Warning! Spoilers to King in Black: Thunderbolts #1 below!
While they began life as villains disguising themselves as heroes, the Thunderbolts are now a prime example of comic companies borrowing ideas from each other, having become Marvel's version of DC's Suicide Squad: a group of criminals forced to participate in dangerous superhuman missions in exchange for reduced jail time and other privileges should they survive. But despite being late to the party, the latest Thunderbolts team seems to live up to the "Suicide Squad" name more than the team from the 2016 Suicide Squad movie, who mostly made it through their film unscathed.
The Suicide Squad aka Task Force X was originally created as a team of government operatives sent in to deal with strange events. The second and more modern team created by John Ostrander was the government assigning supervillains to participate in dangerous missions with low chances of survival, kept in line by the imposing Amanda Waller. Despite their fair share of failures and loss of members, Suicide Squad proved to be a popular series that has gone through many iterations, including crossovers with other popular DC characters. Created by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, the Thunderbolts were originally the Masters of Evil pretending to be superheroes. Their later incarnations of superhuman criminals either rejected their evil origins and worked to redeem themselves, or continued their questionable activities under the sponsorship of the government. The Thunderbolts continued to evolve, either as a government-sponsored team or a superhuman covert task force, and recently came under the control of Wilson Fisk.
In King in Black: Thunderbolts #1 by Matthew Rosenberg and Juan Ferreyra, Fisk assembles a new Thunderbolts team during the King in Black's occupation of New York City and gives them the mission of escorting super-criminal Star into battle to kill the Symbiote god. But first they must rendezvous with someone Fisk believes will help them turn the tide. Offered little to no reason to refuse, the unmasked villains walk through the goo-covered city where conflicts with Knull's symbiote dragons and soldiers result in losing half the team. The remaining team members manage to survive long enough to get to their destination, despite the bickering and lack of trust in each other. Although they meet their contact, former Thunderbolts director Norman Osborn, the tie-in suggests that remaining Thunderbolts won't live to enjoy Knull's demise or whatever rewards Fisk promises them for their services.
In retrospect, the Suicide Squad didn't live up to their name when it was time for their cinematic debut. The first death, Slipknot, was easily forgettable due to Slipknot's lack of character development. The only other death was Diablo's sacrifice at the end of the film to help the Squad defeat the Enchantress. Most of the Squad ended up surviving to enjoy their reduced jail time and whatever other privileges they earned. The Thunderbolts don't need neural implants, as fear of Fisk is enough to keep them in line, as he demonstrates when he kills Incendiary simply for not joining. They lose another member to a symbiote dragon, another deserts shortly after and the last yet biggest death was Mr. Fear killing Ampere for wanting to ditch as well. Losing half of the team truly proves how much of a suicide mission this really is and the creative team sprinkles in enough creative parallels to Suicide Squad while making it entirely its own story.
It would appear the lack of stakes has been corrected in James Gunn's The Suicide Squad, a movie serving as both a sequel and a soft reboot. The film is full of returning cast while adding colorful new teammates whose chances aren't looking good. For the Thunderbolts, their story begins with Fisk tragically reporting their demise, so whether that's true or a red herring is yet to be seen. But seeing that they addressed and corrected one of Suicide Squad's biggest flaws is something they can take to their graves.