Peter Cannon, The Thunderbolt is the singular creation of Pete Morisi, an artist better known by the sobriquet of "P.A.M.". Morisi was a policeman for much of his career and that job forbid moonlighting so according to stories he obscured his artistic identity. What he could never hide was his distinctive style. A fan of the great George Tuska, Morisi took the particular look of Tuska and refined it even more giving his own work an almost ethereal look. More than most artists, Morisi's images looked like stolen moments in time.
In Thunderbolt he concocted a hero who combined some of the look of the Golden Age Daredevil and the origin of the Golden Age Amazing Man to offer up a low-key hero for the modern age. Peter Cannon was a cool customer and entered the fray with aplomb and absolute confidence, using the skills he'd gained in a remote monastery to protect people in the modern world. He was assisted by a friend named Tabu and often confronted by a foe dubbed the Hooded One, a villain who shared some of T-Bolt's remote origins.
Thunderbolt shifted over to DC during the Crisis on Infinite Earths and even had a series for a time at DC, but ownership of the character reverted to Morisi and his estate and now T-Bolt shows up from time to time at Dynamite Comics. No matter what they do with him though, they will never be able to recreate the amazing essence and charm of those original P.A.M. comics.
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What distinguished T-Bolt to me was the intensity and commitment in his writing, the sheer density of the text. On some level, you could tell he really believed in it, and that's very attractive to me as a reader of hero comics. It's the same reason the less than polished early Don McGregor scripts draw you in, or the Horror-Mood tales of Al Hewetson. We know now that Morisi had no real financial reason to draw Thunderbolt; after all, he had a real job and, if anything, taking on comics work on the side was something of a sacrifice of his freedom. There must have been a hunger in his soul that made these comics happen.
ReplyDeleteI could not have put it better. Morisi's work showed a love of the craft and the very doing of it that demanded the reader to come along.
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I'm curious ... why did DC have the license then lose it? Was it a temporary one? if so I'm surprised Thunderbolt appeared in Crisis.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure, but I think it was supposed that T-Bolt was like the rest of the Action Heroes and later discovered that the deal with Morisi was different. DC optioned him before letting him slip out of the corral. He was in Crisis, his own series, and some specials, but not much else as I recall. He was not in the L.A.W. series which was done around the turn of the century.
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