Question about the comics

Collecting Vintage Collectables
1

So for the classic comics (US or UK)do they all take place in Season 1? or are there any comics that take place post-season 1? Also I’m guessing the comics were mostly very kid friendly but what was the quality of the stories? about the same as the tv show or lower? Did the series have any memorable storylines or included lesser known characters/villains like allura and Claudus?

For the recent comics, they take place after the series ended right? What is the quality of the comics? are they worth reading?

2

I can’t speak for the classic comics, but I have read the recent ones, and it varies a lot between them, both in art and story. The art is at least decent all around though.

The first series, Reclaiming Thundera, is a lot like the show; a series of short, episodic adventures. The next one, Return to Thundera, is where things start to get weird. Mumm-Ra ends up taking over, and things get darker, grittier, and implies some very child-unfriendly stuff.

The series after that, Dogs of War, is set after that. It keeps the tone of Return, but it gets a little stupid at times. It’s neat that there’s a race of dog people against the ThunderCats, but they go a little overboard when they mention whole planets of other human/animal hybrids. It also has some poor characterization that doesn’t really fit with what happened in the series before.

Hammer Hand’s Revenge is closer to the show and is set some time during it. It has the same tone and is a lot like watching the show, but I feel it gets weak towards the end and the finale was kind of a let down.

Enemy’s Pride is set just after the series, and it’s a lot like Hammer Hand’s revenge. It does a good job of building things up, but towards the end things start to get kind of stupid, and it’s as if the writer just stopped taking the story seriously.

I would recommend the Heroes and Villains/Villains and Heroes one shots. They do a nice job of explaining the back stories of many characters, and the stories are fairly entertaining.

I have not read the crossover comics yet, but when I do I’ll have to remember to post my thoughts. Overall, I recommend the one shots, Hammer Hand’s Revenge, Reclaiming Thundera, and Return to Thundera in that order.

3

The classic comics had some decent stories I think - the art wasn’t that great though :-p The stories had the same tone as the series…unlike the newer comics which had darker tones. There are things I liked about both the old and new comics.

With the marvel comics, some were adaptations of episodes, other issues told original tales. The US run pretty much took place in tandem with the series (several issues were show adaptations of season 1 episodes) with a few “new” stories thrown in. But they also introduced new characters never featured in the show, including Lynxana the bounty hunter which was a pretty cool character.

The UK comics included reprints of the US run, plus many more stories. Those also went beyond season one, as later issues of the UK series featured Pumyra, Lynx-O and Bengali.

If you are interested, I’ve posted up many of the old issues for download on my website…will add more as they are collected/donated :slight_smile:

4

I’m interested in reading them but couldn’t find them.

5

They’re under memorabilia, but here’s a direct link to the section -

http://www.thundercatsfans.org/tcmemorabilia/marvelcomics

Memorabilia has a lot of other stuff…magazines, books, scripts, art, etc for even more reading and viewing.

/shameless self-endorsement

6

Many thanks!

7

I’m a completist so I was kinda hoping you guys would say they weren’t any good or anything so I could brush them away, but from what you guys told me I’m interested, too bad its going to be a pain to try to track them down, hopefully some of the comic archivers have scanned them, especially the rarer UK issues. I’m guessing the recent comics should be fairly easy to find in TPB form. I am very interested in Lynxana, sounds like an awesome character.

8

sdp, feel free to check out what I’ve posted of the comics so far (the link is a few posts back). I’ve put up all the US marvel issues, and have maybe 2/3 of the UK run posted…working on trying to track down the rest and will update the archive as I either gain more comics or have them donated.

I’m also working on putting these in a torrent, just gotta find the time to do it.

9

I’ll second most of what Gold Lion said concerning the newer comics.

Reclaiming Thundera was readable. The story played out a lot like the 5-part “movie” episodes of the original tv series, where there was a page of plot to tie it to the last issue and then introduction of the villian of the issue. McGuiness’ art was appropriate.

Return to Thundera was a lot darker, and had some adult situations implied. This was kind of the “Dark Knight Returns” (referring to the Frank Miller comic, not the movie) of Thundercats. I personally really liked the story, and Benes’ art is absolutely gorgeous. This is the end of what i consider to be the readable Thundercats comics (with a few exceptions).

Dogs of War. Oh man, do I love Brett Booth’s art. Oh man, is this mini-series trash. I can’t even properly tell you why it is bad, because my brain had blacked out all memory of this series. I just remember cringing at Snarf’s many, many stupid lines. Read with caution.

Hammerhand’s Revenge was equally as bad as Dogs of War in my opinion. The art is still really good. Maybe I’ll have to revisit this one, as Gold Lion seemed to like it, but I remember this one as the middle of the very long end.

Enemy’s Pride. I bought them because I have a habit to support. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even finish reading the series. They were pretty terrible.

But wait! Just when you thought things were hopeless and the Thundercats line was sure to get cancelled, Wildstorm produced 2 very good one-shots. I recommend both Heroes and Villains/Villains and Heroes. Each contain a few short stories by various writer/artist combos. I don’t remember groaning at all while enjoying those stories, and some of them even furthered minor characters back stories which I always enjoy.

Wildstorm also made a cross-over with Superman. Its was produced to try to entice Superman’s many buyers into also trying out this nostalgic comic based on an 80s cartoon. Its not great. Or good.

10

don’t forget, there was also a Tcats/battle of the planets crossover as well.

11

I own all the comics, new ones and the old one (And MOST of the UK, just missing 8 issues x_x) and I can say I enjoy the art in the NEW ones, the color is amazing, but the stories do leave you going ‘Huh’ at some points. The old comics are nice, but the artwork is a bit off and seeing they are old comics you can only get so many colors. SOme of the best issues were ones that were not direct from episodes like with Lynxana and such.

The two cross over ones are amusing. I like it when the Tcats come to earth and the speach is all jarbled. Hah, also the kid playing with the Lion-o toy in that one frame was great =D

12

Yeah thanks I did see that, its awesome, thanks! If I find the other ones I’ll let you know. By the way instead of having them as .pdf , you should also upload them as .cbr or .cbz which is the standard for archiving comic books and easy to read with a cbr reader unlike a pdf reader which isn’t great for reading comics, its actually not hard to archive them that way, just zip or Winrar the scans in page order and rename the .rar or .zip file into .cbr or .cbz depending what you used to zip them up.

13

ok, thanks for the tip :slight_smile: I’ll try that. Maybe the files I upload for torrent will be in that format.

I also recently won another batch of uk comics, so I guess there’s going to be at least a few more updates there in the near future!