He was the first X-men of the second generation that died on a mission. Introduced in Giant-Size X-Men #1 (1975) by Len Wein and Dave Cockrum, this Apache Native American was a former military soldier. He powered manifest in his twenties when he wrestle a bison to the ground. This earned him fame and he was later recruited by Xavier to help rescue the original X-men from Krakoa. The team succeeded in rescuing the original team, who would leave the X-men while the new team took over.

However, it was during the second mission that the hero lost his life. In a mission to stop Count Nefaria, the villain tried to escaped on a plane. Thunderbird jumped on the plane and tried to stop villain by banging on the cockpit. Despite pleads from his teammates to stop, his pride and arrogance refused to do so. The plane crash killing him but Nefaria escape via a teleportation device. (In real life, he was killed off because Wein wanted to kill of a member of the team, to make the reader know this was a more serious series. Thunderbird as chosen because his personality was too similar to Wolverine.) This brother, James Proudstar, would swear revenge against the X-men first as Thunderbird II but would come to know that it wasn’t their fault, eventually becoming Warpath.

Thunderbird would temporary return to the living twice, once when Selene revived many former X-men allies and enemies and another during the Chaos War, which saw many former dead heroes return to life like the Alpha Flight members. Following House of X, he was one of many that was resurrected by the Five. He is now currently residing with his brother on Krakoa.

Despite having a extremely short tenure in the comic (if you don’t count his resurrections), Thunderbird has been a character that has been requested by fans for year. This is in order to complete the Giant-Size X-men team. He would receive a figure in a 2-pack with FA Storm, which was a Target Exclusive.

None at the moment