Thunder…Thunder…Let’s Read Thundercats!

[Beowulf]

First, an introduction: Thundercats was one of the glorious toy-commercial cartoon shows of my childhood in the 1980s. It hit that perfect delightful blend of sci-fi and fantasy, violence (but not too much for 1980s moral guardians) and philosophy (“life lessons” enough to satisfy 1980s moral guardians), and over-the-top hammy acting. The animation was shockingly good for the era, as it was being produced in Japan at a higher standard of quality than most kids action cartoons that reached the US at the time.

The original Thundercats cartoon series debuted in 1985. Starting in December of 1985, Marvel Comics, through their Star Comics imprint, published the first issue of ThunderCats. Publication was bimonthly for the first 8 issues, and then switched to a monthly publication schedule for the remainder of the series, ending in June of 1988. I have a few of the original issues from that series in my collection, but recently backed a crowdfunded re-published collection of the entire series.

I read issue #1, and was like, “Wait, this doesn’t seem to line up with what I remember exactly,” but it had been years since I rewatched any of the original cartoon episodes. So I went back and watched the first four episodes--the first four episodes were originally aired together (as were the first five episodes of the second season, if I remember correctly, as they make a single complete narrative), though officially only the first two are the pilot. To be fair, if I was actually trying to be true to my original experience, I’d need to watch those four episodes half a dozen times each via grainy VHS, while fast-forwarding through 80s commercials and rewinding each time. But so we’re all on the same page, I’m going to start my review/recap of the comic books with a review/recap of the first few episodes of the cartoon, to put us in the mindset of a seven-year-old picking up the comics for the first time.

Leonard Starr was the series’ head writer and was credited with writing the first four episodes. Should I go look up interviews with him? Probably! But whatever! Onwards!

The first episode is titled “Exodus.” The cartoon opens with the ‘Cats escaping the ruins of Thundera and each establishing their characters in a few lines, then watching Thundera explode on the viewscreen. Jaga shows Lion-O the Sword of Omens and drops some exposition about it, as well—and Lion-O can’t even lift it yet. Then he gives the Thundercats their clothes and weapons, and the ship is attacked by mutants from Plun-Darr, who have formed an alliance against them. The rest of the Thunderian ships are destroyed so that the mutants can board and try to take the Eye of Thundera. The ‘Cats fight with the mutants; and Slithe finds Lion-O with the sword, but he successfully channels its power to drive them off. The ship has been damaged, and they need to go to a different galaxy than they’d expected, so they change course to Third Earth and need to use the suspension capsules to get there. Jaga volunteers to stay awake and pilot there. “Even though the suspension capsules slow down the aging process, some aging does take place;” and he’s already so old he’d die on the way anyway. Some amount of time passes, and shortly before they arrive, Jaga activates something on his wrist and turns to dust. The robot pilot successfully crash-lands them on Third Earth.

Snarf wakes Lion-O, who hit puberty in the suspension capsule and is now all grown up. Then a mutant ship arrives minutes later, to search the wreckage for the Eye of Thundera. Lion-O is foggy-headed but attacks the mutants barehanded; Jaga’s spirit appears and reminds him how the sword works, so he uses it to wake the other ‘Cats and drive off the mutants. The Thundercats scavenge the remains of the crash to set up their new home.

The second episode is “The Unholy Alliance” and follows right from where we left off. We jump back to the mutants who are looking for where the Thundercats are setting up and happen upon Mumm-Ra’s pyramid. (They note they’re also looking for a spot to build their own Castle Plun-darr.) Mumm-Ra forces them to crash at the pyramid.

We briefly return to the Thundercats as Lion-O decides to go out checking the perimeter and Snarf whines. Tigra gives the length of their journey in suspension: 10 glacto-years. He also reminds us that Lion-O got bigger but hasn’t actually grown up.

Mumm-Ra welcomes in the mutants and introduces himself. Mumm-Ra has known about the Eye of Thundera for 1,000 years, “since this was still First Earth.” Mumm-Ra sinks the mutant ship and strands them on Third Earth and at his mercy so they’ll work for him in trying to steal the Eye together. He shows them that Lion-O is alone and teleports them to ambush him. Lion-O tries to hunt some deer, and the sword embeds itself in the ground until Jaga teaches Lion-O that the Sword can’t be used frivolously, only to combat evil. The mutants appear and attack, and Lion-O is joined by Panthro and the kittens and they drive off the mutants.

Back at the pyramid, Mumm-Ra shows off his ability to transform and flies off to menace the Thundercats with what he can do.

Lion-O happens upon a tar pit and is attacked by Mumm-Ra, who he decides to try fighting alone. When he when tries to summon the Thundercats, the sword is covered in tar and the Eye won’t open. All seems lost until Mumm-Ra sees his reflection in the Claw Shield and is driven away.

Episode 3, “Berbils”. We pick up again with Lion-O and Snarf exploring more. Snarf shows off some actual bravery on the wildlife and Lion-O falls in a pit. He gets rescued and captured by some Ro-Bear Berbils.

Meanwhile, Panthro has finished building a Thundertank, just in time for a rock-rainfall to begin. The rockfall buries the ship with most of the team inside, but Panthro and the Thundertank pull them out. (The origin of the rockfall is never revealed, though it’s vaguely implied Mumm-Ra had a hand in it.)

The Berbils quickly reveal themselves to be friendly and willing to share food, so Mumm-Ra transforms into a swarm of insects to attack them. Then he turns into a giant insect, the better for Lion-O to wrestle with—and dumps Lion-O in a volcano. Jaga teaches Lion-O to summon the sword to his hand and he uses it to fly out of a volcano…and Mumm-Ra just gives up, I guess? Anyway, the Berbils come meet the rest of the Thundercats and volunteer to help build the Cat’s Lair.

Episode 4 is “The Slaves of Castle Plun-darr” and the last episode of the premiere. It opens with the kittens discovering that the mutants have enslaved local “brutemen” and constructed Castle Plun-Darr. Monkian catches them, but they give him the slip. Tigra and Cheetara are overseeing the completion of Car’s Lair. (They note that Tigra created the plans for Cat’s Lair—they clearly tried to establish Tigra as the scholar and Panthro as the engineer.) The Thundercats take the Thundertank to go deal with the mutants. (Did you want a toy commercial for the Thundertank? Because that’s what’s going on for two solid minutes here.) There’s clearly a parallel between the two lairs being constructed, and the contrast of the Thundercats accepting help from the friendly Berbils and the mutants enslaving the brutemen.

Through all of these episodes, the mutants are consistently incompetent and the Thundercats easily best them in direct combat. Slithe tries to turn the tide by using warp gas to make the brutemen angry and violent, because the Thundercats won’t want to hurt them. Unfortunately, the gas wears off too fast. Warp gas is illegal by galactic treaty, but “Rules are only meaningful if people agree to follow them, otherwise they’re just words.” When Slithe throws another gas bomb, Lion-O creates a force field with the sword and drives the gas (and the brutemen) towards the mutants, who flee. Then the gas wears off again and the brutemen are convinced of their freedom, so they leave.

That’s actually a pretty solid intro to the series! We’ve got a lot of worldbuilding and character setup, we understand the threats (the mutants, Mumm-Ra) and what they want (the Eye of Thundera), and we have the first few weird features of Third Earth setting the stage for lots of further exploration. We have a “kid in adult body” self-insert character for the viewers and a cool supporting cast including The Smart Guy, The Hot Chick, The Strong Bald Dude, the two Mischievous Kids, and the Comic Relief Mascot. It’s not at all surprising they got 140 episodes out of this!

