She-Hulk’s Thunderball and Wrecking Crew cameos have wild Thor connections

She-Hulk isn’t exactly a working-class hero. As a high-powered attorney (albeit one now working in the somewhat dubious field of superhuman law), Jen Walters is the closest thing to a strictly white-collar superhero we’ve seen since Tony Stark drove his last Audi into the sunset.

The same can’t be said, however, for all her foes, and those who make it to the end of episode 3 will have spotted a group of muscular baddies wielding Asgardian construction equipment for weapons. This, dear readers, is the Wrecking Crew, Marvel’s premier team of semi-magically powered, wage-laborer-themed crooks and criminals. Their history, as revealed by the She-Hulk This series is written by series writers and takes you on a journey through the working class side of a super-hero universe.

As their brief TV appearance suggests, the Crew’s time in the Marvel universe actually begins in Asgard, from which Loki had recently been banished and stripped of his powers due to some recent mischief. In Manhattan, he made arrangements to stay temporarily in a hotel room and then he reached a deal with Karnilla for Asgardian energy.

Image: Marvel Studios

Enter Dirk Garthwaite, a manual laborer turned two-bit robber, who picked that fortuitous moment to do what all of us dream of but few of us dare: steal Loki’s fabulous, fancy hat. Karnilla (incredibly) was fooled, and (even more incredibly) bestowed the power intended for Loki on Garthwaite’s trusty crowbar instead, granting the bearer incredible strength and justifying Garthwaite’s new codename: the Wrecker. Ever since, Garthwaite has been fond of declaring to anyone who will listen that he has “the power of Thor” — a statement that’s not strictlyTrue, however one cannot argue with a large dude who holds a magic cupbar.

The Wrecker’s initial tussle with Thor through the streets and construction sites of Manhattan in 1968’s The Mighty Thor #148-151 is one of the best all-out brawls artist Jack Kirby ever produced with his pencil, though it probably wouldn’t have been enough to earn Garthwaite a permanent place in the Marvel universe. After he had made some friends, he was awarded that honor.

Image: Stan Lee, Jack Kirby/Marvel Comics

The 1974-based arc The Defenders found Garthwaite staging a prison breakout along with three cronies from his cell block: bitter war veteran Henry Camp, farmhand and drifter Brian Calusky, and the wild card of the bunch, noted gamma physicist Eliot Franklin, questionably nicknamed the “Black Bruce Banner,” who had resorted to petty robbery to finance his brilliant experiments. When the trio gripped Garthwaite’s Crowbar of Nordic Power in a thunderstorm, they transformed into Bulldozer, Piledriver, and Thunderball, respectively. The Wrecking crew was formed.

Thunderball emerged as the main star of the first appearance after the team found the hidden gamma-bomb Franklin had saved years earlier. The squad’s first contact with the Hulk side was made in the defeat of Thunderball. Manhattan survived the destruction by a sweat-brown bomb diffused from Bruce Banner. However, Dr. Strange, last seen in MCU creating unforeseen multidimensional consequences and Luke Cage, last seen hanging out on Netflix lamenting his unfair cancellation.

The Wrecking crew has been an integral part of the Marvel Universe since then. They are always ready to pound any superhero in need. Over the past few decades, they’ve repeatedly squared off against Thor, chilled with Titania and the Absorbing Man on Battleworld in the original Secret Wars Crossover, but were defeated in the end by Spider-Man’s team-up with his ridiculous self-declared partner, The Amazing Frog-Man.

It is no surprise that Wrecking Crew has been used as a comedy vehicle by writers, with their magic tools and other construction materials. It is clear that the Wrecking Crew members can become villainous Thor-tiers by putting their mind to it. And every now and again, stories make this shockingly obvious. None more so than writer Roger Stern and artists John Buscema and Tom Palmer’s famed Under SiegeTheir 1980s-era run continues with the storyline The Avengers. In that arc, the Crew joined Baron Zemo’s Masters of Evil to overrun and capture Avengers Mansion. The team gives the Avenger Hercules a nearly fatal beating in one of their most terrifying sequences. These guys are Stilt-Man.

Image Credit: Len Wein/Marvel Comics

Still, when they’re not being altogether menacing, it’s hard to deny that the Wrecking Crew guys have a certain charm. Partly it’s writers’ sheer willingness to just go for it when it comes to their silly construction worker gimmick. But it’s also the fact that, in the end, the Wrecking Crew really are a team; unlike cliched supervillain groups since time immemorial, perpetually undermining their own schemes through mutual betrayal, the crowbar-powered foursome trust each other and play to one another’s strengths in a way that can be oddly heartwarming. They’re the pros from Dover of Marvel bad guys: seasoned experts who just want to earn their keep and get home for dinner.

And since they’ve been around the block with just about every Marvel hero more than once, they’ve each had time to develop some quirks and character arcs of their own. Wrecker was revealed in an unsettling Spider-Man story to have taken his mom’s beloved mother’s money. Bulldozer and Piledriver each made the Wrecking Crew a family affair by bringing in kids as extra Crew members at various points in the team’s history.

But it’s noted Ph.D. and ball-and-chain enthusiast Thunderball who’s followed the most interesting arc in recent years. Following several missteps with New York criminal boss The Hood’s services, Dr. Franklin decided to rethink his affiliation with the Crew. He eventually enlisted with the King of Wakanda during Ta-Nehisi Coates’ magnificent and too-often-overlooked run on Black Panther. When Franklin puts off Black Panther’s offer by repeating his old dismissive moniker “the Black Bruce Banner,” T’Challa replies simply: “You are Dr. Eliot Augustus Franklin.” It’s a typically subtle and quietly moving scene that rescues Franklin from an admittedly silly history and sets him on a new course of redemption.

What does this all have to do She-Hulk in the end? So far, the comics don’t seem to have much. There’s the Banner connection between Dr. Franklin and the original-flavor Hulk, of course, and the one time She-Hulk got a glimpse of a teeny, tiny Wrecking Crew held in a miniaturized prison. But to the extent that Jen Walters shares a bond with Crew, it’s mostly one of general vibes. Like Walters, the Wrecking Crew are superhumans who know that a job’s a job; they’re not out to conquer the world or seek revenge on a hated enemy. Their goal is to just break some walls and make some cash, then call it quits. For a character like She-Hulk, who didn’t want a superhuman life in the first place, the attitude feels right at home.

And hey: Who doesn’t want to root for villains who won’t cross a picket line?