Every Wednesday we take turns to delve into our trusty longboxes, pluck out a dusty back issue at random, and give you our thoughts. We’ll also try and place it in the context of the time it was originally published.

Now this is an odd beast that you don’t see a lot of nowadays - a fill-in issue. For those of you who started reading comics after the year 2000, a fill-in issue is one that is run in a comic when the regular art and writing team are unable to meet their deadlines. Sounds bizarre, I know – couldn’t they just delay the comic for a few months? Haha. That’s just a little satire for you. Still, in this case, regular team of Bagley and Busiek do contribute a framing device, and it’s likely any delay was built-in to allow then to get ahead on the extra-sized Thunderbolts #12, so we won’t be too hard on them.

At this point in time the Thunderbolts were operating under their original gimmick – Villains masquerading as Heroes in the wake of the Onslaught disaster that “killed” most non-mutant heroes – though actually sent them into a bizarre pocket universe of gritted teeth, unusual postures and tiny little lines (good lord, take that Image! I’m on fire today!) In this issue, a suspicious Black Widow - one of the surviving Avengers - confronts MACH-1 (the Beetle) and Songbird (Screaming Mimi) and tells a story (written by Roger Stern and illustrated by Ron Frenz) about the early days of the original “new” Avengers, comprised largely of former villains (Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch) and their difficult path to acceptance as heroes. As an interesting footnote, the Avengers fight Radioactive Man, who later joins the Thunderbolts himself.

The issue ends with the Widow cautioning the other two – she doesn’t have the evidence she needs to take them down - yet. Despite being a fill-in, it’s an important beat in the redemptive arc of the Thunderbolts as they consider the Widow’s words, and it’s just a pity that the Heroes Reborn story/business arrangement with Image was ending as this issue was released, thereby truncating the Thunderbolts’ deception. In fact, the heavy rain depicted throughout the issue is actually a reference to the Heroes Return limited series (which brought the Heroes Reborn lot back into the regular MU) that was incorporated into almost all Marvel Comics that month. Now that’s the kind of detail that makes the Marvel Universe worth loving.

Anyway, in issue 10 the Thunderbolts are revealed to the public as the Masters of Evil after achieving their goal of getting the security levels they needed, in issue 11 they take over the planet (er…really) and in issue 12 they fight the newly returned Avengers/Fantastic Four. As a result, #9 ends up feeling too much like a fill-in, as the events of the issue don’t really have any time to cement in before the jig is up. Had the Image/Heroes Reborn deal not ended so soon, you can be sure it would’ve had more importance.

As it is, Thunderbolts #9 is a nice little issue, though it’s fair to say that the absence of the regular team is felt – Busiek and Bagley were doing stellar work this first year of Thunderbolts, so an issue of what amounts to a piece of Avengers history isn’t the best use of the pagetime – but it’s certainly not a bad one.