 

[Beowulf]

So that brings us properly back to Issue #1 of the comic! The comic notes it’s “based on the TV series.” My theory is that there was an original story (probably the working script and concept art, possibly the storyboards) that got split off while both the comic and the episodes were being made and grew their own gecko-tails—it seems extremely unlikely the show premiered early enough that the comic crew could watch the early episodes.

David Micheline wrote it and the story is titled “Survival Run!” We open with a near-immediate difference in the lore: Cheetara says Thundera slipped from its orbit and was swinging towards the sun…but then they watch it explode on the viewscreen anyway. A bunch of the dialogue is almost word-for-word the same but the visuals are often very different—the layout of the ship, for instance, or the design of the clothes and weapons Jaga gives the team (in the comic they just look like the characters’ outfits laid out on display; in the cartoon they’re magic rainbows that coalesce into outfits).

Just like in the cartoon, the alliance of mutants attack, though notably, in the cartoon the other ships are undeniably destroyed; here they’re shown flaming and smoking—disabled but not necessarily gone. The Thundercats use their new weapons to drive off some mutants and then Lion-O swings the sword to scare off Slithe and they flee. The comic actually dedicates a full page montage to the years Jaga spends alone, piloting the ship while the others are in suspension.

In the cartoon, Lion-O seemed to be suffering memory loss and confusion when he came out of suspension until Jaga’s ghost reminded him of what was going on; that dialogue is gone here. The Thundercats awaken, the mutants are driven off, and everybody poses for a closing panel.

In the two-page epilogue, the mutants happen upon the pyramid and are forced to land; Mumm-Ra introduces himself and they quickly agree to an alliance. (No muss, no fuss, no stranding the mutants on Third Earth without their reinforcements.) Basically, this issue summarizes the key events and elements from the first two episodes of the show, in case you forgot or this is your first introduction to the series.

 

[Beowulf]

The pilot sets up a LOT of worldbuilding, some of which they’d eventually pay off and much of which has plot holes you could drive a truck through. Hey, it’s sci-fi/fantasy made to sell toys to little kids in the 80s, who’d be thinking about any of this 40 years later, right?

• Jaga refers to the other Thundercats as “nobles”. All of the support ships of non-noble Thunderians who escaped are dead. We meet three more Thunderians who made it to Third Earth in season 2, and I vaguely recall the implication that there were other survivors who went elsewhere, but this is basically like if six members of the British royal family were the only survivors of Earth. Six people isn’t a society and it certainly isn’t a breeding population. Setting up on Third Earth is less “building a new life for themselves” and more “being the last gasp of their civilization and trying to leave some exciting ruins behind.”
• The journey from the remains of Thundera to Third Earth is full of issues. First, of course, we just go ahead and assume that by “galaxy” they mean “solar system,” because writers never comprehend how mind-bogglingly large galaxies are, and because that actually makes sense if Third Earth is “light years” away but they get there in “ten galacto-years.” We can actually construct a reasonable explanation for what happened that changed their plans: They have the best sublight engines available, but due to the damage they have limited resources for life support and additional propulsion for once they get up to speed. They can’t get to their original destination because the lights and oxygen will go out before they get there; and they can’t trust the robot pilot because if they screw up a minute maneuvering change they’ll end up in light-years off course with no way to recover. They get underway, and the mutants can’t actually catch up, but they can track their course and presumably go into suspension themselves to follow. And because the mutant ship is undamaged, the mutants wake up a week early and are ready to attack when they land at the crash site.
• It’s unclear how old Jaga is or how long Thunderians live, but while I always felt that Lion-O growing up while the kittens did not was a “plot hole”, I now have a teenage son and feel differently: In the past year he’s grown nine inches in height. If we assume (as the writers likely did) that Thundercat years and lifespans are roughly equivalent to human, then we can go with something like: Lion-O is 12; Wilykat and Wilykit are 10; Tigra, Cheetara and Panthro are in their 20s-30s; and Jaga is 70. The suspension capsules turn 10 years of aging into roughly 2. Lion-O goes through his entire puberty growth spurt in the capsule and goes from being a moderately-immature 12-year-old to a very-immature-but-appropriately-full-of-himself 14-year-old who’s bigger than most adults. The kittens were already mature for their ages but are still very much kids, and still haven’t hit puberty yet. The aging is basically unnoticeable for the adults, but Jaga looks at the actuarial tables, sees that his odds of not dying in two years aren’t that much better than not dying in ten, and decides he wants to be awake for the remainder of his life rather than risk dying in suspension.
• There was lore about the Sword of Omens and the Eye of Thundera that I feel like they ignored or reconned later: Tigra has a line implying that he thought the Eye of Thundera was a myth and had never seen it before; but I definitely remember him having knowledge of the sword and what it can do later in the series. At least in the pilot, there’s a lot of implication that the Eye is sapient and has opinions about how it can and should be used—particularly the scenes where Lion-O uses it in the spaceship and where Lion-O tries to use it for hunting. But I feel like this was generally dropped in favor of it just obeying commands and having lots of powers Lion-O didn’t quite understand how to use.
• Also, the Eye of Thundera is a damn impressive artifact: Why the heck is it attached to a sword carried around by one guy? It can transform, fly, fire energy blasts, generate force fields, instantly connect two points in space, “sense danger,” telepathically connect the Thundercats, and dozens of other things as the plot demands. Both the mutants and Mumm-Ra seem to think it can do much, much more. Why isn’t the sword powering a fusion cannon that can blast Castle Plun-Darr off the map from the safety of Cat’s Lair?
• Oddly, Slithe is a “reptilian”, but Monkian is a monkian and Jackalman is a jackalman. I think the later comics—if not the cartoons—actually gave them names. (It annoys me that they’re called “mutants” because they clearly aren’t mutated from anything. They’re just different alien races from Plun-Darr.)
• Are Ro-Bear Berbils cyborg bears? At least in the cartoon, they don’t have real mouths: How do they eat? Do they eat (and why grow so much fruit otherwise)? How do the reproduce? Are they built? Are they some sort of slave race left behind when humanity collapsed, and that’s why they’re growing food they can’t use and leap at the chance to help build things?
• I remember many years ago reading something by a gay fanartist who was into both muscle-dudes and Thundercats, and he noted that every time he drew Panthro he was like, “This is too much, I overdid the muscles.” And then he’d go back and look at the original art and be like, “Actually…never mind. This is accurate.”
• Third Earth is clearly intended to be a future version of our Earth; there are still humans running around with all of the monsters and aliens. Mumm-Ra is clearly Egyptian-inspired, and he claims to both be over 1,000 years old and to have been there during the “First Earth” period. I suspect there are longer treatises about this, but here goes my theory: Third Earth isn’t Earth. It’s actually the third planet colonized by humanity millennia earlier, in the far-future of the world of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. “Mutants” are called that because it’s the collective term for the hundreds of self-sustaining races of human/animal hybrids that grew out of humanity following the TMNT era. Thundera is also one of the colony planets and the Thunderians are also technically human/cat mutants. But the legends of “First Earth” are all distorted in the telling and even Mumm-Ra’s memory is fallible (and has probably been manipulated by the Ancient Spirits of Evil). His pyramid is no more Egyptian than Washington DC is Greek.

(There’s also, to my knowledge, nothing that says Silverhawks can’t also be in the same continuity. Heck, it could probably be happening concurrently with Thundercats in a different part of the galaxy.)

 

[Kirin]

Yeah I remember I’d always assumed as a kid that Thundercats and Silverhawks were in the same universe somewhere.

