Thunderbolts (comics)
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The Thunderbolts are a team of superheroes in the Marvel Comics universe who were initially a team of supervillains posing as heroes in order to exploit public goodwill. The Thunderbolts were created by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, although the team's initial membership consisted entirely of pre-existing characters and their first appearance, in The Incredible Hulk #449 (1997), was written by Peter David and illustrated by Mike Deodato.
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History
New Heroes
The Thunderbolts were initially a new incarnation of the Masters of Evil, a villainous counterpart to the heroic Avengers. The team was formed by Baron Zemo and its other members were the Beetle, Fixer, Goliath, Moonstone and Screaming Mimi. However, before the team had a chance to attack their enemies, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four disappeared and were presumed deceased. Zemo saw a chance for his team to exploit the absence of the superheroes by masquerading as heroes, and then betraying them once they had worked themselves into a position of trust and power. In particular, Zemo wanted access to the Avengers' and SHIELD's files, which he could use himself and then sell off to the criminal underworld. To this end, the team was called the Thunderbolts (a name that Zemo found "pseudo-fascist, but friendly"), and its members adopted new codenames. Zemo became Citizen V, the Beetle became MACH-1, the Fixer became Techno, Goliath became Atlas, Moonstone became Meteorite, and Screaming Mimi became Songbird.
The team succeeded quite well as superheroes, to the point that most of its members began to think of themselves more as heroes than villains. They were shortly after joined by Jolt, an Asian-American teenage girl who believed that her new friends were really heroes. Soon after, Techno's neck was broken in battle; he was believed killed, and his mind transferred into an android body formed from his high-tech equipment. (It was later revealed that this robotic body contained only a copy of his mind, and that his real body had survived but was paralyzed.) The team's true identities were uncovered once the Avengers and Fantastic Four returned - ironically, the ruse was revealed by Zemo himself, who had sensed that his allies were getting to like being heroes and wanted to ensure their loyalty. The Thunderbolts turned on Zemo (minus Techno, who remained loyal), but Zemo and Techno used a mind control to turn the Avengers and Fantastic Four against their former teammates. The Thunderbolts freed the other heroes and together defeated Zemo and Techno; Atlas, unbeknownst to his teammates, helped the wounded Zemo escape, while Techno fled under his own power. During the chaos, Meteorite altered her costume and changed her codename back to Moonstone.
Marvel's Most Wanted
As the Thunderbolts prepared to turn themselves in to the assembled heroes, they were teleported to another dimension. After helping the natives of that dimension quell a revolution, they returned to Earth, where they found themselves fugitives. They were joined soon afterward by the African-American teenage boy Charcoal and then by Hawkeye, who had himself been a supervillain before Captain America recruited him into the Avengers. Hawkeye convinced his teammates that he could get them pardoned if they turned in MACH-1, who had once committed a murder as the Beetle. After mulling over the notion and saving the world from the mysterious Crimson Cowl's new Masters of Evil, they agreed and MACH-1 turned himself in to the authorities.
Not long afterwards, Techno secretly took up occupation in the team's headquarters, under the guise of the team's mechanic, the Ogre, who he had placed in suspended animation. MACH-1 was freed from prison, and Techno altered his facial appearance and armor and changed his name to MACH-2. The new Scourge of the Underworld then came to pose a great threat to the team. He first shot and seemingly killed Jolt in a diner, then travelled to South America and killed Baron Zemo, and finally entered the Thunderbolts' home and deactivated Techno. (In actuality, all three survived in some form: Jolt's electrical powers let her return to life in an energy-based form and Zemo's mind was transferred first into the comatose body of the real Citizen V and later into Techno's mechanical "Tech-Pack", which had also cybernetically replaced the broken segment of Techno's real body's spine. Although Techno remained deactivated, it was revealed that his original body had survived.) The Scourge was ultimately revealed to be Jack Munroe, who had previously gone by the aliases of Bucky and Nomad, and who was being mind controlled by the government agent Henry Peter Gyrich, who was himself under the control of Baron Strucker. In bringing down the Scourge, the Thunderbolts teamed up with the Redeemers, a group of superhumans who used the former codenames of Thunderbolts members and who each had a personal grudge against the individual Thunderbolts, and whose membership also included the original Techno, once again calling himself the Fixer.
