Pre-Joe Casey Comics: Wildcats #3

[Continuing my look at Wildcats before Joe Casey took over the writing chores. Courage, gentle reader... COURAGE!. New posts Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.]

The second volume of Wildcats was bimonthly and was announced, like, twelve years before it began and, yet, Travis Charest needed help completing issue three. He did two issues and 15 more pages before needing another artist to finish the job. Rob Liefeld wishes he was this fucking slow.

And it's not like Travis Charest's work is as amazing as anyone ever likes to say it is. Oh, it's pretty, sure thing, but he can't tell a story to save his life. On the first page, some little kid has a problem with his ice cream cone and I can't tell what the fuck the problem is. All I see is a cone with no ice cream. Did it fall off? Did Grifter (the ice cream man) not give him much ice cream? What the fuck is going on here and why should I care?

The plot of this issue involves the Wildcats (Grifter, Emp, Spartan and Noir) taking on some elite school where the headmaster is a pervy evil-doer and his secretary is an old bitch of an android. Spartan and Emp pose as a mother and daughter, but we don't know it's them yet despite the fact that Spartan dressed in clothes the exact same colour as his uniform, because that's a clever way of telling us, the readers of this comic, that it's actually Spartan in disguise!

Which makes the scene where pervy ol' headmaster pulls out his magical crystal and the mom is all "I'm going to fuck you in front of my daughter, master!" extra creepy, because not only is that not a human... it's not even a woman! Joke's on you, pervy headmaster! That's what you get for using your magic crystal to force women to sleep with you!

But, oh NO! Instead of violating this seemingly-hapless soccer mom right there and then, he feels the need to show off the secret labyrinth below the school and the cool neato alien weapons he's got stored for Kenyan... "THE MAGIC 'K' WORD." Well, he called down the thunder and now he's got it! Yeah, Emp and Spartan totally kill him while Grifter and Noir kill the android secretary.

This issue does actually move the plot forward as the team (or, not-team as Grifter keeps insisting) takes down one of Kenyan's bitches. Go, Wildcats!

But, don't forget the weird pervy stuff or the fantastic homophobia Grifter shows while talking to Noir.

And, damn you, Travis Charest... because you couldn't finish the issue, I now have Carlos D'anda's drawing of Spartan in women's clothing in my head... FOREVER! At least Charest kept him looking like a woman, while D'anda has him magically transform back into the guy we all know and love (but not in that way).

Shit, I can't even write about these issues seriously. Best thing to do is just lie back and think of Joe Casey... okay, that's creepy. Forget I said that.

Tomorrow: this week in comics with the Sunday Open!