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #2 is titled “Tears of Sunrise” and it notes that it’s been about a month since they landed. They’re now friends with the Berbils and dependent on their fruit gardens as a food source and for their help building the Cat’s Lair, which is fully constructed (though it doesn’t quite match the animated version). Swapping the order from the cartoon, the Thundertank is newly-built and Panthro is still working out the bugs.

Also different from the cartoon is that we find Lion-O using the sword to hack at some foliage in a play-fighting sort of way; the same sword that leapt into the ground and wouldn’t move when he wanted to use it for unnecessary hunting in the cartoon. Lion-O also sticks the sword to his side rather than sheathing it in the Claw Shield, and the length is weirdly inconsistent—it’s often halfway between dagger and sword size.

Anyway, the actual plot: Lion-O ate some random berries he found, and it turns out they’re “tears of sunrise” that cause an uncurable fever: Either the victim fights it off, or the next day at sunrise they die! (Also noteworthy: Ro-Bear-Bill speaks in clear English.) Why these poison berries would have the exact same effect on cyborg bears and fully biological alien cat-people is a mystery for the ages.

Meanwhile, the mutants have built Castle Plun-Darr but are fed up with Mumm-Ra and go confront him, and he sends them to go kidnap Snarf. Snarf is bait for the mutants to ambush Tigra, Cheetara and Panthro with an army of “goons” (who look kinda like the brute-men but are clearly both fierce enough to fight effectively and intelligent enough to banter during battle) and start to overwhelm them. Jaga’s spirit appears to Lion-O and convinces him to go out into battle despite feeling terrible, and the sword flies him to the battle, where he provides Panthro an opening to get in the Thundertank and drive the army into retreat. After the battle, Lion-O says he feels better; apparently “summoning his strength” to come into battle was enough to break the fever. Then we have some epilogue denouement with Lion-O choosing to keep an old teddy bear, Jaga praising him for learning, and Mumm-Ra plotting his next scheme.

The lesson, kids, is that being deathly ill is never a reason to shirk your responsibilities, and the best way to treat a fever is with some vigorous exercise. (Alternately: Don’t eat random shit you find in the woods, even if what’s deathly poison to a cyborg bear might only give you a few hours of unpleasant stomach cramps.)

The more important note is that they clearly weren’t sweating the small details of continuity: It didn’t matter to anyone involved here if they built the Thundertank or Cat’s Lair first so long as both got built; it didn’t matter if brutemen could talk or were barely-sapient slaves. I think the takeaway we need here is that we shouldn’t expect the comic continuity to line up perfectly with the cartoon continuity. In broad strokes it’ll probably be close enough, but the writers aren’t talking and nobody cares if they don’t. So we’ll take the comic as its own thing going forward.

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #3, “Siege in Silver and Stone.”

We open with Lion-O summoning the ‘Cats to…help him carry some stuff, which earns him a dressing-down about using the sword for frivolous purposes.

Then we get into the main plot: The Cat’s Lair and the Thundertank are both running low on the thundrillium that powers them, so Panthro needs to go to the source quarry for a supply run. On the way, he finds a human woman being attacked by rockmen, saves her, and uses the last of the power in the Thundertank to collapse a cave entrance with them inside and the rockmen outside.

The kittens use their new spaceboards to mess with Snarf for a page. Was this a mandated advertisement for the spaceboards, or a way to fill a page because the story was running short? We’ll never know!

In the cave, the woman introduces herself as Tessa and explains that she was from the treetop village of the warrior maidans, but when Mumm-Ra sent a monster called Dagger Mist to destroy them, she studied ancient sorceries and gave herself the ability to shoot force-blasts from her hands and bested the monster. But it turned out she couldn’t control the blasts. She put silver rings on all of her fingers as a temporary solution, but ended up exiling herself for fear of hurting people. Panthro comes up with a combination solution to their problems: He sets up a power converter to drain her magic energy blasts into the Thundertank to recharge it. It works, they blast free and drive off the rockmen, and Tessa’s power seems to be gone completely, so Panthro takes her home to the warrior maiden village. She gives Panthro one of her silver rings and a kiss out of gratitude. Then Panthro presumably goes and mines some thundrillium, because on the next page he’s home with plenty for months.

Panthro also gets the marvelous line, “We’re between a rockman and a hard place.”

Meanwhile, Lion-O gets a warning from the sword that Panthro is in trouble, and after getting yelled at, decides not to summon the ‘Cats and instead go help by himself. He promptly gets stuck in some vines and doesn’t figure out that he can uproot them and get free until after Panthro has gotten himself and Tessa to safety. In the epilogue he’s moping that he screwed up, and Jaga encourages him to learn from this experience: Calling wolf is bad, but not calling for help when you really need it is even worse.

But then something terrible happens: A magic field steals away Jaga! What will happen next issue?

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #4, ”Jaga Quest”

Last issue, Jaga was stolen away by some force. This issue opens with the Thundercats setting out to find clues as to what happened to him. (Tigra notes that only Lion-O can actually see Jaga’s spirit, but because he’s their hereditary leader, they’ll believe him regardless. This is a sensible policy that can never go wrong!)

Several pages in, Jaga appears to Lion-O and says it was all a temporary mishap and everything is fine…but it’s made clear to the reader this is not the case. Lion-O heads home, but the kittens are trapped by a sticky web, and the Thundertank is disabled by sleeping mushroom spores, and Cheetara and Snarf are captured by a mysterious stranger. When the ‘Cats don’t return, Lion-O tries summoning them, and when that fails, he goes out searching. (Conveniently forgetting to try Sight Beyond Sight, but at this stage in the series, that’s totally in-character.) He happens upon the ruins of an ancient Third Earth city, and “Jaga” tells him to disregard the sword’s warnings of danger and just blunder in…so of course, it’s a trap. He’s caught in a forcefield by Lynxana the Hunter!

Lynxana gives her backstory: A former noble from Thundera, she was passed over for a position of responsibility when it went to her brother instead, so she led a rebellion against her house. When it failed, Claud-Us banished her and she became a bounty hunter in space. She’s here to collect the generous bounty Planet Plun-Darr has placed on the Thundercats. Lion-O uses the sword to break free and fight back. Lynxana boasts that she’s glad old Jaga is there to see Lion-O fall…and Lion-O realizes that if she can see Jaga’s ghost, something is amiss, and remembers to try Sight Beyond Sight, which reveals “Jaga” to be Mumm-Ra in disguise. Mumm-Ra’s evil is so overwhelming that Lynxana has a change of heart and decides to help Lion-O against him, so she distracts him while Lion-O reflects his blasts back with the sword. With Mumm-Ra driven off, Lynxana agrees to join Lion-O to rescue the other Thundercats. Next issue!

(This entire plot requires several continuity breaks, mostly around the “ten galacto-years” travel time between Thundera and Third Earth. Presumably Lynxana didn’t see the bounty a decade ago and spend ten years in suspension following the ‘Cats and the mutants for a single job. Maybe Planet Plun-Darr and the space she works in are actually much closer to Third Earth than Thundera was? Recall, the comics didn’t include the details of the mutants on Third Earth being cut off from their reinforcements at home, so that part is fine. But the problem with adding faster travel at any point in the series is then: Why didn’t the mutants catch up with the ‘Cats during their decade in suspension?)

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #5, “To Plunder Castle Plun-Darr!”

