“The Jaguar” makes a return in a special Archie Comics one-shot!
Some Spoilers Ahead!
Cover by Maria Laura Sanapo & Ellie WrightWritten by Keryl Brown Ahmed
Illustrated by Tango
Colored by Ellie Wright
Lettered by Jack MorelliArchie Comics brings back a superhero from an era long passed with a new character picking up the mantle of The Jaguar. After a short-lived solo series, and appearing in back stories within several other Archie publications in the 1960s, the character saw a brief resurgence in the 1980s and then in the early 1990s, briefly once again, under the DC Comics’s Impact banner, and again in 2012 at Archie Comics once more. Now, a young woman named Ivette has been chosen by fate to be The Jaguar.
Visiting Peru for the first time as part of a scientific expedition, she is also in pursuit of learning more about her past and her heritage. The script by writer Keryl Brown Ahmed moves at quite the clip, attempting to give readers a little bit of everything, in one standard length issue. We understand who Ivette is almost immediately. A young woman from the United States, of Peruvian descent. She has never visited the home country of her parents, doesn’t speak Spanish, and outside of her skin color, feels completely out of place in her surroundings. It’s a classic way to kick of a story, keep someone sympathetic who feels just as unsure of their position as we do as new readers. So we are this journey with them. It works at first, except that Ivette is harboring quite the secret and once things get moving, this issue simply isn’t big enough to handle the amount of story that Ahmed is looking to tell. Through visions and flashbacks, we are thrown into Ivette’s past just as harshly as she seems to be. These cutaways to tell backstory are poorly handled and are more than jarring, they almost feel like the comic was put together in the wrong order.
The artwork by Tango with colors by Ellie Wright is completely solid. A few moments really worked for me, but on the whole, it is very similar to the majority of other superhero or fantasy comics hitting shelves every week. It’s a good looking book, so I don’t mean to knock it, I simply wish there was more to it to really get it sticking its head out above the pack. The color work does pack a bit of a punch as the comic goes on, which is nice to see.
Overall, Ivette’s story is very similar to many other superheroes, so much so that this should be an exceedingly easy story to tell. But with limited page space, and the need to somehow tie this story back to the original Jaguar, Ralph Hardy, all while forming a new narrative; it simply comes off as a bit sloppy. Which is unfortunate, because this could be a fun new direction for Archie Comics. They’ve dabbled in so many new versions of the Archie character and his expanded stories and spin-offs, they should take advantage of rebooting other characters they own. This could be a good one and since this seems to be a one-shot comic, I can only assume they released this to test the waters. People will always like superheroes and having another young woman of color picking up the mantle could get a whole new set of eyes on a new series. This is the second time Archie Comics has attempted to put Ivette in the spotlight as The Jaguar, the last time being part of the New Crusaders in 2012, but that iteration went nowhere until now with Ahmed looking to revive Ivette (Ivy) Velez and her superhero alter ego. However, this comic almost relies too much on hoping that you read Ivette’s last appearances twelve years ago, and shoehorns her taking on the mantle directly from Ralph as one of the flashbacks.
Once we get past the shaky retelling of origins and visions, the mystery at hand is pretty fun and intruiging. Somewhere between an “Indiana Jones” or “Hellboy” adventure, an unseen threat is killing off the local Pampas cat population. A small, but deadly breed of wild cat is an endangered species and Ivette is meeting other animal scientists to see what could be causing these unexplained deaths. The action is exciting, and moves at a pace that will keep readers engaged and almost needing to go back to look at the dialogue they missed. Kickass fighting, supernatural beings, and bird-themed supervillains take up the rest of the pages and it does make for a fairly enjoyable time, but its uneven nature at the start was almost giving me a headache. Fans of pulp heroes and similar comics will definitely find stuff to enjoy throughout, but as it stands, I don’t see this one-shot compelling the masses to clamor for more “The Jaguar.” That said, Archie Comics should get a few more tries at it, to iron things out, but let’s keep it relatively soon instead of skipping decades until the next issue releases.
Final Verdict: 5.5, “The Jaguar” #1 is a fun return to a cult pulp hero series, but it is held back by its inability to balance between being a new story and a continuation of past comics.