It's been a couple days, so now that the finale is out there, I’d like to thank you all for coming along with me on the wild ride that was
World War Zemo! It’s a story I’d been building to, one way or another, since Exciter’s
Civil War event in 2020! Literal years in the making!
On that note, I’d like to extend a special thanks to Exciter for being a generous collaborator for this event. I knew there was no doing justice to Zemo’s story on a scale like this without Captain America to stand against him. Not only did Exciter trust me with his lead characters, but he let me muck up Sharzhad, Madripoor and Vanaheim along the way! This event was build as much on the back of his books as
Thunderbolts. And a huge thanks and round of applause for those killer team line-up images he assembled for the Avengers teams! Above and beyond, as alway!
I’d also like to thank our newest recruit, the esteemed CaptainUniverse! They’d only just joined our crew when WWZ began, but they dove in headfirst!
Thanks to nx01a, for graciously sharing the X-Men name as I ran
X-Men Silver! I promise that, finally, you’ll be able to recruit Archangel for Uncanny! Soon!
Thanks to Cleg, for embracing the tie-in with his use of the Fenris twins!
Thanks to Marv for offering Iron Man and Black Panther — it wouldn’t have been a proper Avengers line-up without them!
In a way, I’ve come full-circle with
World War Zemo #4. Back when I first joined this project, I actually originally imagined the book that would become the
Ultimates as Shining Avengers! So when it became clear to me that, with the truly generous amount of characters volunteered for duty, that *two* squads would be assembling, it was a forgone conclusion what adjectives I’d be using. Readers with sharp memories will notice that I couldn't stop myself from drawing on my
Ultimates while working on
Atlantis Attacked and
X-Men: Silver, either!
I’ll be doing a little epilogue to the event next month with a couple one-shots —
Avengers Armistice and
Thunderbolts No More. Well, the latter might morph into a miniseries depending on how much detail I feel inspired to use. I’m glad to have been able to make a big, long story that embodies all the different, contradictory aspects about what I love about the Thunderbolts. My touchstones were the Kurt Busiek, Warren Ellis and Jeff Parker runs, which I think is pretty clear from my line-up if nothing else! Some Fabian Nicieza made its way in there eventually — and I even tried to wink at the infamous Fight Club era (Axum!) and the Red Hulk incarnations of the team.
It’s been a blast, but I’m pretty tapped out by now. Once the event epilogues wrap up, my
Thunderbolts era will have come to an end. Just counting books with "Thunderbolts" in the title, that's 31 issues. Including WWZemo and the tie-ins, that's 47 issues! Before any epilogue, which will bring the total to somewhere between 49 and 52 issues. On the topic of conclusions,
Crossgenesis will be wrapping up next month with an oversized #14. That number isn’t too high, but I’ve been juggling six unrelated storylines, so there’s a lot to the series! Besides, what self-respecting event doesn’t have an overly-ambitious spinoff series that suffers frequent delays and wraps up ahead of schedule? The legacy of 2021's
Negation will finally be cemented! I'm hilarious.
Spellbound will be continuing,
at least until I wrap up the Xorr storyline. Outside of that, I still have
Uncanny G-Men running over at the distinguished competition of DC Next Dawn! And, actually, I’m hoping to launch an event out of that in July (you might have seen the teaser). You’re not rid of me just yet!