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Thundercats: Hammerhand’s Revenge

October 4, 2004 | Trades

Thundercats: Hammerhand’s Revenge
Fiona Avery, Carlos D’Anda
Wildstorm/DC Comics
$22.95/$14.95 US (Paperback)
* (out of five)
Who says you can’t keep beating a dead horse?
Thundercats: Hammerhand’s Revenge, the fourth collection of tales of the warrior felines from Wildstorm, starts out with a very plausible plot and quickly turns into one giant Snarf joke.
For those not into Thundercats, which was a very popular afternoon cartoon series in the mid-1980s, Snarf used to be nursemaid to Lion-O, lord of the Thundercats. But after the king grew up, Snarf had a hard time letting go and continued to be the voice of caution, if occasionally cowardice in the group.
He also has a strange habit of saying his name over and over again and referring to himself in the third person e.g. “Snarf thinks that if we do that, we’ll get Snarfed.”
But anyone who has watched the show knows that the root of the character’s fears and annoyance is his love of his friends, not that he’s an obnoxious pain, like writer Fiona Avery would have you believe in this collection.
While the plot is supposed to revolve around rescuing Thundercat ally Hachiman from old nemesis Hammerhand the pirate, it quickly becomes about bashing Snarf.
There’s joke after joke about the way he talks, about his cowardice and, sadly, even about his flatulence. Resorting to fart jokes? That’s just sad.
And worst of all is a one-page internal monologue by Lion-O where he keeps denigrating Snarf and thinking of him as “stupid”. Anyone who has watch this cartoon knows that while Lion-O thinks Snarf can be overbearing, that he loves him like an uncle and would never refer to him in such harsh terms.
And one last note for Wildstorm: after three straight collections set after the Thundercats’ cartoon ends, this series appears to be set in the past. A timeline or explanation of continuity would be nice.