Cheetara #3 // Review
She can see into the future and she knows that something bad is going to happen. She’s uneasy. There’s a tremendous amount of anxiety about it all. She doesn’t know how to communicate it, though. So it’s going to be a complicated series of pages for her in Cheetara #3. Writer Soo Lee continues a sort of Thundercats prequel series that is rendered for the page by artist Domenico Carbone and colorist Chiara Di Francia. The nuances of dramatic complexity rest somewhere in the heart of a cast of characters who are about to undergo the series of events that will result in a beloved 1980s animated series and accompanying toy line.
Life would seem relatively idyllic on Thundera were it not for the fact that Cheetara has this overriding sense of doom and uncertainty clinging to the back of her mind. Everyone else seems to know that she’s going through something, but she doesn’t really know what they’re going to be able to do for her. There’s a lot of stress coming down on her and she can’t exactly see what it is that’s going on. And then the alarm is raised. There’s an incoming attack. Any anxieties are going to have to wait.
Lee deftly handles the rather subtle intricacies of uncertainty and ennui in a major action hero. This is REALLY difficult to do with pop sci-fi/fantasy given the fact that it tends to be as action-based as it is. The real challenge ends up lying in trying to make the whole thing seem balanced. The action needs to be crisp and invigorating and overall uneasiness and general stress don’t generally factor-in to that sort of a story. Lee manages to make it work quite well, making for an action/drama dynamic that isn’t often attempted and quite rarely manages to be put to the page all that well. Less does a really good job with it, though.
The script would be really, really difficult to manage for any artist. It’s a space fantasy sort of a setting...and such settings aren’t exactly known for their nuance and subtlety...especially as this PARTICULAR setting ended up being kind of a major thrill-based visual adventure in animated format on syndication back in the 1980s. Carbone manages a really sharp contrast between the subtlety of the ennui of Cheetara and balances that quite capably against the more solid action at issue’s end.
It is a real genuine challenge to make everything work. And once again, Lee and Carbone have found just the right mix of drama and action in very graceful, little intricacies that allow for a very clever look at something that could have much more easily turned itn o something with all the subtlety....of a syndicated cartoon after school in the 1980s. It’s sharp stuff that feels remarkably fresh and easily one of the more sophisticated updates on an old animated property from the 1980s. Quite an impressive work.
Grade: A.
