When devils reign, it is perhaps inaccurate to describe things as spinning out of control — it’s merely a question of whose hands control has been shifted to. Mayor Wilson Fisk seems to be holding all the cards, and it’s the Thunderbolts who forfeit. Devil’s Reign: Villains For Hire #3 is written by Clay McLeod Chapman, penciled by Manuel Garcia, inked by Lorenzo Ruggiero, colored by Protobunker’s Dono Sánchez-Almara and lettered by Joe Sabino.
Villains for Hire reads like it thought it would have more time than it was going to get. It’s like John Mulaney’s bit about writing “Happy Birthday,” boldly establishing things it does not have the space to play out, leading to an ending that feels crammed between the pages of what this story wanted to be and the crossover event that spawned it.
This issue takes a sharp turn into the events of Devil’s Reign, to the extent that its last five pages recreate a scene we’ve already seen happen in the main title. It adds very little to what we’ve already seen and, honestly, very little to the comic itself, ending the miniseries on a cliffhanger continuing into Devil’s Reign. I doubt very much that that series is going to give much of a spotlight to Fisk’s Thunderbolts, so I’m feeling very unsatisfied.
I am unsatisfied with Taskmaster’s appearance in this series — for one of the most entertaining characters in the Marvel Universe, he’s gone through this entire series being little more than set dressing. I am unsatisfied knowing that we’re not going to see USAgent develop relationships with some of Marvel’s worst villains, constantly struggling with whether he’s better than them as he tries to get both them and his own worst impulses under control. I’m unsatisfied with how the Abomination just … showed up. I’m upset that Clay McLeod Chapman made me care about a purple poor man’s Carnage in Agony and ended the series without even pretending to give us all a little taste of resolution.
I don’t pretend to know how easy it is to plot out a three-issue tie-in, but I do know I’m unhappy with how it turned out, all the more because of the bits I enjoyed, and the promises they gave me. Agony’s purging of Contagion’s (literally) toxic influence. Rhino’s strange sense of honor coming to the fore, saving newbie Electro. USAgent getting to help people, because no matter how much of an asshole he is, his desire to help people has always been undimmed, he just works with the worst people to get it.
I will miss this comic with its grubby, weird art. Its dirty shadows and cold, cold faces grown tired with violence, evil and insatiable needs that manslaughter can’t quite fulfill (though not for lack of trying). Colorist Dono Sánchez-Almara gives us ashy smoke, dusky oranges and soft reds suffused with the purples of mind control, and I enjoy this ugly little corner of the bright and shiny Marvel Universe.
It’s easy to see what this comic could have been had it been given a longer run. I’ve read enough Thunderbolts comics to know how much I enjoy long arcs of the Marvel Universe’s B- and C-list villains, and that was the draw for me here.
The kind of pacing we’d get there, though, is very different from what a three-issue miniseries requires. I know the kinds of stories we could have gotten — but as for the story we actually got? I’m hard pressed to tell you what it is, really, besides abrupt and disappointing. All the same, though, I’m glad it exists, and I’ll say one thing for it — it’s going to stay in my mind a lot longer than the entirety of Devil’s Reign will.
