It's happened a few times on this site where someone has asked "what comic books have heroclix introduced you to" and at this very moment I'm going to state that heroclix is the sole reason I have such an interest in the Thunderbolts.

For anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, Thunderbolts came out sometime in 1997 and was the brainchild of Kurt Busiek (who also did an acclaimed Avengers run shortly after). I remember Wizard magazine was hyping this series and even published the big reveal that...

My comic book tastes are somewhat fickle and for no good reason I ignored this series until about a year ago when someone lent me the Thunderbolts issues that ran through the post-Civil War, Secret Invasion and Dark Reign story lines. I really really enjoyed these issues and it had me look at my Thunderbolt figs in a whole new light.

In terms of playability: I find the Thunderbolts to be the anti-Avengers. In other words, there's a lot of them to chose from and the powers are pretty varied. I like how they re-introduce a lot of obscure villains (ex: centurius, blizzard, ghost, etc) and how CW Baron Zemo will let you bring in any Masters of Evil into the group. The Thunderbolts ATA keeps them competitive, and you can play them as strong or as weak as you want to (Mystics TA to Avengers TA, respectively).

Two questions:

1) If I had, say, a $50 gift certificate to my local comic book shop and wanted to pick up some TPBs of Thunderbolts, which would you recommend?

2) What are your favorite comic accurate Thunderbolt line-ups? How do you play them? What are your strategies?

...or you can just gush about how great Thunderbolts are and how lucky we will be to add more characters to the roster thanks to the new Deadpool set. :D