With superheroes outlawed in New York, Mayor Wilson Fisk needs superpowered operatives to keep the city under control. With Whiplash, Rhino, Electro, and Agony making up the new Thunderbolts, however, control isn’t all that easily found. Devil’s Reign: Villains for Hire #1, written by Clay McLeod Chapman, drawn by Manuel Garcia, inked by Lorenzo Ruggiero, Scott Hanna, Livesay, Andy Owens and Victor Nava, colored by Dono Sánchez-Almara and Fer Sifuentes-Sujo and lettered by VC’s Joe Sabino.
Every comic book event has a tie-in that feels like it doesn’t really need to be there. Its stakes are low. They will be forgotten a month after the event is over, if not halfway through the series. Devil’s Reign: Villains for Hire is certainly that, but damn if it isn’t a satisfying read.
I don’t know what it is about them, but there are no kinds of villains I enjoy reading as consistently as the truly petty ones. The ones with no underlying sense of honor, grandeur, or even purpose. The ones whose motivations are simple and largely unchanging—the only thing they like more than violence is being paid to do it.
And so we have Fisk’s newest Thunderbolts team, a group of villains who seem to be more or less randomly picked out of a hat, acting as Fisk’s own personal enforcers. Switch out these villains for dozens and dozens of other D-list characters and this book wouldn’t change a whit. They’re brutal; the only times they can work together is when they’re ripping apart someone else. No matter what PR Fisk is paying for, there is nothing that can make these villains look good.
Not even, as it turns out, the issue’s artists. A mess of inkers and colorists on Garcia’s art makes for some inconsistent pages—the opening fight scene is especially shabby, barring two Taskmaster panels. This is not a good looking comic. Here and there, though, the ugliness does work in the book’s favor.
Let’s get the plot out of the way—it’s pretty by-the-numbers for this kind of book: violent villains forced to work for public good, a relatively sane field leader with their own set of morals, and a master schemer behind it all, using them to further their own complicated agendas. Check, check, and check. Kingpin has taken the Thunderbolts program under his own name (there’s a fun gag where the Thunderbolts’ lightning symbol is replaced with the Kingpin’s silhouette early in), and when he can keep them from fighting each other, he’s using them to violently take out what crime there is in the city that isn’t already under his control.
What makes this book fun, when it works, is the ugliness of it. The chaotic panel layouts bring a liveliness to the fight scenes even when it’s not so easy to make out what’s going on. The rough pencils give a sort of shabbiness to our team despite the brightness inherent in their costumes’ color schemes. The violence can at times both feel gross, and far too close up. It could only work for a book like this.
I’m almost enjoying just how impersonal this first issue is. The spotlight’s on the villains, but I don’t think I’m getting to know them any better through this. These are just violent people. There’s no particular joy to their violence, just a grim addiction. When they fight amongst themselves, it’s not because there are any real interpersonal team dynamics; these are all just people itching for a fight, uncomfortable under the guise of respectability, bristling under authority.
Which brings us to that last page—the last page introduction of their new field leader: the authoritative, short-tempered and cluelessly militant USAgent. Whenever John Walker appears, a fight isn’t far behind, and I’m looking forward to watching this team tear each other apart in the upcoming two issues.
Devil’s Reign: Villains for Hire is clearly a D-list tie-in, spotlighting D-list characters. There’s nothing to suggest we’re going to see anything come out of the issues ahead that hasn’t been done before. The comic, however, is a uniquely ugly kind of satisfying. It scratches a certain itch. You know what you’re in for with a comic like this. And if that’s your cup of tea, it’s doing exactly what it’s set out to do.
Armaan is obsessed with the way stories are told. From video games to theater, TTRPGs to comics, he has written for, and about, them all. He will not stop, actually; believe us, we've tried.
