A team-up of super villains hasn’t been a groundbreaking idea for comic book plots in many decades, but when Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley debuted the Thunderbolts in the pages of The Incredible Hulk #449 — and later their own solo series — they did it with finesse and the right amount of secrecy. The team’s first appearance consisted of new heroes Citizen V, Mach-1, Meteorite, Atlas, Techno, and Songbird, and arrived on the scene in the Marvel Universe after it was believed that the Fantastic Four and the Avengers had died, so the world needed a major superhero group to fill the void. This is when the rug was pulled out from under us and the team was revealed to readers as a group of supervillains in disguise.