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ThunderCats #3
ThunderCats, Vol. 3: Dogs of War
Featuring the popular characters from the 1980's cult-favorite animated series, Thundercats: Dogs of War is a fast-paced tale of hard-hitting action and duplicitous betrayals. Ten years after defeating the sadistic Mumm-Ra, an elderly Lion-O rules over a peaceful and prosperous Third Earth. But when the War Dogs, a savage race of canine killers, target his planet for subjugation, the leader of the Thundercats must go to his arch-nemesis and enter into an uneasy alliance. Now with the fate of their world at stake, the Thundercats and the Mutants must find a way to work together or face their ultimate annihilation.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
32 people want to read
About the author
John Layman
821 books588 followersJohn Steele Layman is an American comic book writer and letterer. Layman is most known for writing Chew, published by Image Comics.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 28, 2017
A more worthy successor to the cartoon than ThunderCats, Vol. 2: The Return. Everyone is more in character and the story is pretty decent. Booth's art is ok and does a decent job updating the look of the show.
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December 13, 20194 Hand That Feed You November 2003
June 1, 2023
Y ahora que? Gran final de arco pero abierto. Tendré que buscar la continuación
December 28, 2014
I gave this a try because I remembered liking the show as a kid and although even back then I thought some stuff was stupid, e.g. if Mumm-Ra is immortal why doesn't he just wait until the Thundercats die of old age?
But anyway, for all its flaws I am sure the series was never as dumb as this miniseries was. Sure the antagonists usually weren't any smarter but somewhat better developed, seriously even back then I was able to come up with some better storylines and character traits to make the villains more interesting; however it was never this stupid.
The comic has the same flaw the show had and it was magnified by the scope of the enemy. You see in the show, at least as far as I watched, they never went against intergalactic empires, so at least it made somewhat sense that the Thundercats nearly always won, however when they go against an empire that apparently conquered hundreds of planets and even has its own slave caste, who are basically plot devices and wow were they stupid, then the victory of the Thundercats doesn't say anything when the antagonists are so incompetent.
And they are the biggest flaw here, apart from all characters being bland, cliché and uninteresting, the antagonists are a joke. They are terrible enemies despite being an empire, which apparently the Thundercats didn't know off and had no means to look out for and… yeah pretty much everyone here is stupid. The plot is predictable, lacks any suspense and has several holes, the characters are shallow and stereotypical and quite often their actions make no sense and I have the feeling that they made this up as they went along (like with the explanation for the plan of the war dogs to capture the Thundercats) since it was pretty stupid.
And the biggest problem plot-wise is that they could have easily turned this into a good story, maybe even an actual saga, not just a claimed one like the cover states. They could have given the War dogs some more depth by actually being sympathetic to Jackalman, respectively him leaving the mutants permanently, because he is a canine like they are. But it's all tossed aside and there is nothing. The Thundercats are no different and I didn't care for any of them.
The writing as you can probably guess was really bad. The plot had one hole after the other, there were constant bad dog-puns (seriously "Doberlord" and "Diabaldor"), every chapter title was a stupid dog-pun and the whole make-up… an alarm that is a bark is stupid no matter what. Plus the pacing was often too slow and there are grammar and spelling mistakes an editor really should have noticed.
The main problem with the artwork is that it never manages to get emotions right or situations right, when the dogs were supposed to be angry they looked bored, retarded or like mutated pigs. With the humanoid Thundercats it really was no better. At least the main artist could have been good had he refrained from all these overdone male physiques (muscles and hair), while keeping the females skinny of course, and managed to portray emotions across. Not to mention that sometimes the art did not fit what was stated. So all in all, this will all go into the garbage where it belongs, there isn't even any artwork there that I could keep for future references. And as can be expected the covers were usually bland as well.
Not to mention that as a dog-person I reject this artwork. The dogs are obviously drawn after breeds leaving us with things like British Bulldog war dogs, whose life would be really miserable due to their inability to breath properly. Depicting several breaths who have no erect ears normally but only due to surgery is a similar problem. I needed enough suspension of disbelief to simply accept that these are talking humanoid dogs, but when they come with stuff like this and even legs too weak to support these dogs, it gets simply ridiculous. This was drawn by someone with no knowledge in dog anatomy and behavior.
In and, this was a bad comic, bad art, bad story, bad dialogues and if you don't read this comic, you have lost nothing. It is basically a waste of time.
But anyway, for all its flaws I am sure the series was never as dumb as this miniseries was. Sure the antagonists usually weren't any smarter but somewhat better developed, seriously even back then I was able to come up with some better storylines and character traits to make the villains more interesting; however it was never this stupid.
The comic has the same flaw the show had and it was magnified by the scope of the enemy. You see in the show, at least as far as I watched, they never went against intergalactic empires, so at least it made somewhat sense that the Thundercats nearly always won, however when they go against an empire that apparently conquered hundreds of planets and even has its own slave caste, who are basically plot devices and wow were they stupid, then the victory of the Thundercats doesn't say anything when the antagonists are so incompetent.