Becoming Villains/Heroes
After their victory, the Thunderbolts were given a choice by the government: if the team disbanded permanently and MACH-1 and Hawkeye went to prison, the rest of the team would each receive a full pardon for their past crimes. They accepted, and Jolt and Charcoal, who were the only two Thunderbolts with no criminal records, were assimilated into the Redeemers under the leadership of Captain America and then the Zemo-possessed Citizen V. The Redeemers, save for Citizen V and Jolt, were slaughtered by the supervillain Graviton, and the Thunderbolts were reformed to defeat him. In the process, however, several of the team members present (Citizen V/Zemo, Fixer, Jolt, Moonstone, Jenkins as MACH-3 and the merged Atlas/Dallas Riordan) were transported to Counter-Earth, the world to which the Avengers and Fantastic Four had vanished when the Thunderbolts had formed. They encountered a group of their counterparts, whose members included that world's counterparts of both Henrich and Helmut Zemo and the Phantom Eagle, the counterpart of the first Moonstone, whom Karla had stolen hers from, and who also wielded a moonstone identical to hers. Zemo's disembodied mind, which had been transferred into Fixer's "Tech-Pack", was then transferred into his counterpart's body, while he killed his "father." After the Thunderbolts failed to get on a rocket home, Zemo convinced them to stay for a time and act as leaders for the planet, basing themselves on the alternate Attlan, while Moonstone stole the mentally-unstable Phantom Eagle's moonstone for herself.
Meanwhile, Hawkeye escaped from prison alongside several supervillains, and was reunited with MACH-2 and Songbird. They formed a second group of Thunderbolts, along with Plantman (new codename Blackheath) and several former members of the Crimson Cowl's Masters of Evil: Cardinal (now Harrier), Gypsy Moth (Skein), Man-Killer (Amazon), and Cyclone, who did not change his codename. Cyclone defected and was turned over to the authorities. These Thunderbolts finally defeated the Crimson Cowl. Upon investigating a rift consuming the V-Battalion's Vanguard, they were reunited with their lost teammates, who, in the process of returning home through it, had closed the rift from the Counter-Earth side (leaving Jolt behind in the process to join the Young Allies), and the two teams of Thunderbolts closed the rift, although the Vanguard was lost in the process.
In the aftermath, Atlas and Dallas found themselves separated into their own two bodies once more; Hawkeye, Amazon and Skein left the team; and MACH-3 & Harrier returned to prison, leaving Zemo to lead the team.
The Best Intentions
In the 2004 Avengers/Thunderbolts miniseries, Zemo led the Thunderbolts (now including Dallas Riordan, under the codename Vantage) in an atempt to deactivate the powers of all other superhumans on Earth. The team subsequently fought the Avengers, whose membership at the time included Hawkeye; during this affair, the Avenger Iron Man assumed the identity of the Cobalt Man and infiltrated the Thunderbolts. Ultimately, the power that had been drained was channeled into Moonstone, but Iron Man drained away both the power that she had stolen and her own natural powers, leaving her in a coma. Zemo, his face burned in the confrontation, took Moonstone's twin moonstones and fled, leaving the defeated and directionless Thunderbolts to disband. Jolt, temporarily recalled by the Avengers and MACH-3, returned to the Young Allies and Counter-Earth, a depowered Blackheath returned to prison, the Fixer fled, Vantage retired to a government job, Songbird was offered reserve membership in the Avengers but turned it down, and MACH-3 was paroled from prison and decided to form a new team of Thunderbolts.
Zeroes to Heroes
Marvel subsequently launched New Thunderbolts, reuniting Abner Jenkins (now called MACH-4), Atlas and Songbird as the Thunderbolts. The team's new recruits included the formerly insane alien superhero Captain Marvel (Genis-Vell, son of the late Captain Mar-Vell), now calling himself Photon, and several former supervillains: Speed Demon, Joystick, Blizzard and the Radioactive Man. The new team has so far battled the Atlantean superhuman terrorists called Fathom Five and Baron Strucker's Hydra organization, the latter having briefly brainwashed Wolverine of the X-Men into working for them.
Other Thunderbolts
From Thunderbolts #76-81, the Thunderbolts team was no longer featured in the pages of Thunderbolts. The focus instead shifted to Daniel Axum, an ex-convict and former supervillain known as the Battler. Axum joined an underground fighting circuit that employed several other supervillains, including the Armadillo. Axum turned on his criminal manager, Rey Trueno, and, along with fellow combatant Man-Killer, refused to return to the supervillain lifestyle.