It’s time to hunt some monsters!
Creative Staff:
Story: Marguerite Bennett
Art: Mirka Andolfo
Colors: J. Nanjan
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
The Bombshells study the hieroglyphics covering the mechanical beasts and discover a horrifying truth.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the three-part arcs blending together for the most part these days, outside of things involving the Batgirls, we get a new three-part title this time around with “Big Cats,” which essentially continues on from the previous arc that involved Vixen and the unearthing of mechanical beasts of yore. Bennett had a lot of fun introducing Vixen and tying things with Hitler as she did and then rolling around to try and put Renee in her place as well. With this installment, Bennett works with Mirka Andolfo once again and that’s certainly a delight through and through with the look of the book – especially under Nanjan’s color work. It’ll be a hellish day if I’m ever forced to pick my favorite artist of this series because they’re all so very talented and bring their own uniqueness to their respective chapters while adhering to the overall series look.
This installment feels a little all over the map, but not in a bad kind of way. The initial fight with the mechanilca beasts ends quickly enough with Cheetah heading off with the beasts as the whole thing kind of just sputters out. That puts our heroes in a position of licking their wounds – not quite literally – and trying to figure out why these beasts are so different. It’s good to see Sheira with a purpose here beyond being wonderfully upbeat and outgoing and she delivers in a big way when she gears up the whole crew toward the end. Giving Kate a new bat that she calls “hot sauce” is hil-arious, however. These are very fun little bits but it’s also tinged with some darker moments, notably with Mari using her abilities to try and coax a few answers out of Kate about the darkness within her. It’s a nicely creative approach to how she uses her powers and one that doesn’t quite get all the way through since Kate’s a bit aware of how all this works.
One of the best moments, however, is when Sheira pulls back the curtain to reveal their transportation as they’re going to obviously continue going after these beasts and Cheetah since she’s tied to the enemy. This is your standard variant on the Batmobile but I love how Vixen tries to paint it without an animal design and everyone bonds it to themselves. I still think Questionmobile is the best! It’s a nice bit of levity before it shifts to dealing with Cheetah and her communication with the mechanical beasts in how they see a use for her in establishing themselves in the present and gaining new followers. It’s the cementing of who Cheetah is at this point as well as she takes the name more formally and completes her descent, all while tying us back to who she’s currently working for. Bad pennies everywhere these days!
In Summary:
Bombshells gets things moving a bit more with this arc involving Mari and her land and it’s working pretty well overall. It’s the kind of piece that I know will flow better when I read it in full when it’s done since it’s working through some origin style pieces for Cheetah. This chapter does some good character interaction with our leading characters as they recover, re-equip up, and get moving to try and figure out what’s going on. More hints are are here and I’m definitely interested to see where these mechanical beast gods will fit into things and how much of a role Cheetah will have. As with past issues, Mirka Andolfo has such a great sense of character design here that combined with the bold colors just gives it an old school feeling with modern sensibilities. It simply delights me when I hit that first page to see these designs come into view and there’s a lot to like throughout. Can’t wait for me.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: September 16th, 2016
MSRP: $0.99
