Cheetara #1 is the initial issue in a prequel series to the main and heretofore only series in the reimagined Thundercats universe, one of many childhood franchises adapted, updated, and streamlined for a modern audience. The writer is Soo Lee; the artist Domenico Carbone; the letterer is Jeff Eckleberry.
Thundercats was not a childhood franchise with which I was obsessed, although of course I was aware of it, so this reimagining does not break my almost non-existent sense of canon, nor do I cry how any change has ruined my childhood. Let us ignore the Johnny Quest promotional stinger interpolated herein!
This prequel takes place on the alien planet Thundera before its destruction. The most obvious comparison would be Superman's home planet of Krypton, especially if you choose not to believe that Lion-O's original name Lionel was in reference to a train rather than the Big Blue Boy Scout. The presentation of Thundera does remind me a Silver Age Krypton or a more aggressively furry Space Wakanda. This is a bright and wonderful world, full of promise, at least from the perspective of our protagonist Cheetara.
Since Krypton has not been portrayed in this manner since the icy planet of the Christopher Reeve movie (the best Superman movie) usurped the utopian vision of the World of Krypton backups with their primary colors and many headbands, a more apt comparison is Troy before its fall. Thundera is prosperous and powerful due to its control of the endemic mineral power source Thundrainium. Troy is prosperous and powerful due to its control of access to the trade routes into the Black Sea; the beginning of the Iliad involves Agamemnon, king of men, who is besieging Troy, offending the priest of Apollo, "Goldman," father of "Goldie," from "Goldtown." The different Great Thunderans, Thundera's aristocrats (or Aristocats?) are based on different feline species. The original motivation for this was visual distinctiveness, a key quality in animation but also in epic, since all important Trojans and Greeks receive epithets which may not be applicable in the immediate circumstances, but nonetheless provide personal characteristics with which to imagine them. Cheetara, as one of these nobles, is an biased observer; in the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid, the perspectives of the Greeks and the Trojans differ markedly.
Both Thundera and Troy are treated not just as places, but as characters, and as characters, both are positioned as tragic heroes. According to Aristotle, a tragic hero must be at the height of their power, yet the conditions for the fall have already been set. This necessity is best illustrated in Oedipus Tyrannus, where the same qualities that made Oedipus a great king guaranteed his downfall. The causes of Thundera's future reckoning are not presented in Cheetara #1, but there is only one issue and Cheetara has a enormous privilege as a noble. Troy, on the other hand, despite being blessed by the gods, had broken its agreement with the divine builders of its current walls, as well as the laws of hospitality. Troy was the head of a Bronze Age empire, with subordinate princes such as Aeneas, Briseis' father Briseus, and Cassandra's suitor Coroebus. The Thunderan ruler is blind from the last war (details as yet unrevealed) and therefore unfit to rule, so he has selected an elite squadron of Great Thunderans to raise his only son as ruler of Thundera. Priam, king of Troy, has no such externally inflicted infirmity, but he is very old and he was the only surviving son of the last Trojan War. Perhaps one could connect king Claudius of Thundera's disability with Anchises, father of Aeneas, rather than Priam, due to the savior complex surrounding the child prince Lion-O. Priam has a squad of sons, royal cousins, and client kings on which he can rely.
Cheetara is framed as a warrior, a priestess, and a mother figure. The gender equity of the franchise and perhaps felines in general allow Cheetara to fight alongside the male Thunderans, a true Andromache. She accompanies the Regent Jaga to the temple of the ancestors. While it is true that the temple has an aesthetic between that of the Jedi and that of Black Panther, the facelessness of the ancestors provides a point of comparison. Many of the oldest idols in the Classical and pre-Classical times were not statues as we conceive them, with carefully defined faces, but rather sacred stones to which divinity and sometimes facial features were attributed. One can still visit the Aphrodite of Paphos, a stone where the characteristics of the goddess would suggest greater detail. The Thunderan Sword of Omens, which guarantees the safety of Thundera as long as it remains in the temple, is not just a Chekhov's gun, but also an easy analogue to the Palladium, a lumpy sacred statue which Odysseus had to remove from the Temple of Athena in the citadel of Troy before Troy could fall.
Cheetara's preference is holy orders, but martial duty takes precedence. Cheetara's physical gift of suitably themed speed, "swift-footed Cheetara," overshadows her psychic gift of precognition. This precognition, which in the service of the story involves the ineluctable doom, aligns her more with Cassandra than Achilles. Cassandra was cursed to speak the truth which none would believe. This conflict is a way to build tension when the outcome is already known - as in a tragedy. Cheetara is also the replacement mother for the young prince Lion-O, whose own mother is no longer around, although once again there are no details. Since Priam's wife Hecuba and Hector's wife Andromache are prominent in the Iliad, a more apt comparison is Anchises, who begot his son Aeneas on Aphrodite, a conspicuously absent mother. Lion-O may be special, but it remains to be seen if his bloodline is what passes for divine in the Thunderan cosmos. If Cheetara's maternal role aligns her with Andromache, then Lion-O is Astyanax, the doomed son of Hector, presumptive heir of Troy. Andromache's name means "she who fights like a man," while Astyanax means "lord of the city," both of which are applicable to the Thunderans.
Cheetara's story also involves romance. Tygra, a male Thundercat not to be confused with Marvel's Avenger, the engineer and builder of the core characters, is smitten with her. His obsession with ships is not only a narrative necessity, but also provides a link with Troy and the infamous thousand ships. The reality of noble families, however, demands arranged marriages, and Tygra and Cheetara is not one such. In this aspect also, there is a comparison between Cheetara and Cassandra. Cheetara is reluctant to accept her arranged match, else there would be no story. Cassandra also had a suitor, Coroebus, a prince of the outlying territories. His tale appears in the second book of Aeneid, when Aeneas is reluctantly recounting the fall of Troy to an insistent Dido at the Carthaginian court. Coroebus visited the city and was enchanted by Cassandra. Her brothers discouraged Coroebus, but Priam, king of Troy, could not pass up an opportunity for extra military assistance and allowed it. On the final night of Troy, Coroebus joined Aeneas' suicide squad and perished as Cassandra was carried off to be Agamemnon's booty. Tygra and Cheetara survive the fall of Thundera, so the parallel is not exact, but the number of similarity between Cheetara and Cassandra, as well as other women of Troy, is suggestive, Cheetara, as the girl Thundercat, must encompass far more roles than the more abundant male characters.
Although it is not possible to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Troy has provided an inspiration for the first look at prelapsarian Thundera, the multiple parallels condensed into a smaller cast and narrative structure suggest that it is worthwhile to use such an approach. The land, the king, the heir, and the royal retinue show points of similarity, but they also reveal potential differences. The interest in both lies in the path to the inevitable.