We open with Lion-O and Lynxana outside of Castle Plun-Darr, and recap that the ‘Cats are being held there, and Jaga is still being held by Mumm-Ra. Lynxana proposes she pretend that Lion-O is her prisoner and just walk in the front door. He reluctantly hands over the sword of omens, and she shoots him and turns him (and the sword) over to the mutants. She’s given run of the castle, but Slithe cackles that she’ll join the other Thundercats for execution the next day.

(Side note: I keep trying to type that name as “Lwaxana,” Deanna Troi’s mother from Star Trek: The Next Generation, daughter of the Fifth House, holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx, heir to the Holy Rings of Betazed.)

In the dead of night, Lynxana goes to where Lion-O and the sword are being held, monologues about her backstory for a while, and then smashes the machine and frees Lion-O, revealing that she hadn’t betrayed him after all. (Future dialogue indicates that her gun only fires “stun-bolts”. What the Thundertank’s cannons fire is never discussed, but per 80s censorship standards, nobody is shown injured or dying from them. Just like Lion-O never cuts any living creature with the sword.)

They work their way through the castle, freeing the other Thundercats from the elaborate deathtraps the mutants have set up. The castle is full of other reptilians, monkians and jackelmen—in this continuity, the main three mutants are clearly employing other members of their races in their schemes. Panthro hijacks a skycutter and fights a bunch of mutants with skycutters and nosedivers of their own. (Name-checking them several times: Again, this entire sequence feels like it’s there to show off the toys.) They fight the mutants for a few more pages, Panthro retrieves the Thundertank, and everyone escapes.

Afterwards, they regroup and Lion-O explains that Mumm-Ra has captured Jaga. Lynxana tries to leave, but before she gets through her goodbyes a giant ethereal Mumm-Ra appears, claiming he’s absorbed Jaga’s power and is now unbeatable, and fires an energy bolt that destroys Castle Plun-Darr and everyone inside. What can the Thundercats do against an opponent so powerful?

 

[Kirin]

Well that was a short-lived castle (unless this is all just illusion magic or something).

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #6, “Mumm-Ra Times Three!”

We pick up immediately where we left off, outside the ruins of Castle Plun-Darr marveling over Mumm-Ra’s new power. But Tigra points out: If Mumm-Ra’s so powerful, why not just destroy them? Lion-O uses Sight Beyond Sight to determine what we’ve all been suspecting since the end of last issue: Castle Plun-Darr is fine; the destruction was just an illusion. The mutants realize the ‘Cats are still there, and march out the army to attack them. Giant Mumm-Ra reappears, now solid, and claims Jaga’s power has allowed him to triple his magical might, blasts some things randomly, and vanishes. Lion-O proposes a truce with the mutants to deal with Mumm-Ra, which Slithe accepts “for now.”

Lynxana recaps her backstory again as they travel to the Desert of Sinking Sands and Mumm-Ra’s pyramid. As the army fights giant Mumm-Ra, Lion-O leads a strikeforce using the Thundertank’s drill blades to burrow into the pyramid. There, they discover what Mumm-Ra has done: Using the mystic power of Jaga’s spirit, Mumm-Ra has brought his incarnations from First and Second Earth into the present to triple his strength. He commands the Ancient Spirits of Evil to animate the stone statues, which do their best to crush Lion-O, Cheetara and Lynxana. Lion-O speaks to Jaga, and agrees to destroy the crystal holding him, even if that might destroy Jaga as well, in order to foil Mumm-Ra’s scheme. The two other Mumm-Ras fade back into history and the giant dissipates. Slithe briefly considers having his army attack the Thundercats but then gets lambasted by Mumm-Ra for his string of betrayals and ends up taking the army and fleeing.

In the epilogue, back at Cat’s Lair, they offer Lynxana a chance to join, but she declines in favor of returning to space to work through her issues. Lion-O briefly mourns the loss of Jaga’s spirit, but Jaga reappears fully-restored on the last page, thereby restoring the status quo. (Also, Jaga notes that he knows how Mumm-Ra captured him and can prevent it from happening again.)

I feel like the blending of science and magic (and sci-fi/fantasy) in the way we see here is common now but was specifically exploding in children’s media during this era. Using Tessa’s dark magic power to charge the Thundertank’s batteries because energy is energy; Jaga having mystic powers despite him using an electronic wristband on his spaceship to become a ghost. I think it’s obvious to blame Star Wars—blue-transparent Jaga is extremely obviously a Force ghost—but I feel like that blend has come and gone in various genres over time. It’s not the same as using magic in place of technology (lightning rails in Ebberon, for example), it’s not “all alien technology is basically magic” (like Steven Universe) as much as there’s both sci-fi technology and there’s magic and we all use both of them in varying degrees. I’ll probably ramble more about this later.

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #7, “Back to Thundera!” Gerry Conway has taken over writing with this issue, so any differences in tone might be attributed to that. We open in medias res, as the Thundercats work to keep the Berbil village from flooding. Lion-O uses the sword to ground mysterious red lightning, which knocks him silly—it was a stupid idea—but the magic lightning instead strikes a nearby mountain. Lion-O is a bit maudlin and homesick for Thundera afterwards. Maybe they don’t really belong on Third Earth? Turns out the storm was magically sent by Mumm-Ra as a ploy to get the Thundercats to climb up Mount Dark.

A rockslide separates Lion-O and Cheetara from the others, who are attacked by Sectra and the Insectoids. The ‘Cats fight them back in several waves over the course of the issue, taking special note that the drones are mindless and Sectra controls them. (This doesn’t actually matter to the plot, though, and none of the insectoids are really injured on-camera, just hit and driven away as usual.)

Meanwhile, Lion-O and Cheetara pass through a rip in space-time that takes them to Thundera…in the prehistoric past. They find primitive cave-cats fighting a “mamroth” (a giant mammoth/bat/rat mammalian thing) and rescue them with the sword, causing the cave-cats to revere them as sorcerers. Clearly there’s tension between Rath, leader of the cave-cats, and Lion-O, which Cheetara tries to diffuse, as Lion-O flirts with a girl named Kindra. But then the sword warns Lion-O that the other Thundercats are in danger, and they rush back to the portal to realize it’s shrinking—meaning that leaving to save their friends means they can’t come back.

But of course they go back to Third Earth, because that’s the responsible thing to do, and get back just in time to stop Sectra from emptying a boiling caldron on the other ‘Cats. They drive off the insectoids, Mumm-Ra’s plot is foiled, and Lion-O remarks that home is where his friends are.

As a side oddity: Panthro calls his weapon a “Knumb-Chuck,” which I have to admit is a new one on me! (The narration box calls them nun-chucks later; I have no idea what they were going for there.) Also, every time the planet Thundera is referred to, it’s styled as THUNDERA, and I have no idea why.

This does give us some interesting backstory for the comics-verse, though: It’s implied that Thundercats evolved from more primitive humanoid cats on Thundera over thousands of years. That makes it harder (though not impossible) to believe they’re an offshoot of humans from First Earth.

Also the more I think about it, the more I really liked the scene of them saving the Berbil village from the flooding. The Berbils have been magnificent friends to the ‘Cats, providing the majority of their food and providing enough manpower (ro-bearpower) to build the massive Cat’s Lair in a month. It’s good to see that the ‘Cats are also being good neighbors and giving back to the Berbils, and it isn’t just a one-sided relationship.

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #8, “To the Victor, the Spoils”. We open with the Thundercats having a sporting competition amongst themselves for an audience of Berbils, which is going well until the kittens devolve into poor sportsmanship and everyone else starts squabbling around them. The prize, a catseye crystal from the Rainbow Mountains on Thundera, gets forgotten in the commotion. The mutants learn that the ‘Cats are fighting amongst themselves and use it as an opportunity to attack. Jaga gives Lion-O some encouragement and he apologizes to Cheetara, but the kittens continue squabbling and get captured by the mutants.

