By: John Ostrander (story), Victor Ibáñez (artist), Wil Quintana (colors)
The Story: Eat your heart out, fellas; this lady’s on the prowl.
The Review: If you ever want proof positive of Wonder Woman’s maligned status in the DCU, look no further than the Cheetah. Superman gets evil geniuses, Batman sadistic madmen, and Wonder Woman a crazed lady in jungle-cat body-paint (which admittedly beats out a debutante in an actual cheetah outfit, but the point stands). It’s not as if efforts haven’t been made to bolster Cheetah’s rep, but like her nemesis, she’s often the victim of writers who don’t get her.
There have been decent, even very fine stories featuring the Cheetah, but none that have had the lasting power and influence of Lex Luthor in All-Star Superman or the Joker in The Killing Joke. Ostrander’s Villains Month offering falls within the general gamut of Cheetah tales: interesting, respectable, but strangely tame in comparison to the complicated portraits of her male peers. It feels as though Ostrander brushes up against some potentially compelling material for the feline villain, but he ultimately fails to drag them into the light.
From a psychological standpoint, Cheetah’s animal instincts make her as straightforward as they come. Anything she does frequently seems motivated by impulse rather than strategy. She’s so driven by this abstract notion of the Hunt that there’s little room for human motivation. We learn that she might have been this way even if she never made the transformation from Barbara Minerva to avatar for Goddess of the Hunt. Apparently brainwashed by her aunt Lyta from a young age, we never get a glimpse of the girl or woman beneath the cheetah spots.
Even when she ends up turning upon her aunt, it’s not as if she does so out of some personal spite or feeling. Confusingly, she explains her sordid murder as both a way to sever the last ties with her former identity and to sever her connection with the divinity from whom she gained her powers. The only way to square both is to view Cheetah’s actions as a way to set aside expectations of her and clear the path to forge a new, more purposeful identity.
Perhaps it’s best that we don’t delve too deeply into her past because from what Ostrander gives us, there’s not much there. Her childhood is grisly enough for any modern villain, but thin and underdeveloped, with little exploration of either her brother or mother before they’re disposed of.* Her conflict with Wonder Woman also bears little fruit, once you learn that the whole thing started from a comical misunderstanding (Diana: “Ha ha ha ha ha!”) on Barbara’s part, which just makes her subsequent hatred of the Amazon seem like high-strung craziness.
In the midst of all this weirdness, Ostrander inserts one U.S. Marshal Mark Shaw, assigned by Amanda Waller’s fill-in to track down the Cheetah while the world’s superheroes are out of pocket. It’s really unclear what Shaw is even doing in this story. As an active character, he fails to make an impact on anyone in the story, much less the readers; as a cipher, it feels like most of the characters are perfectly capable of delivering the necessary exposition without him. You’re not even minimally concerned with his fate since Ostrander broadcasts Shaw’s survival, funnily enough, by making too obvious and early a reference to his death: “Make sure I get a nice funeral, Leroi.”
This is one of those cases where the script comes a far second to the art. I’ve always admired Ibáñez’s DC work and the occasional issue like this one never fails to make me wonder why DC isn’t paying him to work on an ongoing series. Not only does he have a beautifully lush approach to figures that gives contemporaries like Yanick Paquette or J.H. Williams III a run for their money, his storytelling is right on the money as well, drawing out moments of suspense and heightening instances of action with great care. Quintana’s colors are appropriately velveteen, adding extra life to Ibáñez’s already vigorous work.
Conclusion: This is some bizarrely superb art for a mostly mediocre issue, but it does provide an engaging primer on one of Wonder Woman’s greatest archenemies.
Grade: C+
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: * There is a moment of interest where Lyta mocks Thena, Barbara’s mother, for her girlish mannerisms, which made her the favorite of their father. I’d have loved it if Lyta’s whole cult was some kind of extreme response to sibling resentment.
Grade
Conclusion