At least modern comic covers make a good poster while not selling the story inside.
Thunderbolt #56
Charlton Comics Group (February, 1967)
“Beware The Cobra”
CREATOR/WRITER/ARTIST: PAM
The Sentinels: “Where Walks…The Titan!”
WRITER: Gary Friedrich
ARTIST: Sam Grainger
EDITOR: Dick Giordano
No G.I. Joe team for this one. This Cobra is one guy who uses a cobra venom-based formula to turn people into mindless slaves and sells them to the highest bidder. Of course you-know-who is willing to sit on his butt watching Gunga Din than do anything to investigate the disappearances until he learns one of the missing is a doctor needed to save a child’s life. So Thunderbolt investigates, and during the fight the Cobra is killed by one of his own snakes as the antidote is found and delivered in time to save the boy’s life. Also a list of his buyers to save everyone else already sold to slavery.
What they got right: Admittedly, watching a man bite a snake is amusing. Cobra is an interesting villain, and he’s dead now.
What they got wrong: The same two complaints: letting all that training go to waste and that silly mantra. Plus half of the story is a recap of the previous stories and Thunderbolt’s origin.
So what are our crimefighting folk band in suits up to? Unfortunately I had to find out. After doing their appearance on Ed Sullivan’s show, with a terrible song (Friedrich is a worse songwriter than I am and that’s sad), Crunch has another falling out with the group and walks off. Meanwhile, some large guy calling himself Titan menaces the dumbest old lady ever, and threatens to destroy the world unless the Sentinels show up. Helio is immediately knocked out and Mentalia’s powers are useless because Titan is another robot sent by Mindbender to destroy our “heroes”. Brute faces him alone and despite getting a few licks in manages to end up on the losing end, realizing he might need some help. Not that Helio can help because after his beatdown he has amnesia for the cliffhanger.
As you can guess, I didn’t like this story. It neuters the other team members just to make this a Brute battle, is verbose as heck, and none of it is very interesting.
What I think overall: Thunderbolt could be interesting if he ever got a good learning about the innocent people he could be helping with all of those decades of training–they also do the “only use a portion of our brains” line, and that’s more than I can say for the Sentinels. Four more issues and I’m done with this. I’d be done sooner but I’m trying to understand what DC saw in this title, and so far I’m not.
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