Then the mutants blow up the reservoir and flood the Cat’s Lair (through their brand-new aqueduct!), driving out all the Thundercats. They then take control of the lair and turn the flame cannon in the big cat head again the ‘Cats. Slithe, very full of himself because his plan worked, taunts the kittens with the catseye crystal, and that night they figure out how they can use it to escape if they work together. They retake the flame cannon and signal the other ‘Cats to attack and retake Cat’s Lair. In the end, the group will have to rebuild their aqueduct, but the kittens have learned a valuable lesson about sharing and teamwork.

Not a huge amount to say about this one, though it’s nice to have the parallel of “the adults behave maturely and are fine” vs. “the kids are immature and suffer for it.” Though Lion-O’s general maturity level across the series is a yo-yo.

It did get me thinking about the critical bit of technology the ‘Cats don’t have: Communications tech. Over and over, the plot hinges on “We need to go find X” and nobody has a phone or walkie-talkie, not even a radio between the Thundertank and the Cat’s Lair. I suppose this makes the sword of omens more special because it’s the only way to summon everybody; but in a setting where space travel is common this technology should exist; and on a world where there are at least two actively hostile forces and countless unknown dangers, it should be a priority. I actually have to wonder how much was because this was written in the 1980s by people born in the 1950s and earlier: They were from a generation where kids just went out to play and were expected to make their way home by dark; and where calling someone on the phone was a crapshoot because they didn’t even have answering machines yet. People just weren’t reachable and that was a fact of life; and “stranger danger” was in its infancy even as the show was airing. I’m now very curious to see how the updated comics handle this when I get to them.

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #9, “The Price of Pride.”

We open on Lion-O and Panthro building a rampart wall near Cat’s Lair. Lion-O is concerned the rockmen that Panthro encountered in issue #3 will return for revenge. An accidental rockslide leaves the Thundertank teetering on the edge of a ravine, and (unbeknownst to the Thundercats) injures the rockmen at the bottom, including Pek, son of Lord Tork. An advisor tries to talk Lord Tork out of seeking revenge—after all, the prince was secretly spying, it might all be an accident—but Mumm-Ra shows up in astral form and goads him to action.

The rockmen attack Cheetara as she’s swimming in a waterfall and then the kittens and Snarf as they’re picking berries; and they seriously injure Snarf. Lion-O declares they’ll bring the fight to the rockmen to defend their honor, even as Jaga tries to talk him down. Lion-O leads the ‘Cats to attack the rockmen, setting a fire to smoke them out and then charging into melee. Mumm-Ra gloats from his pyramid that he’ll be able to pick off whoever survives this battle. And dizzy, concussed Snarf wanders after them, falls off a cliff and lands on Prince Pek. The rockman elder sorts out that this was all a misunderstanding and the trio charges in to stop the deadly duel between Lion-O and Lord Tork. Snarf talks down Lion-O, Pek talks down Tork, Lion-O tells Tork to go ahead and smash him to prove his sincerity in not wanting to fight any more, and after a long moment Tork agrees to forgive. Lion-O calls taking that risk a point of honor, and Mumm-Ra again fumes his plan has been foiled.

Very similar to the last issue, actually: One main plot that involves the ‘Cats learning a valuable social lesson with a lot of action in between. We never do find out how they retrieve the Thundertank from where it was teetering on the ravine; it feels like that plot point was there so they wouldn’t take the tank to fight the rockmen with (which would give them an overwhelming advantage given how the rockmen did against it in Issue #3). This is a pretty solid low-risk ploy for Mumm-Ra, though: He clearly doesn’t like the rockmen, so whether they get slaughtered or never listen to him again, as long as they did some damage to the Thundercats it would be a net win.

Also amusing is the Cheetara bikini scene, as if her normal outfit wasn’t a bathing suit to begin with and as if she wasn’t naked in Issue #1. I wonder if it was there for the artist’s amusement as much as anything else.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

When your title proclaims the hero has gone mad, it's pretty underwhelming just seeing him do a generic action poise facing some character we don't know.

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #10, “Graveyard of Memories”

The ‘Cats are out on the Hunting Plains, trying to catch a rumpa for dinner. The rest of the ‘Cats are ready to give up and eat Snarf’s vegetable stew, but Panthro goes off on his own to hunt more. Mutants (an assortment of vulturemen and jackelmen) attack the ‘Cats.

Panthro wanders into the grave of the Si-tare, ghostly creatures of “pure thought” claiming to be ten thousand years old. He smashes a tombstone to get away, clearly angering them. The ‘Cats defeat the mutants and get away, but pass through a mysterious mist before reuniting with Panthro.

That night, Panthro askes Lion-O about ghosts, given that Lion-O talks to Jaga. Lion-O is convinced that ghosts can’t change, that a good ghost is always good and an evil one will always try to be evil. As he contemplates this, the other Thundercats all fall ill with fever, and he concludes this is the Si-tare’s doing and he needs to go confront them. A group of mutants notice the ‘Cats are sick and sneak in to try to attack, but the “challenge of battle” is enough to get them to throw off the fever and beat back the mutants. Then they realize that Panthro has gone off on his own.

Panthro challenges Ashtar, lord of the Si-tare, to fight him. Ashtar takes solid form as an extremely powerful giant. Panthro holds his own briefly, but thankfully the rest of the team shows up when he’s on the ropes. The power of the sword of omens is enough to banish Ashtar. Panthro still feels bad—the Si-tare attacked him because he messed up their cemetery, after all, so he repairs the stone he broke and the Si-tare accept his amends.

This is basically another twist on the same story format and message of the last few issues: If you mess up, it’s important to take responsibility for that and make amends. But you can have some fun fight scenes in the interim.

Upon reflection: Most felines are obligate carnivores; it would be logical if Thunderians are too. Maybe the Berbil’s “meat fruits” are generally sufficient for their nutritional needs, but Panthro just likes real meat?

There’s a side bit where Wilykit uses “numb-powder” to paralyze some mutants, but notes that was all they had unless he finds some jewel roots. I’m not clear on why that bit is there at all because it doesn’t lead to anything. “Hey, that trick you used on random mooks was cool, why don’t you do it more often?” “Oh, that was my only dose and I can’t do it again.”

Similarly, Panthro and Lion-O’s discussion about ghosts doesn’t really lead into what happens with the Si-tare. It’s just random philosophical musing. It’s not bad (I’ve seen similar discussions about vampires and one can argue that “How much can non-humans change?” is the driving question of the entire Sandman series) but it’s odd that it doesn’t figure into the resolution.

This issue continues to emphasize that in the comics continuity the mutants have a whole army of Plun-Darrians kicking around Castle Plun-Darr, some of whom aren’t happy with Slithe being in charge.

And finally: Cat’s Lair really could use locks on the doors!

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Issue #10

Better cover than the last one but I imagine Panthro saying "Vengeance for what? Eating a meal? A succulent Thunderan meal?"

 

[Beowulf]

This has been a big series of "covers always lie", where what's on the cover might have been something from the story...but never actually is.

Also the artists are really inconsistent (on covers and interiors) about the Eye of Thundera, which should be open if the sword is fully-extended.