And they are the biggest flaw here, apart from all characters being bland, cliché and uninteresting, the antagonists are a joke. They are terrible enemies despite being an empire, which apparently the Thundercats didn't know off and had no means to look out for and… yeah pretty much everyone here is stupid. The plot is predictable, lacks any suspense and has several holes, the characters are shallow and stereotypical and quite often their actions make no sense and I have the feeling that they made this up as they went along (like with the explanation for the plan of the war dogs to capture the Thundercats) since it was pretty stupid.
And the biggest problem plot-wise is that they could have easily turned this into a good story, maybe even an actual saga, not just a claimed one like the cover states. They could have given the War dogs some more depth by actually being sympathetic to Jackalman, respectively him leaving the mutants permanently, because he is a canine like they are. But it's all tossed aside and there is nothing. The Thundercats are no different and I didn't care for any of them.
The writing as you can probably guess was really bad. The plot had one hole after the other, there were constant bad dog-puns (seriously "Doberlord" and "Diabaldor"), every chapter title was a stupid dog-pun and the whole make-up… an alarm that is a bark is stupid no matter what. Plus the pacing was often too slow and there are grammar and spelling mistakes an editor really should have noticed.
The main problem with the artwork is that it never manages to get emotions right or situations right, when the dogs were supposed to be angry they looked bored, retarded or like mutated pigs. With the humanoid Thundercats it really was no better. At least the main artist could have been good had he refrained from all these overdone male physiques (muscles and hair), while keeping the females skinny of course, and managed to portray emotions across. Not to mention that sometimes the art did not fit what was stated. So all in all, this will all go into the garbage where it belongs, there isn't even any artwork there that I could keep for future references. And as can be expected the covers were usually bland as well.
Not to mention that as a dog-person I reject this artwork. The dogs are obviously drawn after breeds leaving us with things like British Bulldog war dogs, whose life would be really miserable due to their inability to breath properly. Depicting several breaths who have no erect ears normally but only due to surgery is a similar problem. I needed enough suspension of disbelief to simply accept that these are talking humanoid dogs, but when they come with stuff like this and even legs too weak to support these dogs, it gets simply ridiculous. This was drawn by someone with no knowledge in dog anatomy and behavior.
In and, this was a bad comic, bad art, bad story, bad dialogues and if you don't read this comic, you have lost nothing. It is basically a waste of time.
January 3, 2023
It's pretty remarkable how hard it was to write a proper Thundercats comic in the early 2000s. After an overly simplistic introductory series, followed by a grimdark rape fantasy sequel, writer Ford Gilmore mercifully left the Thundercats franchise. The torch was passed to John Layman, and he was, actually, not total shit, which makes this the best Thundercats story up to this point.
In my opinion, Layman did a lot to undo the damage Gilmore inflicted on the franchise. I mean, it wasn't great comics, but Dogs of War was tonally a lot more in line with the cartoon than The Return, and not as insultingly simplistic as Reclaiming Thundera. And it did have some moments of humor and pathos, along with some of the cheesier, more whimsical elements one might see in a Thundercats story. (Although the Robear Berbils were dispatched pretty cruelly, but even that was less gratuitous than the previous series.)
I'm probably overselling Dogs of War by giving it 4 stars. It wasn't particularly deep, and it was a little silly, but honestly, look at the show it's based on. Besides, the bar was set so low for these Thundercats comics that I feel justified in doing so.
In my opinion, Layman did a lot to undo the damage Gilmore inflicted on the franchise. I mean, it wasn't great comics, but Dogs of War was tonally a lot more in line with the cartoon than The Return, and not as insultingly simplistic as Reclaiming Thundera. And it did have some moments of humor and pathos, along with some of the cheesier, more whimsical elements one might see in a Thundercats story. (Although the Robear Berbils were dispatched pretty cruelly, but even that was less gratuitous than the previous series.)
I'm probably overselling Dogs of War by giving it 4 stars. It wasn't particularly deep, and it was a little silly, but honestly, look at the show it's based on. Besides, the bar was set so low for these Thundercats comics that I feel justified in doing so.
April 22, 2016
This was a much more refreshing and enjoyable book series than the Volume 2 (which I enjoyed, but felt it a little more "extreme" than I would expect), at least up until the end.
The end felt rushed, a little extra corny, and like the writer didn't really know how to cap this off or had to reduce the total number of books or something.
Still, very fun. I could see this series as an actual Thundercats animated feature film. All in all, worth a read!
The end felt rushed, a little extra corny, and like the writer didn't really know how to cap this off or had to reduce the total number of books or something.
Still, very fun. I could see this series as an actual Thundercats animated feature film. All in all, worth a read!
January 7, 2023
Good story and some great artwork. My first Thundercats graphic novel and I think I'll read more.
September 9, 2014
This may be one of the dumbest things I've ever read.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews