Giant-Size X-Men: Thunderbird
Thunderbird goes home and has some business to deal with in Giant-Size X-Men: Thunderbird, by writers Steve Orlando and Nyla Rose, artist David Cutler, inkers Jose Marzan Jr. and Roberto Poggi, colorist Irma Kniivila, and letterer Travis Lanham. This issue reintroduces Thunderbird to readers who weren’t even born when he died, and it’s a barnstormer.
After his resurrection, Thunderbird goes home, where he finds what’s left of his family and people taken by an old foe. He hunts them down to a police station where they’re being kept waiting for the Heritage Foundation. Thunderbird’s old enemy Martenyc shows up, and the two tussle, but Thunderbird stops short of killing him when his grandmother tells him to. They get reacquainted at the reservation, and Warpath shows up, the remnants of the Proudstar clan back together.
Thunderbird has been dead for over forty years, so for the most part, most readers will have no idea what his characterization was actually like. Orlando and Rose do, but they also basically have a blank slate, which makes this issue all the better. Even for X-Men fans who never read Thunderbird’s stories, there was the legend of him, the angry young man. That’s on display here, but there’s also more; a man searching for belonging from two different worlds, both of which have been marginalized and victimized. He’s been gone so long he doesn’t know what to do next, but he knows he can’t just stay on Krakoa. Orlando and Rose do an amazing job of really capturing who Thunderbird is and laying it out for readers.
Of course, that’s not all they do, as they give readers a nice action-packed battle. The Heritage Foundation is working with Orchis, getting their hands on mutants for their own purposes, and finding ways to use the X-gene and its powers. There’s a nice little tease that long-time Marvel fans will recognize of who is running the Heritage Foundation that’s really cool and shows that this subplot isn’t over yet. All in all, this is a very well-written comic.
The art by Cutler, Marzan Jr, Poggi, and Kniivila has a nice indie sensibility but works for the kind of action-packed story this becomes. Cutler’s figure work and character acting look amazing and is very important to this story, especially towards the end, when the dialogue really carries the book. The action scenes are well laid out and paced. The art team gives Thunderbird a new costume designed by Cutler, a member of the Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation tribe, that’s authentically Native and looks much better than the cliche original costume, something the writing references.
Giant-Size X-Men: Thunderbird is the real deal. Orlando helps Rose, a wrestler turned comic writer for this issue and a Native herself, turn in an impressive script about one man’s quest to find himself and his people, the latter literally. The art perfectly compliments the script, with the team nailing both the action and the character work. Thunderbird’s return bodes well for the future, and this is easily one of the most exciting and well-done issues of the nascent Destiny Of X era.