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #11, “The Enemy Below”

We open with an earthquake shaking the Cat’s Lair, causing parts of the ground nearby to collapse into sinkholes. Lion-O almost falls in (Snarf and Panthro save him), then Cheetara’s garden collapses out from under her (she saves herself), then that damn aqueduct collapses again and Wilykit almost drowns (Tigra saves her). Turns out the mole men are responsible. Jaga tries to get Lion-O to examine the mole men’s motivations before just attacking, but apparently he didn’t learn anything over the past four issues.

But that’s fine, because while they’re still planning the floor collapses and they land in a gaggle of angry mole men, who immediately start a fight. The leader of the mole men commands that the Thundercats must be destroyed, and the ‘Cats retreat to regroup but are split up by a cave-in. Lion-O uses the sword to break open a route to the surface, and Tigra recognizes where they are: The mole men’s domain, which is being ravaged by a swarm of midges acting as one giant creature. Lion-O figures out the insects are attracted to light and use the sword’s beacon to lure them away. Tigra then makes the critical connection: The midge-monster drove the mole men out of their home, so they tried to move under Cat’s Lair. Lion-O is chastened that Jaga was right and they go back down into the caves.

Lion-O confronts War Commander Rix with an apology and a proposal: There’s fault for being too aggressive on both sides, but they can forget the war and all team up against the midge monster. The mole men seem persuaded, but Rix won’t listen until Lion-O bests him in battle and blinds him with light from the sword. Hours later, they successfully build a big fire that draws in the midge monster and hurts it, convincing it to leave for greener pastures. (The mole men hate light, so they never figured out the midge monster was attracted to it.) Rix offers to repay this debt, but Lion-O assures him friendship is all they want.

…I hope that “friendship” includes “filling in the caves under Cat’s Lair and making sure that area is structurally secure.”

This is one of those plots that falls apart as soon as you think about it too hard: The midge monster follows lights and didn’t go underground; the mole men hate the light and seem to exclusively live underground. How did it drive them away in the first place? And why did they seem to think that under the Cat’s Lair was the best place to move when there are clearly vast uninhabited swaths of Third Earth? (I do understand why the midge monster “saw they could hurt it and ran away” despite clearly being semi-mindless in the first encounter—the ‘Cats haven’t killed anything and the writer clearly wasn’t going to have them start here.)

I think this issue gave Tigra more lines than every other issue of the comic combined. Lion-O is the main character; Panthro had two stories he starred in; Cheetara got to be Lion-O’s sidekick in several; and the kittens keep getting page-filling mischief or character beats. But Tigra’s…been there. I guess they didn’t need the smart guy until now?

 

[Johnny Unusual]

Issue #11, “The Enemy Below”

I dont like how Panthro looks like an airport duty free shop from the 80s version of Batman

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #12, “Berserker Rage.” We open in Cat’s Lair, where Drella of the Nai (purple-skinned people with elf ears and grapes for hair) is asking for help. They’re peaceful fisherfolk but they’ve been attacked and enslaved by the berserkers and their leader Horak the Axe-Wielder. Lion-O immediately offers to help; but Cheetara calls him out on it, accusing him of committing the Thundercats to war just because a pretty girl asked him to and with no other information.

The ’Cats attack the berserkers (who we see are clearly big jerks) at the Nai village while Lion-O goes to cut the anchors on their ships. But when a berserker attacks Lion-O and he drops the sword, Drella refuses to touch it, even to help him, because they’re a “peaceful” people. He manages to complete his task anyway and just in time—Tigra notes the five others probably couldn’t take down Horak and the berserkers alone, and the Nai hadn’t helped at all. Lion-O has harsh words for Nella, because he knows the berserkers will be back once they’ve repaired their ships, and he doesn’t want to risk his people defending people who refuse to risk themselves.

Musing on this with Jaga, Lion-O is reminded that the strong must protect the weak, even when the weak won’t protect themselves. The rain picks up and the berserkers return; and Lion-O once again challenges Drella to convince her people to stand up and defend themselves before charging off to fight the berserkers. Sure enough, when it looks like the battle is hopeless and the ‘Cats are going to go down fighting, the fisher-folk charge in as reinforcements. The distraction allows the ‘Cats to turn the tide. Lion-O ends up in single combat with Horak, but this time when he drops the sword, Drella passes it back to him so he can win the fight.

When the berserkers are driven off, the ‘Cats are sure they won’t be back, because they’ve been taught a lesson that despite preferring peace, the Nai are not afraid to fight.

There’s some 80s-style pseudo-feminist sexism in the way Cheetara calls out Lion-O, but she’s also absolutely right that he shouldn’t be committing the team to fights they know nothing about. After all, we’ve just had multiple issues full of fights based entirely on misunderstandings and the team has also been waylaid by false information from Mumm-Ra repeatedly. Cheetara is written in an extremely 80s way; exclusively by men who know they’re supposed to be selling a “girls can do anything” message but also have lots of unconscious bias. So last issue she’s the only Thundercat who doesn’t need help getting out of an earthquake-induced problem…but it’s because she was working on her garden, which is clearly a tiny vanity project. Wilykit actually comes off better much of the time because she’s one of “the kids” so she and Wilykat get into all the same mischief and bad choices together.

There’s also the fact that the moral of this story is about standing up to bullies, but too many adults think it’s how geopolitics reliably works. Yes, if you show a bully that you’ll fight back he’ll probably go choose a softer target next time. Or maybe he’s smart enough to know that you’re an autistic gay kid and the teachers will take his side no matter what he does and you’ll be the one punished if you hit him back. Or maybe he really, really wants your mineral wealth or oil reserves and will just keep coming back with bigger forces until he gets them. Anyway, where I was going with this is I hope after this issue Panthro builds a nice anti-ship cannon in the Nai village that everyone agrees “they’ll never have to use” but Drella practices regularly anyway.

This brings us to the halfway point, the end of the first book of the reprint collection and an issue I actually remember, though not particularly well. (Drella’s grape hair and gold bikini design was pretty memorable!) I think before this project is done I’ll need to go digging in the boxes and figure out exactly which issues I actually owned back in the day.

 

[Daikaiju]

Sidenote: It always lowkey annoyed me that despite being his elders, Lion-O goes full adult wet blanket on the Kits left and right in the TV series. Does that happen a lot in the comic too?

 

[Kirin]

Also, every time the planet Thundera is referred to, it’s styled as THUNDERA, and I have no idea why.

I wonder if it’s because, in the absence of audio, they just wanted a way to convey that the planet is pronounced thun-DARE-uh, not THUNder-ah.

Better cover than the last one but I imagine Panthro saying "Vengeance for what? Eating a meal? A succulent Thunderan meal?"

My issue with that cover was that I was expecting the revenge to have something to do with the big green guy’s prosthetic fourth arm, but apparently that’s never even a part of the plot.

 

[Torzelbaum]

My issue with that cover was that I was expecting the revenge to have something to do with the big green guy’s prosthetic fourth arm, but apparently that’s never even a part of the plot.

Chekhov's prosthetic fourth arm.

 

[Beowulf]

Sidenote: It always lowkey annoyed me that despite being his elders, Lion-O goes full adult wet blanket on the Kits left and right in the TV series. Does that happen a lot in the comic too?

There's actually been very little interaction between Lion-O and the kittens, and while we've had a bunch of scenes of them being kids, we've had very little scolding from anyone about it. Even the issue that revolves around them bickering pretty much has them reconcile it on their own.

My issue with that cover was that I was expecting the revenge to have something to do with the big green guy’s prosthetic fourth arm, but apparently that’s never even a part of the plot.

