Fictional Team History
The first issue introduced the first three T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents: Dynamo, NoMan, and Menthor. In that issue, United Nations soldiers storm a mountain laboratory of a UN scientist, Professor Emil Jennings, driving off the forces of the Warlord. The scientist is dead, but he left behind several of his inventions — super weapons to combat the Warlord's worldwide attacks. These inventions provide superpowers. Leonard Brown is given the Thunder belt, which makes him super strong and invulnerable for a short amount of time, and is code-named Dynamo. Dying scientist Anthony Dunn transfers his mind into an android body of his own design. With a wide number of these identical bodies, he can transfer his mind to any of them should something happen to the one he is in. He is given an invisibility cloak and becomes NoMan. John Janus gains mental powers from the Menthor helmet. He is a double agent for the Warlord, but when he wears the helmet, he turns to good. Joining these super agents is the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad, a special team of agents who fight the worldwide threat of the Warlord. This team included Virgil "Guy" Gilbert, Dynamite (Daniel John Adkins), William "Weed" Wylie, Kathryn "Kitten" Kane, and James "Egghead" Andor.
In subsequent issues, additional agents were added. Gilbert of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad is given the Lightning suit and becomes a super agent in the fourth issue. In the second issue, it is revealed that the Warlord is actually a Subterranean, and his forces are humanoids who live under the surface and have engaged in a war with the surface world to reclaim it from humans. Also in this issue, Egghead is killed in action, but later reappears as a villain in an issue of Wally Wood's T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. In issue #7, Menthor is killed. In issue #8, Craig Lawson is given an experimental rocket pack and becomes the Raven; and more importantly, the Subterraneans are defeated in that same issue. Later post-Tower additions included sonic-powered agent Vulcan (Travis F. Riley), two different Undersea Agents (Lt. David "Davy" Jones and his daughter Theresa), and two later versions of "new" agents who wore the Menthor helmet.
With the threat of the Subterraneans ended, new villains appeared in the original series. Issue #9 introduced S.P.I.D.E.R. (Secret People's International Directorate for Extralegal Revenue), the main villains for the rest of the series. Other menaces included the Iron Maiden, an armored mastermind (introduced in the first issue as a possible love interest for Dynamo) who worked for the Subterraneans; Andor, a fast-healing telekinetic superhuman created by the Subterraneans who was introduced in Dynamo #1; along with Red Star (Communist menace) and others.
The 2010 DC Comics series began with S.P.I.D.E.R. kidnapping the Raven and killing Dynamo and Lightning, leading to new versions of Lightning and Dynamo being recruited, along with the original NoMan, who had left the team because he was losing his humanity. It was established that by this time a number of people had been behind the costume of each T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent, since the devices that gave them their powers are eventually fatal.
Also introduced are T.H.U.N.D.E.R.'s recruiters, field agent Colleen Franklin and salesman Toby Heston. In the assault on S.P.I.D.E.R. to rescue the Raven, it is revealed that Toby is actually the brother of S.P.I.D.E.R.'s new leader, given a false personality to infiltrate T.H.U.N.D.E.R. When he attempts to use the Menthor helmet to gain the Raven's secrets however, he regains the "Toby" personality, similar to the effect it had on Janus.
Colleen is revealed to be the daughter of Len Brown, the original Dynamo, and the Iron Maiden. They attempt to live quietly in Sydney, Australia but their home is eventually raided by the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad, and the family is captured. Brown wears the Dynamo belt one last time in exchange for his daughter and the Iron Maiden's life and apparently dies during the mission. The Iron Maiden manages to escape T.H.U.N.D.E.R.'s custody, leaving Colleen to be raised by T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Years later, Colleen tracks down the Iron Maiden and after extracting some information from her with the help of Toby Heston, leaves her to be killed by the daughter of one of her former victims.
Soon, the Subterraneans, defeated back in the early 70s, start an uprising. It was the existence of the Subterraneans that lead to the establishment of the Higher United Nations and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. The uprising is led by Demo. The new Dynamo is killed and a new Raven is introduced. In a backup series, a new UNDERSEA Agent is introduced.
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“One of the proud joys of the man of letters—if that man of letters is an artist—is to feel within himself the power to immortalize at will anything he chooses to immortalize. Insignificant though he may be, he is conscious of possessing a creative divinity. God creates lives; the man of imagination creates fictional lives which may make a profound and as it were more living impression on the world’s memory.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)