Thunderbolts

After a battle with Onslaught left the world without the majority of the heroes that made it feel safe, Baron Zemo devised a plan like no other in order to rule the world. Zemo gathered Beetle, Fixer, Goliath, Moonstone, and Screaming Mimi, all former members of the Masters of Evil, together to disguise themselves as a new heroic team in order to take advantage of the missing heroes and gain the trust of the authorities and public in general. They were soon joined by starry-eyed young rookie heroine Jolt, who was unaware of her teammate's true identities and hidden agenda. Zemo barely tolerated Jolt, regarding her as little more than a public relations tool, but most of the team quickly grew fond of her and found her idealism infectious. A seeming exception was the amoral Techno, who grew colder than ever after his neck was broken and he returned in robotic form.

Once the Thunderbolts had established themselves as beloved heroes, Zemo abruptly dropped their deception successfully launched a plan to take over the world by enslaving everyone including the returning Avengers and Fantastic Four. However, the plan was thwarted when members of the Thunderbolts decided they preferred the life of a hero than villain and teamed with Iron Man to put an end to Zemo’s plans. In the end, Zemo fled with Techno, and the other Thunderbolts began a new life on the run as outlaw adventurers, trying to prove their heroism to the public while evading capture.

Veteran super hero Hawkeye, who was sympathetic to the Thunderbolts because of his own outlaw past-quit the Avengers and joined the Thunderbolts as their new leader, enhancing the team's reputation, morale and fighting skills. He persuaded ex-Beetle Abe Jenkins, the team's only known wanted killer, to go back to prison for the sake of the group's credibility-though this parting proved difficult for both Jenkin's and his girlfriend Songbird. Hawkeye also championed the joining of the team's repentant one-time foe Charcoal and led the group to victory over the Crimson Cowl's new Masters of Evil, seizing the Masters’ Mount Charteris complex to serve as the new Thunderbolts headquarters. The facility’s reclusive resident caretaker and mutant machinesmith Ogre, a long-inactive agent of defunct subversive group Factor Three, began providing the Thunderbolts with tech support. Hawkeye began a romance with the cynical Moonstone, inspiring her to change for the better. Jenkins soon rejoined the team as MACH-II, having won a secret early release through covert government work. A bored, lonely Techno secretly imprisoned and impersonated Ogre for a time, eventually sacrificing his artificial life to revive Jolt, who had been shot by the mind-controlled assassin  as part of an anti-superhuman conspiracy led by rogue government agent Henry Gyrich, who was himself under the mental influence of Hydra's Baron Strucker. During Gyrich's conspiracy, Atlas and Zemo were seemingly slain by Scourge, Ogre quit the group, and Hawkeye was estranged from his teammates when they learned that he never had government approval for his work with them and could not authorize pardons for them as he once claimed. Hawkeye redeemed himself when he led the team in defeating Gyrich and secured pardons for the Thunderbolts in exchange for going along with the government cover-up of Gyrich's plot, the catch being that Hawkeye had to go to prison for his own technically illegal vigilante work with the Thunderbolts.

Most of the other Thunderbolts were released, though conditions of their pardon forbade them from public use of costumed identities or special powers. As minors, Charcoal and Jolt became wards of the state and were assigned to the Reedeemers, a Thunderbolts-inspired, government-backed super-team whose members included the resurrected Fixer (his human body restored plus memories apparently downloaded from his robotic Techno form), the sonic entity Scream (the sonic soul of Songbird's ex-partner Angar the Screamer) and new incarnations of Beetle (Abe's old enemy Leila Davis), Meteorite (disgraced pilot Valerie Barnhardt) and Smuggler (Atlas' brother Conrad Josten). Captain America mentored the group briefly, but was soon replaced as leader by the new Citizen V, who was secretly possessed by the disembodied consciousness of the slain Zemo. After a power-mad Graviton slaughtered most of the Redeemers, he and his alien P'Tah allies were defeated through the combined efforts of Citizen V, Fixer, Jolt, Moonstone, Songbird, a reborn Atlas (sharing a composite form with his ex-lover Dallas Riordan) and a re-armored Abe Jenkins (now MACH-3). Most of the heroes seemingly died in a climactic implosion, but were actually hurled to the alternate world Counter-Earth, created by Franklin Richards and the Celestial Ashema the Listener. Reunited and uneasily allied with a newly resurrected Zemo (whose disembodied consciousness had been drawn along with them), these Thunderbolts worked to restore peace and prosperity to the disaster-ravaged Counter Earth. Zemo's Thunderbolts soon became the leading heroes of that world.