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OMG!

One of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS was secretly born in Africa, according to this leaked birth certificate!

Dynamo's loyalty may be in question!

See the birthplace of this birth certificate and make your own birth certificate here

Updated the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents page to reflect the announcement that DC has acquired the rights to publish the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. James Robinson was talking like he'll be doing the story crafting, but this is taken from notes out of the Newsarama page for the event.

I'd love confirmation on whatever Micheal Uslan said about the Thunder Agents in a separate event. If Uslan has the movie rights, and DC has the comic book rights, we're pretty much back to the way it was some years back before Carbonaro -- uh, took his ball and went home.

Micheal Uslan announced something about Thunder Agents at his panel at Comic Con.

Did he buy the movie rights?

http://twitter.com/k4ng/status/2830038149

So, I just learned that there is a very distinct possibility that at this year’s Comic-Con International: San Diego there will be an announcement about the THUNDER Agents. I know that I don’t have to remind you all of this site’s connection to the Agents, (but I’m going to anyway).

Walt and I were introduced by John “I may be dead, but I still own the THUNDER Agents” Carbonaro. I (The Perfessor) met John some 30+ years ago at a comicbook convention and eventually wound up championing his cause, when a former friend business associate (and scumbag) attempted to defraud John by stealing his property out from under him, and discrediting John in the process (for a number of years, while John was defending himself from the scurrilous charges against him his friends would chide him as being “a broken and tragic man” — one of the epithets used against him by the former employee). Later on, after he won his suit, John would wear a T-shirt that proudly proclaim “My Lawyer can beat up your lawyer.”

Walt met John when John relocated to Houston from NYC. eventually John introduced Walt and I to each other when both of us seemed to be the only ones who supported his cause of bringing the Agents back into print.

To be sure, John had a number of folks interested in the Agents, a few of these efforts actual made it into print. Unfortunately, none of them lasted. Well. John passed away earlier this year, and control of the Agents passed on to his heirs. I was able to consult with the executor of John’s estate shortly after John’s death, and not only advise him as to who the “players” were in the field, but to put him into contact with a number of parties who were interested in continuing the legacy of the Agents.

Well, I just heard from the executor that there is a very good possibility that there will be an announcement concerning the Agents this year at SDCC, and that we will be among the first to be notified if such an announcement is to be made.

So stay tuned kids, there is more to this story yet.

The Perfessor

Den Of Geek chats up the Top 10 second chance superheroes that need a reboot / movie

and tops of their list is the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents

I'll be interested to see how much extra traffic that under visited site gets.

And yes, I believe the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents are still up for sale. I haven't heard anything different, nor any update since Carbonaro's will was made official.

A friend of mine died last month. It was the friend that introduced me to The Perfessor, the other half of this blog. We're all sorry to see John pass away because John Carbonaro was a very nice man. Nice to a fault. John was a very giving soul. Giving of his time and his money. He had a special charity for women and children that made him a real gentleman. I think John was born outside of his time. I'm convinced that he picked up his chivalry from the Knights of the Round Table, although back then I'm sure he was the tall and thin one, because karma being what it is, he was neither in his most recent incarnation.

I'll probably end up making a few posts about John and the Thunder Agents (originally typed out as T.H.U.N.D.E.R Agents) but thought I'd make a few statements about John before I really get underway. To learn a bit more about the history of The Thunder Agents and John Carbonaro, The Perfessor some years ago put together a little history page that is required reading if you're interested in the obscure comic book history both The Perfessor and your author Walt here got mixed up in.

THE RESPLENDENT SOUND OF T.H.U.N.D.E.R.!
got a lot of traffic recently with the news of John's passing this past February, and while it's a bit long, it will catch you up to speed on the background The Perfessor and I may talk about in future weeks.
Additional reading can be had in the most excellent book,
T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents Companion, edited by Jon B. Cooke and published by Twomorrows [ISBN-10: 1-893905-43-8]

Being familiar with the Thunder Agents is helpful when talking about John Carbonaro, simply because they were a very large part of who he was, and that was unfortunate. You see, aside from being an all around great and generous guy, John had one flaw. John was stubborn. Especially when it came to his property. And by that I mean the Agents. It's difficult to dive into all of the detail required to get the point across about how stubborn John could be, but it's just a study in contrasts how nice John could be with people, but how bull-headed John could be about these little known comic book characters that had a very brief time in the sun way back in the 1960s.

Now, the merits of the Thunder Agents, and their history is a whole can of worms that sidetrack a discussion for quite a ways, but that's not what I'll discuss at the moment. I hope to someday approach the Thunder Agents' and their limited mythos with a couple of different takes of mine, but I'd first like to make the point about how being stubborn about the Agents was a bad thing for John in the long run.

You see, John's honor didn't allow him to compromise his vision of what he wanted the Agents to be. Everyone disagreed about the Thunder Agents with John, including your truly. I was his friend for many years, finally growing apart simply because John preferred stagnancy to change. It would be as if an Archie and Jughead revamp were to take place, and some style director decided that nobody in the real world actually wore the purple crown shaped hat that Jughead wears in the comic. John would be the first to insist that the hat has to stay, no matter how out of place that hat would make the character look. (and yes, I actually did have an argument with John over that exact hypothetical scenario) John didn't want to watch any of the Spider-Man movies because of the change in the web shooters from the comic book mythos. (He eventually did go)

You can imagine some of the arguments with John, my own personal "Comic Book Guy". John was that "Comic Book Guy", except for the ponytail the Simpson's character wears -- John was a life long conservative Republican and anything that smacked of "hippies" was still a dirty word to John. But yes, big on the comic book geek aspect. Somewhere there's an entire room full of comic book based action figures, all unopened. I cringed when I first saw the first few stacks of those things. Me being the non comic book guy -- I barely read comics in Jr. High, paid attention to comics briefly in college (go Fabulous Freak Brothers!!), and then late in my adult life get thrown into the whole world of comic books because this guy I became friends with was obsessed with them.

I had no idea about the Thunder Agents when I first met John. I was invited over just to hang out and meet some of John's friends, but when I came over, John was having technical difficulties. A fax machine was giving him fits, and could I help him get the thing to run properly? He had to fax back some changes in an as yet unsigned contract with Rob Liefeld. I looked at the document, noticed several errors in spelling and so forth, recommended a few changes... and the next thing I knew I was John's adviser in Houston.

I'd love to say that I had some impact on the progress of the Thunder Agents, but with John's stubborn streak, I can confidently say that I had no impact on the Thunder Agents whatsoever. I take that back. I'm responsible for the "Thunder T" hats seen in one Thunder Agents story in an anthology comic book published in 1995. Yep. I feel so accomplished. For a while I actually had the rights to make and sell hats with that same "Thunder T" logo, but that's another story.

In the end, John's stubborn nature prevented a lot of things from happening. In the early days with John, I was in the middle of things. I knew why John made the decisions he did. I disagreed with him, but John was set in his ways. Toward the end of things, I would find out about the broken deals much after the fact, and would disagree with him again, just to hear one side of the story. John's side. The Thunder Agents were on the block to be made into a movie once -- a producer well known in Hollywood, someone who has produced or executive produced movies that you reading this have seen had the movie and comic book rights. He shopped around the characters. The ONE movie house that was actually interested -- John put his foot down -- they were NOT allowed to see a pitch. You see, it was all about a slight someone gave John. The guy wasn't even employed by this mega-giant movie studio. Merely an unrelated subsidiary in an unrelated capacity. Didn't matter. John wouldn't consider talks with this particular movie studio.