Avengers: The Initiative #13

History

Dan Slott had been writing Avengers: The Initiative since its 2007 launch as the main ongoing series handling the post-Civil War Fifty State Initiative concept, with Steve Uy having already contributed art to earlier issues. For #13, Christos Gage was brought in to write a standalone fill-in so Slott could catch his breath; Gage used the assignment to introduce Butterball and a new class of recruits. Slott responded enthusiastically enough that he invited Gage aboard as co-writer starting with issue #8 (retroactively from a publishing standpoint), and Gage eventually took over the book entirely. Steve Uy handled all pencil, ink, and color duties for the issue, with Joe Caramagna lettering and Tom Brevoort editing under editor-in-chief Joe Quesada.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance of Butterball / Boulder (Emery Schaub), created by Christos Gage and Steve Uy — an overweight North Carolina fry cook with total physical invulnerability whose mutation cannot be trained away, making him a washout despite his genuine enthusiasm.
• Issue title is 'Washout'; released May 21, 2008 (cover-dated July 2008) by Marvel Comics.
• Written by Christos Gage; art (pencils, inks, colors) by Steve Uy; letters by Joe Caramagna; edited by Tom Brevoort.
• Introduces the third wave of Camp Hammond Initiative recruits: Annex (Alex Ellis), Batwing (Jimmy Santini), Prodigy (Richard Gilmore), Gorilla Girl (Fahnbullah Eddy), and Sunstreak (Andrea Roarke) — most of them given a choice between the training program and the Negative Zone prison for non-registration violations.
• Taskmaster, serving as drill instructor, mockingly renames Emery Schaub from his chosen codename 'Boulder' to 'Butterball' — a nickname that stuck throughout the character's subsequent Marvel appearances.
• Villain subplot: a contract has been placed on Taskmaster's life, with King Cobra (Klaus Voorhees), Mr. Hyde (Calvin Zabo), and Firebrand among the assassins dispatched to fulfill it, with Constrictor (Frank Payne) and War Machine (Jim Rhodes) also present at the camp.
• The issue carries a Secret Invasion 'Skrull variant' cover (art by Steve Uy), part of Marvel's line-wide variant program tied to the 2008 crossover event, foreshadowing that Camp Hammond's Yellowjacket is actually the Skrull Criti Noll.
• Taskmaster and Constrictor's humanizing moment — allowing Butterball to pose for a photograph that makes it look like he defeated them — became one of the most-cited character beats of the series and was later referenced in TV Tropes' entry on the book under 'Pet the Dog.'

Cast · 13 characters

Full credits

Variants (2)