then order Mephisto to fulfill the rest of their contract. On Earth, Mercy is holding a defeated Punisher and Elektra by their throats high in the air when she disappears, causing the two to fall back down to the forest, Castle protecting Elektra as they hit the trees. Mercy appears in Hell and immediately begins devouring souls. Deadpool comes back through the gateway with a feather for his hat, to replace the one he lost on the previous mission, and through the gateway after him comes a host of warrior angels. Enraged at what the Thunderbolts have brought to Hell, Mephisto swears vengeance, until the Leader points out that their contract forbids him from any retaliatory action against them. If he breaks the contract, the throne of Hell will belong to the Leader. Red Hulk thanks Strong Guy, who decides to stay behind in Hell to get his soul back, and the Thunderbolts instantly reappear in their headquarters. Elektra has brought a grievously wounded Punisher there, begging them to save his life. The feather that Deadpool brought back from Heaven reaches out and heals Castle's wounds, restoring him to life, to the surprise of everyone. Blaze then asks Ross if he can join their team, saying he needs to fight evil as much as the demon inside him does. Ross agrees, and Ghost Rider consciously changes the flame surrounding his skull from orange to red.

If only he'd kept this bike!

THE ROADMAP

Johnny Blaze last visited Hell in Ghost Rider (2011) # 9. He had previously been imprisoned there for an extended time and made his escape in Ghost Rider (2006) # 1.

Red Hulk (along with Venom, X-23, and Alejandra, then host to the Ghost Rider) was given the Hell Mark by Mephisto in Venom # 13.3.

The reason the feather "knows" the Punisher is due to the time Castle spent as an agent of Heaven, complete with supernatural weaponry and an angelic mark on his forehead, in the 1998 Punisher series that was part of the original launch of the Marvel Knights imprint.

Guido Carosella became the ruler of Hell during "The Hell On Earth War" in X-Factor # 250-256.

CHAIN REACTION

"No Mercy", the first arc of Thunderbolts featuring Ghost Rider as a member, comes to a conclusion.

So, here we are with a story-arc that has two purposes: a) bring Ghost Rider into the cast and b) wrap up not one but two outstanding plotlines from other writers (one of them from a totally unrelated series). The first outstanding subplot is what in the hell to do with Mercy, a character I struggled to understand the point of during Daniel Way's year writing the series and one who I was glad to see put out to pasture with this issue. Soule came up with an interesting idea, send Mercy to Hell, that gave him a great opportunity to add Ghost Rider to the cast, so points for that one. When the story gets going, though, it turns out to have little to nothing to do with Mercy and is instead going through the motions of wrapping up a plotline from the previous year's X-Factor series that installed Strong Guy as the ruler of Hell.

Huh. Okay...

I can't help but feel that the whole Guido/Mephisto thing was just a huge diversion away from what the real plot (namely, the Thunderbolts taking Mercy out) should have been. Mercy gets a couple of pages to threaten Elektra and the Punisher, and then just stays in Hell with no resolution about what's actually going to happen now that she's there sucking up souls. I can't imagine Mercy being more powerful than Mephisto, so I can assume the demon lord just stripped her of her power or something once the angels were driven out of Hell. Still, though, it's so unsatisfying a conclusion to what I had assumed was going to be "Ghost Rider fights Mercy, earns his place on the team". I suppose the fact that Guido was ruling Hell had to be addressed if the team was going to visit there, but it really seems like that was the whole point of the arc, to get Mephisto back on the throne.

That's not to say this issue didn't have it's awesome moments, particularly with the Leader and his confidence in staring down Mephisto. I hated the Red Leader when Way was writing the book, but in the last three issues Charles Soule has really sold me on how dangerous this guy really can be. Ghost Rider also gets a few great moments when it comes to standing up to Mephisto, as he's the one character who knows what's going on and isn't afraid to call the devil out on his bullshit. We also get the debut of a new hellcycle, this one made from the bones of incinerated demons, and it looks so much better than the bike that Billy Tan designed for "Shadowland" and the one that Alejandra drove during her brief stint as the Spirit of Vengeance. There were a few confusing parts to the script, though, when it came to Deadpool bringing the angels to Hell and Guido's reasons for giving up the throne so easily. It took me several read-throughs to figure out the bit with the gateway to Heaven that Deadpool goes through to get his feather, having forgotten the barely-mentioned bit in the previous issue with Deadpool putting his own clause into the contract. When the gateway appeared, I assumed it was the one that was going to send the team home, so when the angels appeared it really seemed to come out of nowhere. It hangs together after a more studious read of the arc, but it could have been explained much more clearly than it was. Ditto for the bit with Guido, who is fighting to keep his throne on one page, then on the next is abdicating it after a very brief tussle with Ross.

I did enjoy the artwork by Carlo Barberi more in this issue because he finally gets to cut loose with some action. His depiction of Hell and the demons that live there are still rather cliche and boring, but he conveys action well. I highly enjoyed the sequence where Ghost Rider creates his new bike, for instance. I'm not too thrilled with Ghost Rider now having a pinkish-red color to his flame just to fit in with the team's visual aesthetic (I have a similar problem with Punisher's red skull on his chest, it just doesn't look right), but I suppose that was inevitable.

This was a strange arc, no doubt about it. Soule and Barberi were able to keep things moving with a few clever twists, good use of the characters, and a solid grasp on Marvel continuity. I just wish the plot containing those parts was better conceived.

That fire is totally pink, not red!