On May 2, 2025, the Marvel Cinematic Universe will introduce a team of former villains, antiheroes, and screwups who will do their best to defeat the dangerously powerful Void. Before Yelena Belova, Bucky Barnes, Red Guardian, and the rest of the team face those insurmountable odds in Thunderbolts*, we are revisiting how the team began.

The Thunderbolts are typically composed of reformed villains, antiheroes, and heroes, though they were originally all villains. The team was created by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, who introduced them in The Incredible Hulk #449 (January 1997). They began when Baron Helmut Zemo called on his former Masters of Evil allies, including Fixer, Beetle, Moonstone, and Screaming Mimi, to try to rescue Goliath. Then he decided to lead the team in a campaign to defeat the Avengers. Before they could put that plan into action, Onslaught seemingly killed the Avengers and the Fantastic Four.

With both groups of heroes out of commission, Zemo decided that his team could fill the world’s need for superpowered champions. He figured that they could gain the public’s trust and get more power to rival the status achieved by the Avengers. He wanted to build a relationship with S.H.I.E.L.D. so that he could learn important secrets that he could then sell to criminals.

The team adopted new costumes and codenames to make themselves appear more heroic. Zemo became the patriotic Citizen V, Beetle used a high-tech suit as MACH-1, Screaming Mimi took the name Songbird, Goliath turned into Atlas, Fixer became the gadget using Techno, and Moonstone changed her name to Meteorite. Together, they took on the team name of Thunderbolts.

Once they started acting as superheroes, the Thunderbolts earned the appreciation of people they had saved. Those positive interactions had a profound impact on some of the members and they started thinking of themselves as heroes and wanted to continue helping people.

Jolt was the next character introduced to the team. She went to the Baxter Building looking for help from the Fantastic Four after Arnim Zola experimented on her. Instead of finding the Fantastic Four, she met the Thunderbolts and joined the team because she believed that they were heroes.

As Zemo was about to put his dastardly plans into action, the Avengers and Fantastic Four returned. He revealed that the Thunderbolts weren’t actually heroes, hoping that the team would stick together because the world would hate them for pretending to be good guys. Instead, everyone in the Thunderbolts (minus Techno who was now in an android body) turned on Zemo.

In retaliation, Zemo and Techno used mind control to force the Fantastic Four and Avengers to attack the Thunderbolts. But, Atlas and Iron Man (whose suit blocked mind control) helped the Thunderbolts defeat their former teammates. Since then, the Thunderbolts have had many incarnations with heroes, antiheroes, and former villains doing good and, occasionally, some bad.