It's never mentioned in any way, no. In the comic interiors, the fourth arm is drawn like a prosthetic (and has fewer fingers than the other three arms) but is colored the same green as the rest of the solid Si-Tare except for the gold ring at the shoulder. That Si-Tare also has a gold robotic leg and gold-colored pants that cover his other knee as well. I'm guessing the original conception was that the Si-Tare were cyborgs before they became "beings of pure thought," but we'll never know, because this was apparently their only appearance in any media ever.

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #13, “Snarf Takes Up the Challenge” is actually an adaptation of a cartoon episode. (Episode #25) The original episode was by Peter Lawrence, and the comic by Tom DeFalco (who also gets an “executive editor” credit). I’m not sure I read this comic as a kid, but I have distinct memories of the episode, particularly of the traps. (The back half of the comic series has a lot of adapted episodes rather than original plots. Given that the comics were bi-monthly for the first 8 issues, I wonder if there was some sort of delay getting the teleplays to the comics writers—all of the episodes that comics were based on aired in 1985, and this issue didn’t come out until July 1987.)

Slithe and Jackelman are terrorizing the unicorn herds in the Forest of Silence, so their shepherd comes to the Thundercats for help. Of course they’ll help! Cheetara is left in charge of Cat’s Lair as the rest of the team heads out. Meanwhile, Snarf is offering to help a packbat build a nest, and after Panthro notes that Snarf can communicate with all of the weird creatures on Third Earth—a power it’s important to remind us of because he’s never used it previously—Snarf is told to go ahead with that while the real warriors save the unicorns.

Foreshadowing: The mark of quality literature.

The team reaches the forest and splits up to find the mutants. Lion-O can’t hear the warning from the sword and tries to steal a seemingly-abandoned nosediver, which turns out to be a trap. Tigra gets caught in a mirror maze; Panthro is lured into a giant crystal ball by a set of free nunchucks; the mutants deploy a “glidepath beam” to hijack the kittens’ spaceboards; and they build a fake ‘Cat-signal lamp to trick Cheetara into coming to help and getting caught. The mutants bring the ‘Cats to Mumm-Ra, who wraps them all in bandages and lines them up in coffins, and gloats that the “useless sword of omens” will make a nice wall ornament.

Snarf gets home and finds the Cat’s Lair empty except for a confused Ro-Ber-Bill, and then the unicorn keeper arrives to tell them the ‘Cats have all been captured. The next morning, Snarf enlists the packbat to fly to Castle Plun-Darr and spy on the mutants, and learn that the ‘Cats are being held at Mumm-Ra’s pyramid. He gets a spider to sneak in and wrap silk around Mumm-Ra’s coffin while a diamond-beaked woodpecker breaks open the door lock. Snarf frees Lion-O and retrieves the sword, which Lion-O uses to free the other ‘Cats as Mumm-Ra wakes up. Mumm-Ra transforms to attack, but Lion-O forces him to see his reflection in the sword and drives him back into the coffin so they can escape.

In the epilogue, the ‘Cats celebrate Snarf, but an angry packbat appears to remind him that he’s promised to help build an extension on the nest in exchange for that ride.

This is a solid adaptation of a cartoon episode that lets Snarf show off that he does, in fact, have valuable skills. The big plot hole (in both continuities) is Mumm-Ra’s treatment of the sword of omens once he’d captured it: The mutants chased the Thundercats for ten galacto-years to try to get the Eye of Thundera from them; it’s the entire reason they came to Third Earth in the first place. Mumm-Ra has known about the Eye and its powers for “over 1,000 years”. He really doesn’t have any plans for it besides hanging it on the wall?

Side note: The introduction to volume 2 is by Mike Carlin, who confirms something I had suspected early on: The comic writers had access to the scripts of the cartoon, but not the finished episodes, which explains the matching dialogue but disparities in artwork for things that didn’t have corresponding toys.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

This is a solid adaptation of a cartoon episode that lets Snarf show off that he does, in fact, have valuable skills.

Every 80s cartoon seemed to have this kind of episode. For example, Cheat Commandos.

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #14, “Safari Jo” is also an adapted episode, though in this case Steve Perry wrote both the teleplay and the comic! (Episode #24)

Safari Jo, a human with a bad mustache and a monocle, lands in his spaceship, scaring the wildlife and scorching plants, indicating that he’s a bad guy. His robot buddy Mule reminds him that he’s here to hunt Thundercats. And that he does! He blows up the kittens’ spaceboards with “nitro-darts” and catches them in sacks.

Meanwhile at Cat’s Lair, we interrupt Lion-O and Snarf’s game of “kick the bucket” to learn that Safari Jo set up an electronic blind to block the ‘Cats from seeing the area around his ship—and that even affects Sight Beyond Sight.

Safari Jo puts the kittens in a Thundrainium cage, and Mule runs him through Tigra and Cheetara’s strengths and weaknesses. This gives us fun facts like the Tigra being unable to swim, Cheetara being able to run faster than 100 m/s, and Cheetara having an “underdeveloped sixth sense”. Safari Jo uses this knowledge to trap Cheetara with rocket-powered bracelets that keep her aloft; and drop Tigra into a hole full of water. Later, Safari Jo taunts Cheetara, claiming he’s doing this for “sport” and flying into rage when she calls him a bully. But then he regains his composure and Mule teaches him about Panthro, who can shoot “dangerous substances” from his nunchucks but fears bats. So when Panthro arrives in the Thundertank, Safari Jo knocks the tank out with a nitro dart and takes down Panthro with a giant bat illusion. Mule tries to provide an analysis of Lion-O, but the machinery explodes because the Eye of Thundera defies analysis.

Jaga appears to Lion-O with some critical info: That Safari Jo knows their weaknesses, so Lion-O must overcome his weakness. Lion-O is goaded into throwing down the sword but still dodges all of Safari Jo’s traps and lures him into Cat’s Lair, where Snarf kicks a bucket at his head, and Lion-O scares him until he cries. Lion-O and Snarf muse on the fact that most bullies are actually big cowards. They free the others, Panthro reprograms Mule, and they make Safari Jo promise to never hunt again before sending him back into space.

This issue brings a bunch of later TV series developments firmly into the comics continuity. Thundrainium, for one, which works like kryptonite. But also Cheetara’s sixth sense, which hasn’t come up before. (And 100 m/s is over 220 mph—Cheetara isn’t faster than a speeding bullet, but she is faster than a locomotive.)

When Jaga appears, Snarf clearly reacts to him, despite it being a plot point earlier than only Lion-O could see him. Though you might also interpret those panels (where Snarf doesn’t speak) as Snarf going, “What are you looking at? Is Jaga’s ghost there?”

Safari Jo’s technology is pretty awesome, and in retrospect, the Thundercats should have at least gotten schematics for the electronic blind—it could have been really helpful against Mumm-Ra at some point.

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #15, “The Time Capsule” is apparently “loosely” based on the teleplay by Peter Lawrence and adapted by Tom DeFalco. (Episode #15)

We open with Lion-O lost in thought atop Mount Anguish. Jaga appears and tells him that there’s a way he can learn more about THUNDERA: There’s an “energized optocrystal,” (a time capsule) they brought with them somewhere on Third Earth. (Jaga also confirms something I guessed a while back: Lion-O was 12 when they left Thundera.)

Lion-O convinces the team to go searching, and Tigra notes they can stay in touch using communications devices Panthro recently invented. (Finally!) The kittens are supposed to stay at Cat’s Lair, but they sneak out on their spaceboards. Lion-O takes Snarf and goes to the Forest of Unicorns, and a black widow shark (it’s got six crab legs!) blocks him from crossing the River of Despair. The unicorn keeper has the unicorns gather special diamonds to create the Bridge of Light to cross the river; but the crossing is still fraught because the shark attacks and the bridge messes with the sword’s lasers. They get across, though. Then they run into some rockmen but Lion-O drives them off.

