Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League #2 review

1 week ago 10

The first issue of Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League did a great job hooking the reader (a.k.a yours truly) in well and truly. An interesting premise, combined with decent reasoning and character work, did a lot of heavy lifting in keeping my interest. Add on some amazing art from Nicola Scott and Anette Kwok and this series has my interest.

Does #2 maintain the momentum?

So I Hear You’re Putting a Team Together…

If the first issue was the proposal of the heist, the second issue was the recruitment of the crew. Cheetah is upfront as to why she isn’t recruiting any A-Listers…namely the fact that any team-up between them ends up with a knife in someone’s back. Also, I am happy to note that Jade seems to be aware of Cheetah’s issues with Urzkartaga, so I think she knows the reason behind the heist. Rucka’s done a fantastic job in portraying the relationship between these women, so I’d hate to see a rather cliched third-act misunderstanding tear them apart for no reason apart from cheap drama. Still, the man has given me no reason to doubt him so far, and thus I will keep my faith in him.

As for the team, we have three (or four, depending how you count Teekl and Klarion as separate; I like to think of them as a package deal) characters who can charitably be called C-List at best. The first is Hazard, a probability tweaking character whose main claim to fame is being created by Todd McFarlane. Luckily she also has some tech manipulation abilities as well courtesy of Absolute Power so she ticks off that particular box. The next guy(s) is the aforementioned Klarion and Teekl, whom Cheetah recruits by appealing to his love of magical secrets, which there are plenty of in the Watchtower. Finally, we have a new character for muscle, a 25-year-old girl dressed in a pink cat hoodie and matching hair. And if you think that sounds underwhelming, well dear reader you haven’t been…I was going to say “reading enough comics”, but I can go as far as to say “not consumed any media in the last 100 years.” Still, she does seem to be more of a freedom fighter type, so we may see some moral quandaries pop up from her side.

I can see some people being disappointed that this issue focuses on recruitment and not much else. However, this issue is paced well and we are only a third into the overall series. Again this is a series focused on character work, which may not appeal to readers who prefer action over talking. But, there’s plenty of books that focus on mindless action, so this book taking the time to flesh out its cast (and cats) really gives us a reason to care for these characters.

Nicola Scott kills it on this book with the art, aided and abetted by Annette Kwok on colors. However, I want to highlight letterer Troy Peteri for a moment. As mentioned previously, this is a dialogue heavy book, with plenty of instances of standing around and talking. Peteri does an amazing job fitting what I can assume are pages upon pages of dialogue in a neat enough fashion so that the text doesn’t clutter the pages. Again, this is especially noteworthy for this book.

Recommended If

You love lesser known characters taking the spotlight.
You love women supporting women.
You don’t mind a dialogue heavy book that places less focus on the action.

Overall

Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League #2 does a fantastic job building on the foundation left by the first issue. We get to meet the rest of the cast in this issue, with decent reasoning given as to why they are here. Let’s hope the rest of the series manages to keep delivering.

Score: 9/10

Disclaimer: DC Comics provided advance copies of this issue for review purposes.

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