If I had a nickel for every time Andrew Wheeler had written a fantastic comic about a sexy animal-themed gentleman thief, I’d only have two nickels but it’s strange that it’s happened twice. The newer of the two (and the focus of this particular review) is Cat Fight, a globe-trotting man-on-the-run thriller following Felix–the thieving grandson of a retired cat burglar. Sometimes, Cat Fight’s similarities to Wheeler’s previous gentleman thief comic, Sins of the Black Flamingo, are hard to ignore. For example, both first issues have masquerade ball settings. Nonetheless, these similarities don’t stop Cat Fight from feeling unique. Solicits for future issues, featuring Felix on the run across train carriages and through major cities, also make it clear that Cat Fight has no intention of staying in any one place for long.
From page one, Cat Fight charms and entertains. Wheeler’s script is incredibly playful, laying the cat puns (e.g. characters named Felix, Kitty, and Schrodinger) and cat-themed imagery (e.g. a lion statue, cat-shaped mask, and literal cats) on thick. The front cover, showing Felix’s grandmother Kitty sitting on a rattan peacock chair calls to mind multiple Black feline-inspired icons from the 1960s, too: Black Panther Party leader Huey Newton and Eartha Kitt’s television portrayal of Catwoman. While there’s certainly a strong sense of social consciousness to this series, as with some of Wheeler’s work, it remains unclear if the visual reference to the Black Panthers will go more than pun-deep. As in Wheeler’s other work, character dynamics feel messy and full of heart.
Ilias Kyriazis’ artwork is fresh and inventive, using white silhouettes of birds and human figures extending from the page’s gutters to frame compositions. Sometimes Kyriazis pushes the comic form even further, getting rid of panels almost entirely and relying on lines of action to guide the eye through the page (and helped along by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou’s speech bubble placement). Auguste’s crisp, dark inks and Dennis Yatras’ rich colors work in perfect harmony with Kyriazis’ line art to create sleek, stylish pages with a momentum that builds to the point of breathlessness. And when the momentum can build no further, the comic leaves us to dangle on the edge of a cliff, waiting until next month to whisk us away to somewhere new.