Tigra finds the wreckage of their original spaceship (didn’t Panthro scrap that for parts?) and gets into a whip-fight with Molemaster of the Molemen, which he wins handily. Cheetara searches the Swamp of Serpents, and wouldn’t you know it, there are serpents there! She easily runs rings around the giant snake. The kittens try to fly over the River of Despair but don’t fly high enough and the shark gets WilyKit’s board.

Then Lion-O spots a glimmer and confirms it’s the optocrystal with Sight Beyond Sight. He summons the team, then sees that cavemen are using the optocrystal to grow plants. He gets into a fight with a caveman, but then realizes that by chasing the past he’s endangered the Thundercats’ present and the cavemen’s future, so he lets them keep it and concludes that this was the valuable lesson Jaga wanted him to learn.

(In the cartoon, Lion-O arm-wrestles a caveman for the Time Capsule and wins, and the Time Capsule appears in later episodes, allowing Lion-O to travel back to Thundera before its destruction and interact with his father Claud-Us.)

The geography of Third Earth and the naming conventions are a bit of a mess. Is the Forest of Unicorns also the Forest of Silence, or did the keeper decide to move her flock after the whole debacle with the mutants? The River of Despair is clearly a key spot to cross, but there must be other ways around because the rest of the ‘Cats catch up with Lion-O with no problems.

Oh, and the Berbils grow insane amounts of fruit and love helping people. If the issue is starving cavemen, why not load the Thundertank with produce and trade it to the cavemen for the optocrystal?

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #16, “The Queen of Eight Legs” is another adapted episode where Steve Perry wrote both the teleplay and the comic. (Episode #34)

Mumm-Ra scries a terrifying event, the birth of a new queen of the Kingdom of Webs, Spidera! Knowing that deception will allow him to use this event against the Thundercats, Mumm-Ra transforms into the fairy Diamond-Fly and hypnotizes Lion-O with flashing lights and soft words into walking into the Forest of Giant Insects. Fortunately, Snarf notices Lion-O is late for dinner, retrieves the dropped sword, catches up, and realizes that it’s a trick by Mumm-Ra. Lion-O snaps out of it and drives off Mumm-Ra, but not before the spiders capture Snarf.

Lion-O fights his way through an assortment of spiders of various sizes and approximately ten thousand webs to get to a cocooned Snarf, who is about to be Spidera’s lunch. Faced with a spider the size of the Thundertank, Lion-O summons the rest of the team. “It’s too big…too strong…too many arms!” Across another action sequence the team get caught and stuck in various arms and webs, but through teamwork get the sword back to Lion-O, who uses it to dissolve the webbing and stun Spidera. They contemplate killing Spidera, but they can’t use the sword of omens to take a life, and they don’t feel good about killing her in general—but she’s a destructive monster who can’t be left to roam. So instead they use their combined will through the sword to re-created Spidera’s egg and seal her back in it. The ‘Cats congratulate Lion-O on his smart, non-lethal solution and Snarf says they need to get back for a meal…of anything except eggs.

A significant percentage of this book is action sequences, though we still get some interesting things: There’s yet another terrifying, aptly-named forest within easy walking distance of Cat’s Lair. Mumm-Ra shows off his transformation powers in a reasonably clever way (though it begs the question of why he didn’t have Diamond-Fly walk Lion-O off a cliff) for another “low effort, potential high reward” plan. Snarf gets another big show of competence. The rules for the sword of omens, previously established as not using it frivolously or for evil, now include never using it to take a life. Which brings us back to…why the heck is the Eye of Thundera in a sword at all, then?

Then we get to the ‘Cats fundamental misunderstanding of biology: Lion-O somehow concludes that the shell held Spidera “for thousands of years” and that they can just seal her back in for some additional length of time. That’s…not how eggs work. That egg was laid by another giant spider, Spidera grew to maturity in it (and consumed the resources in the egg), and now she’s hatched. By any reasonable interpretation they have not “re-sealed” Spidera for another thousand years, they’ve just suffocated and/or starved her. She’s dead, Jim. At least she seemed to be a non-sapient animal?

 

[Beowulf]

Issue #17, “Tower of Traps,” which was a teleplay by Leonard Starr and adapted by Dwight Jon Zimmerman. (Episode #8)

We open when the kittens spot a poor Wollo (dwarf-like humanoid) being attacked by gargoyles. Wilykat tries to jump in and gets batted away, leading to Wilykit thinking he’s badly hurt—but he was just playing a joke on her. (She dresses him down over it appropriately.) Meanwhile, it turns out Kronus the Wollo wasn’t poor and Robber Baron Karnor sent the gargoyles after him deliberately; and they’ve stolen his purse with his late wife’s wedding band, intended for his daughter’s wedding that day. Kronus is upset but notes at least he’ll make it to the wedding. The kittens decide to brave Karnor’s Black Tower to get the stolen purse back. But while they’re looking for a way in, Wilykat vanishes!

Elsewhere in the forest, Lion-O has done some hunting and is camp-roasting meat. The sword alerts him of trouble and Sight Beyond Sight shows him what the kittens are up to, so he scratches a message in the ground for the others and heads off to help. (Lion-O has both forgotten the primary use of the sword and also the communicators that were introduced a few issues ago…but haven’t been introduced in the cartoon yet because of episode order…oh dear, I’ve gone cross-eyed.) He catches up with Wilykit, and they spring a trapdoor into the tower’s basement. Wilykat’s voice echoes, calling for help, so they follow it upstairs through a series of other traps: Gates that separate them, a giant squid-monster, a rolling boulder, and a false wall to where Wilykat is caged up. They free him and continue into Baron Karnor’s treasure room—and it turns out the Baron is long dead, having been unwilling to leave his wealth even in death. Wilykit spots Kronus’ purse and grabs it. Doors slam to trap them in the treasure room, but Lion-O uses strings of pearls as a rope to get them to the hole in the roof. That hole was how the gargoyles had been delivering the treasure. All of the gargoyle statues animate and attack, and Lion-O remembers to use the sword to summon the rest of the ‘Cats. The ‘Cats smash all of the gargoyles and remark that Baron Karnor must have been a magician as well as a thief, and his spells lasted long after his death.

They then rush to Wallo village and return the purse and the ring, delighting Kronus and his daughter. And this all taught Wilykit a lesson about practical jokes, somehow.

I double-checked: Kronus is called a “Wollo” all through the first part of the story, but the place is “Wallo” village at the end. Error or linguistic depth? You decide!

Just last issue we learned that the sword of omens can’t be used to kill any living thing. Fortunately, despite how alive those animated stone gargoyles looked, they didn’t count and Lion-O could smash them without a second thought.

I feel like there was supposed to be some sort of connection between being so greedy you set up a tower full of traps and die there, and playing practical jokes on your sibling. But that clearly got lost somewhere in the process. Maybe Wilykat’s disappearance outside the tower was supposed to be a “boy who cried wolf” situation? Wilykit and Lion-O only briefly entertained the possibility it could be a joke and mostly were worried about him.

And I love that Karnor’s title “robber baron” clearly has no attachment at all to that term’s actual meaning, and instead indicates he’s either a landowning noble who robs people, or that he’s not quite cool enough to be the “prince of thieves” so instead has to be the “baron of robbers.”