(And Alan Moore was reacting against this industry turn since at least 1996, for what it's worth, returning to the mainstream to create material that he hoped would inject optimism and creativity into a moribund industry.)Īn adult Wilykat lives far off in the wilderness, allowing his friends to believe he's dead, while he attempts to make amends for his actions in The Return.
Darkening up beloved children's properties was, at one time, at least a novel concept, but what followed the release of titles like Watchmen and Miracleman was an onslaught of uninspired material that made the adventures of once aspirational heroes a miserable slog to experience. The miniseries read as an amateur attempt at imitating Alan Moore's worst excesses of the 1980s. Amidst the grimdark, the team's one-time kid sidekick Wilykat even betrayed his fellow ThunderCats, completing the heel turn required of all dark re-imaginings of children's characters. The story dramatized a hellish world, created during Lion-O's five-year stint on an interdimensional sabbatical, that had the evil Mumm-Ra ruling Thundera and keeping the ThunderCats as prisoners and slaves. ThunderCats: The Return, the second WildStorm ThunderCats miniseries, introduced death, torture, implied sexual assault, and betrayal into the previously all-ages friendly reality.
