Thundercats: Cheetara #1
It’s a distant planet in a different era. There’s an elegant race of humanoids living on the planet who are cat-like humanoid extraterrestrials. It’s a place called Thundera which rests on the precipice of serious danger at the hands of sinister forced. Dynamite Comics explores the pre-history of a popular animated action series with Thundercats: Cheetara #1. Writer Soo Lee delivers a story captured for the page by artist Domenico Carbone and colorist Chiara Di Francia. It’s an interesting exploration into a character who never really got the center of the screen nearly as much as she deserved.
Thundera is beautiful. It’s a very serene sort of a civilization. No massive overcrowded cities. No pollution hanging thickly in the air. There IS advanced tech and industrialization, but no one seems to be suffering. Culture appears to have reached a sort of a golden age. Nevertheless there are a few that must maintain eternal vigilance. Cheetara is one of those tasked with maintaining everything. That includes making certain that a certain young future monarch is carefully looked-after as well.
Lee firmly establishes all of the basic elements that made the mid-1980s cartoon everything that it was. She’s reintroducing nearly every character that Tobin Wolf pitched to Telepictures back in the early 1980s. It’s kind of a weird parade that could have come across as being VERY awkward. Lee crafts an opening chapter that allows everything to feel quite well-rounded from beginning to end. Every character has his or her place in the introduction. The one issue with this is the fact that the direct conflict doesn’t really hit until the final page. This is actually kind of charming. Lee is allowing this of us who haven’t thought about the franchise in over three decades a chance to reconnect with the characters and their world before diving into the story.
Carbone isn’t given a whole lot of time to spend with the title character. There is a huge ensemble to establish and lots of background to fill-in from various angles. Carbone still manages a great deal of nuance and mystery into the face of Cheetara as she begins her adventure. Di Francia gives the atmosphere of Thundera a dreamy washed-out sort of a look that is occasionally accented by bits of color and intensity. Some of the layout is gorgeous. It may not completely follow the distinct feel of the Japanese cel animation from the 1980s, but it looks good.
Creator Tobin Wolf had developed an interesting enough loose premise for a fantasy franchise. Lots of different stories could be told there. When Wolf created Cheetara as the sole female character in a group of action heroes, he was merely following a 1980s traditional that had already been relatively long standing when he presented his first sketch in 1984. It’s nice to see her get a central focus. While there have been many adaptations of the premise since the TV series debuted back in 1985, relatively little attention has been paid to the period of time in the history of Thundera prior to the beginning of that first episode that originally aired in 1985. Lee rectifies this a bit with a look back at the world before Lion-O and his conflict with Mumm-Ra.
