Wildcats: Street Smart

Wildcats, Volume II #1

by Scott Lobdell, Joe Casey, Travis Charest

box F

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Comic Book, Superheroes

160 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2000

About the author

Scott Lobdell (born 1960) is an American comic book writer.

He is mostly known for his work throughout the 1990s on Marvel Comics' X-Men-related titles specifically Uncanny X-Men, the main title itself, and the spin-off series that he conceived with artist Chris Bachalo, Generation X. Generation X focused on a number of young mutant students who attempted to become superheroes in their own right at a separate school with the guidance of veteran X-related characters Banshee and Emma Frost. He also had writing stints on Marvel's Fantastic Four, Alpha Flight, and The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix mini-series with artist Gene Ha. He wrote the script to Stan Lee's Mosaic and an upcoming film from POW Entertainment featuring Ringo Starr. He also participated in the Marvel Comics and Image Comics (from Jim Lee's WildStorm) crossover mini-series WildC.A.T.s/X-Men.

Reviews

[Camille · Rating 3 out of 5]

great art (4 to 5) when charest is the penciller but atrocious story (1)

[Randy Lander · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing here is typical Lobdell, which is to say mediocre at best, but the art is phenomenal.

[Ümit Sevgi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Serinin ilk kitabı, çizimler çok güzel ama Venedik, Japonlar, uzaylılar, Amerikalılar, kavga dövüş derken anlam bütünlüğünù yakalamakta zorlandım.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have no idea what happened in this book. The story and exposition feel completely random. The books offers moments of brilliant art, but often deteriorates within a few pages.

[47Time · Rating 5 out of 5]

The light tone on all of the violence is lovely. This type of humor agrees with me. We need more stories like this, featuring characters with great fighting experience, but constant cool under deadly pressure.

The Wildcats are scattered. Cole tries to foil a weapons deal where the buyer turns out to be Spartan. The latter was tracking down weapons being sold by Kenyan. Cole reluctantly joins Spartan in hunting down Kenyan hefore his trade of Kherubim weapons leads to the destruction of the world.

Priscilla Kitaen and Jeremy Stone are taken to a lab where the latter's scientific experience is required to develop a cure for a man-made, weaponizable virus. Not only is the anti-virus completed, the good guys also survive an assault from the Bros. Death and then escape.

Though Cole refuses to admit it, a new team is slowly being formed. They are investigating more of Kenyan's dealings, now in a school for gifted children whose intellect is used to power a device built by the Daemonites called a psiclotron. They gain little more than a confirmation of their suspicions regarding Kenyan, so they must wait for his move.

The Wildcats disbanded after a mission where Zealot was believed to have died. She in fact survived and then went into hiding, though her former sisters of the Coda still want her dead for leaving the order. They don't survive the attempt at Zealot's life.

The Wildcats track down both Kenyan and a bacterial bomb he placed in New York City. Too bad they lose Kenyan in the end, as well as the chance to acquire the Kherubim armory.

[blair corbett · Rating 1 out of 5]

Travis Charest's art is lovely when he's not supplanted by a variety of capable but much less pretty back-up artists. The premise of the narrative is interesting but progresses in an extremely haphazard manner, in no way assisted by Lobdell's tin ear for dialogue. I only read this because I wanted to get all the background info before Joe Casey's run, and it was a passable but fairly poor use of time overall.

[Pawan Rai · Rating 4 out of 5]

This marks the start of Joe. Carey’s run on Wildcats and is a good new direction for the team. Finally the Wild C.A.T.s are acting like a covert action team (?).

[Koen Claeys · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s no doubt that Charest’s eye candy artwork is the selling point for most but I found the 6 stories in this relaunch of Wildcats to be a fun read. Was much, much better than anticipated.

[Gabriel James Maurice Rodriguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

writing is just horrible. Charest kills some poses tho

[Anchorpete · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is such a shame that DC incorporated (keyword: corporate) the Wildstorm universe into the DC universe. I know, more than often than not the Wildstorm books were poorly written, though they might have had good art. Of course, that could be said about most of the 90's Image stuff. There are some incredible books that Wildstorm put out, just before DC took over- Warren Ellis' run on Stormwatch, followed by his run on the Authority is better than pretty much anything the big two have put out in ten years. Mark Millar's run on the Authority is one of my favorite comic book runs, ever. The Wildcats story, that begins with this arc, and continues with, I think, two more trades, written by Joe Casey, is almost as good as that. This still has Scott Lobdell attached, so you get a lot of instances where characters are talking to themselves, to give us all of the exposition, and the book often feels like it is trying to be edgy, versus having a real edge. The next two trades (could be one) get far more philosophical. I really love this book, and it makes me wish Wildstorm kept going on, just as the top cow universe did.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I'm happy to see the names of both Scott Lobdell and Travis Charest adorning this book, I don't think anyone should get their hopes up. I won't argue that Charest's art is incredibly beautiful and dynamic, but of the six issues collected here he does the full art for issues one and two, then only about five pages of each issue afterwords. It's really unfortunate he couldn't keep up with a bi-monthly schedule even. Scott Lobdell does quite a nice job taking this book in a different direction. The main "team" of characters are only around each other in pairs, if that. Each hae gone their separate ways, yet their stories are still woven in to each other. I'd give the collection a higher rating if only Travis Charest could have stayed on the ball with the book full-time.

[Don · Rating 2 out of 5]

This could have been good, but it gets so much so very wrong. Lobdell clearly has a long-term vision in place, and the idea to have the book start out in the aftermath of the team's disbanding was a good one - but the story is really unclear. However, part of this lack of clarity is down to the artwork of Travis Charest, which is freaking gorgeous ... but can often sacrifice clear storytelling for an ambitious layout. (Plus, he only does about half the book, putting in progressively less of an appearance as the story goes on.)

A new beginning that had a hell of a lot of potential. Most of it wasted. I've heard great things about Joe Casey's run though, which immediately follows...

[Brad · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've heard good things about subsequent volumes of Wildcats, so I started here. The best thing I can say is that it's good to recalibrate your taste every once in a while by reading something uninspiring and listless. I still don't quite get what the Wildcats are doing, except not really being a team, and not knowing what the two warring alien races are doing. Right.

[Jdetrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're not familiar with WildCATS (I'm not) then this series won't make much sense to you. These six issues don't spend any real time filling the reader in, and the writing is awkward from more than just a plot standpoint. That being said, Travis Charest's art is gorgeous...or at least the people he draws are. That's not enough.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing in all these stories seems smart, but somehow the first few don't make any sense. Fortunately, it begins to cohere by the latter half of the volume, and the art is nice throughout. Still, a pretty mixed bag.

[David Miranda · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book starts out with a good premise and great art, but slowly devolves into a cliche action movie with a ridiculous ending that brings the story to a sudden halt. Other than for the Travis Charest art in half the book, I would not recommend.

[Jay Rox · Rating 3 out of 5]

we have a team of super hero's that are left with out a war to fight because there main nemesis have been dealt with or so we think. So it start's of with former hero's all goin on with there new mundane lives & slowly getting back in contact with each other threw a series of events so blaze up youre sattle's & mount up cus it look's like were getting the posse back together. well not really there's 2 story's goin on here one with Grifter & Spartan the other with Maul & Vodoo . its a nice jumping on point you get back round information on characters as you go & the art is nice a more realistic tone that fit's a more grounded world were there super powers are not really used but still plenty of action. I give this a - 6/10