Wild C.A.T.S

Issues 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 + Sourcebook

Image

Written by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi. Art by Jim Lee. Inks by Scott Williams. Lettering by Mike Heisler.

Published in 1992.

I got this book as a gift from my friend Peter, who is a writer and also the GM of the Super Hero RPG I play. Maybe more on that later. Anyway, Peter was moving into a new apartment and needed space so he offloaded 'most' of his comic books onto me. TBH I don't know if he has any left.

Before the review a little bit of comic book history. In the late 80's a plethora of hot artists and creators came through the ranks and each one worked on one of the big two's titles. The 'worked for hire' and any characters or storyline ideas they came up with were owned by the company.

"In December 1991, a group of these illustrators approached Marvel president Terry Stewart and demanded that the company give them ownership and creative control over their work. Accounts vary as to whom this group included, but it is generally accepted that Todd McFarlane and Liefeld were among its leaders. Marvel did not meet their demands.

In response, eight creators announced the founding of Image Comics: illustrators Todd McFarlane (known for his work on Spider-Man), Jim Lee (X-Men), Rob Liefeld (X-Force), Marc Silvestri (Wolverine), Erik Larsen (The Amazing Spider-Man), Jim Valentino (Guardians of the Galaxy), Whilce Portacio (Uncanny X-Men) and longtime Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont. This development was nicknamed the "X-odus", because several of the creators involved (Claremont, Liefeld, Lee, Silvestri and Portacio) were famous for their work on the X-Men franchise." - Snipped from Wikipedia.

Wild Cats (I can't be arsed typing out C.A.T.S every time) was one of Jim Lee's contributions, and was based around the war between the Kherubim and the Deamonites here on earth. The Wild Cats are a team of meta humans, sponsored by a billionaire, who are mixed Kherubim and humans (Half breeds) and are trying to protect Earth from a Deamonite invasion.

The book started out as a 4 issue limited run. It was probably huge sales that prompted it to be pushed into an ongoing series. Jim Lee had just come off a successful run on Uncanny X-Men where he illustrated some of Chris Claremont's stories and if memory serves me right, won an Eagle Award.

The story starts with the Wild Cats gang rescuing another meta from a strip club, where she is 'the best dancer', mainly due to her abilities to woo punters with her meta powers. Because we are launched right into the story the exposition is blasted across the page and we are then launched into a battle between our Wild Cats and the Deamonites, who are led by the flame headed Helspont. In what was to be a running theme in Image comics, a second team of meta-powered people show up. This turns out to be Youngblood, which was Rob Liefields first product for Image. The action now comes thick and fast into the story, with a second set of bad guys added and plots swinging across the screen at a rapid pace. The Wild Cats are laid low, but one of the team manages to crawl along in the background and shut down Helspont and the giant orb he was using to summon nasty Deamonites to Earth. Spartan, the saviour, dies but we don't have to panic as he is a robot and his conciousness is simply loaded into a fresh body and we launch into issue 5, which is the first of the now ongoing series.
This issue starts with two massive fold out pages where The Grifter and Zealot are busting into a place and murdering goons while exchanging banter. Grifter's weapon of choice is souped up pistols and Zealot uses a katana and lethal parts of her costume. The whole team arrives and spends a long time fighting a feisty red head called Misery. Warblade really doesn't like her and he launches into the auto self destructing space craft to battle to the death with Misery as the rest of the Wild Cats flee, leaving him to be the second team member to die in the first five issues.

The 'Sourcebook' for Wild Cats basically fills, or tries to fill, lots of blanks that were missing in the first five issues. We have images of the gang, Spartan, the robot with bio energy powers, The Grifter; who loves guns, Zealot; who is NOT Psylocke at all, Maul; the muscle, Warblade; who is NOT Wolverine, Voodoo; the exotic dancer mentalist, Void; a teleporter, and Lord Emp; the rich backer he may have powers. We also have the rogues and I am guessing their nefarious schemes laid out as well. The images are nice but the text is hidden by the background and hard to read. I love source books but this one is a bit ...meh.

Overall the books are very well drawn for the style they are going for and the books are very much schlocky meta-human fun. The Image Creators rode the crest of a comic book wave, which was a combination of speculation and a particular genre, and rode it for all it was worth. Wild Cats is one of these wave riding books. The Image Creators left Marvel to have creative control then they basically replicated extra teams of X-Men, with solid rip off of stuff Marvel had done for years. The first Wild Cats books are all style, beautifully drawn ladies, guns and wall to wall meta powered peoples going at it and yelling at each other. When a second team shows up, the formula is laid bare.

The Image creators left to do their own thing but seemed to have stolen the blueprints from Marvel.

I recommend these books with the qualification that you like Jim Lee's art or you love very simple action books. There was also many hundreds of thousands of copies purchased by speculators so they are still relatively cheap and easy to obtain.