Something is killing the pampas cats of Northern Peru. This looks like a job for… The Jaguar! Major Spoilers review of The Jaguar #1 from Archie Comics awaits!
THE JAGUAR #1
Writer: Keryl Brown Ahmed
Artist: Tango
Colorist: Ellie Wright
Letterer: Jack Morelli
Editor: Jamie Lee Rotante
Publisher: Archie Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: February 21, 2024
Previously in The Jaguar: Something is killing the Pampas cats of Northern Peru. A group of zoologists has come together to investigate these mysterious slayings. They know the culprit is a bird of prey, but the method of killing is unlike any of the birds local to the region. It’s going to take someone with apex predator abilities to find out who’s causing these murders…someone like Ivette Velez, aka The Jaguar! But will the predator become the prey?
A HELMET OF DESTINY
The first page of this story gives us a good look a The Jaguar’s new costume, but also implies that she just died in combat. Thankfully, the old “record scratch, then flashback” routine is in effect, as we cut to Ivette Velez, riding with other zoologists in a rather janky bus to the area where a strange bird of prey has been attacking the native pampas cats. Even though her family is from Peru, Ivy is out of her element, speaking no Spanish and serving as an expert on feline behavior, rather than the bird specialties of the rest of the crew. Worse still, she’s hiding a big secret (and a big helmet), with her secret identity causing the rest of the team to distrust her. A young man named Samir reaches out to her, though, even hinting that he knows something about what’s in her duffle bag… but then, Yvette’s Jaguar senses pick up the scent of trouble on the horizon, and it’s spelled B-U-Z-Z-A-R-D.
REMINDS ME OF SOLO AVENGERS
The big positive of this issue is seeing Ivy in her first real solo outing as The Jaguar, including a recap of her origin, in which she is gifted with the helmet of Ai Apec by Ralph Hardy, the Silver Age Jaguar. Ivy was a member of the New Crusaders team during Archie Comics’ 2012 reboot, but this is the first time we get to spend an extended period with her as the protagonist. The art, like the recent one-shots featuring Darkling and Bob Phantom, remains simpler than many Big Two titles, channeling some of the classic Archie simplicity aesthetic. For this Jaguar, that means slightly fewer clean lines than normal, with artist Tango giving a little bit of jagged, claw-like angularity to everything. The use of The Buzzard, one of Archie Comics’ existing villains, is interesting here, especially since it almost sets him up as Jaguar’s “dark mirror” guy. Birds and cats, after all, just don’t get along. The biggest negative for me is that the story is so straightforward that the ending comes as a little bit of an anticlimax, but it does give us the blueprint for the use of Ivy as a modern Jaguar going forward.
BOTTOM LINE: THE SLOW BURN
A small, hopeful part of me hopes that The Jaguar #1 is part of a long game wherein Archie Comics carefully presents newly revamped versions of their superhero characters as a build to a successful relaunch (even though I admit it’s a longshot), but even if this remains the only time we see Ivy as Jaguar in solo action, it’s worth your four bucks, earning 3.5 out of 5 stars overall. The new look is dynamic, the character has potential, and the art is quite attractive, so what’s not to like?
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THE JAGUAR #1
The "new" Jaguar (who is actually more than a decade old now) gets her first real focal story, a villain all her own, and an interesting niche in Archie's intermittent superhero universe.
It's nicely done.
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Writing7
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Art7
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Coloring7
Once upon a time, there was a young nerd from the Midwest, who loved Matter-Eater Lad and the McKenzie Brothers... If pop culture were a maze, Matthew would be the Minotaur at its center. Were it a mall, he'd be the Food Court. Were it a parking lot, he’d be the distant Cart Corral where the weird kids gather to smoke, but that’s not important right now... Matthew enjoys body surfing (so long as the bodies are fresh), writing in the third person, and dark-eyed women. Amongst his weaponry are such diverse elements as: Fear! Surprise! Ruthless efficiency! An almost fanatical devotion to pop culture! And a nice red uniform.