ThunderCats #1

History

Dynamite announced the title at New York Comic Con in October 2023 as the lead entry in a broad new licensing deal struck with Warner Bros. Discovery — a deal notable for giving an independent publisher simultaneous access to both Disney and Warner Bros. animated properties. Writer Declan Shalvey (known for his Moon Knight run and Alien work at Marvel) and artist Drew Moss (Gargoyles: Dark Ages, Copperhead) were named as the creative team alongside letterer Jeff Eckleberry, with editor Nate Cosby overseeing the project; both Shalvey and Moss publicly identified themselves as childhood fans of the franchise. The book arrived on February 7, 2024, set in 'the earliest days on Third Earth,' a conscious decision to explore story territory the original animated series largely skipped over rather than retread the cartoon beat-for-beat. Previous holders of the ThunderCats comics license included Marvel Comics via its Star imprint in the 1980s and Wildstorm (a DC imprint), which published a well-regarded series of titles in the early 2000s overseen by Jim Lee.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published February 7, 2024 by Dynamite Entertainment; written by Declan Shalvey, art by Drew Moss, lettering by Jeff Eckleberry.
• First issue of Dynamite's new ongoing ThunderCats series, the flagship title of a multi-year licensing deal with Warner Bros. Discovery that also encompassed The Flintstones, The Powerpuff Girls, Space Ghost, and Jonny Quest, among others.
• The series was announced at New York Comic Con in October 2023, with character designs by Drew Moss — covering Lion-O, Panthro, Cheetara, Tygra, WilyKat, WilyKit, both forms of Mumm-Ra, and Slithe — revealed in the November 2023 Previews catalog.
• The issue dramatises an explicit malfunction in Lion-O's Stasis Pod as the cause of his aging to adulthood during the flight from Thundera — a detail only vaguely implied in the original 1985 animated series — establishing him as a child's mind in an adult body, a tension the comic foregrounds more deliberately than its source material.
• The story opens on Third Earth with the ThunderCats already arrived, compressing the animated 'Exodus' episode into a single opening spread, before moving into Lion-O's on-planet training under Panthro (reconceived here as his general rather than mentor) and his first wielding of the Sword of Omens in battle against the Mutants.
• Cover A was painted by David Nakayama; additional covers for the issue were provided by Lucio Parrillo, Declan Shalvey, Jae Lee & June Chung, Ivan Tao, and a Rob Liefeld FOC variant, with foil, virgin, and blank Authentix editions also available — over a dozen distinct covers in total.
• Pre-orders reportedly reached 170,000 copies before the Final Order Cutoff, making it the highest-selling first issue in Dynamite Entertainment's publishing history.
• The series went on to run for at least ten issues before transitioning into a larger crossover event structure, and directly inspired spinoff titles including ThunderCats: Cheetara (2024, by Soo Lee and Domenico Carbone) and the one-shot ThunderCats: Apex, as well as the related SilverHawks ongoing series announced at NYCC 2024.

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