4.0 out of 5 stars
Better Than It Should Have Been, April 8, 2010
After Image cancelled the first series of Wildcats with issue #50 and Wildstorm studios was sold to rival giant DC, the Wildcats received a second series which began running in 1999. "Street Smart" collects the first six issues of what would eventually be a twenty-eight issue series.
Writer Scott Lobdell (with Joe Casey co-plotting) and artist Travis Charest were brought in and tasked with giving the series a new direction.
What Lobdell decides to do is take the characters into a more 'real-world' type of scenario. There isn't a lot of 'superhero-ing' going on within these pages. Sure, there are still some Daemonite-based shenanigans, and Spartan still occasionally takes to the air and fires blasts of energy, but mainly what we see are guns, hand to hand combat, arms dealing...more of a black-ops than superhero vein.
Lobdell gives Grifter and Spartan the most page time. Zealot and Emp are around, but they (Zealot especially) aren't too large of factors. Voodoo and Maul (now living together in Florida) have issue #2 dedicated to them and Lobdell begins a storyline with the two that is definitely going somewhere but, it's the only time we see anything of it in these six issues. This is unfortunate as it is probably the most interesting and fresh story element in the collection.
The main plotline of the trade concerns a new villain, Kenyan, who has gotten his hands on the Haikyatu Armory, an arsenal of weapons that the Kherubims brought with them when they originally came to Earth. Emp, with Spartan in tow, recruits Grifter and French arms dealer Noir into helping him track down Kenyan. Other threads float in and out, but that's the nuts and bolts of it.
Lobdell's issues careen in quality, often quite massively. The first two issues are excellent, while 3, 4, and 5 decline in quality with each passing issue. The final issue of the trade is definitely the worst, being, literally, one massive chase scene that adds nothing to the overall story and dumps the idea of having any sort of resolution to the arc. Likewise, the dialogue is very hit or miss. Sometimes it is funny and spot-on, while at other times it seems very amateurish.
I suppose the overall problem with the writing is that it's essentially all set-up. Lobdell seems to have some idea for a greater plan here, but as he leaves the series with issue #7, very few of the elements introduced here ever conclude in a satisfactory way.
The art in the book is a wildly different story.
A little more than half the trade is handled by Travis Charest (to be exact, he does all of issues #1, and #2, about 70% of #3, 50% of #4, and 30% of #6). His art is, simply, STUNNING. It looks amazing. Charest has grown astoundingly since his early days on the first series of Wildcats. If you compare the two, well, it's an absolutely incredible evolution. It's pretty much alone worth the price of the book. With the amount of detail and precision shown in Charest's work here, it's no wonder that it takes him forever to finish anything.
Issue #5 is handled by Bryan Hitch, who would later go on to find fame with his runs on 'The Authority' and 'The Ultimates'. His single issue contribution to the book looks good.
Overall, the collection is surprisingly effective at rebooting the Wildcats. Though the story quickly devolves in quality throughout these six issues, it's entertaining enough to not feel like a waste while the artwork more than effectively takes up any slack.
While not great, it's better than it should be.
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9 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Rip Off, November 2, 2000
This review is from: Street Smart (Wildc.A.Ts) (Hardcover)
Normally, I wouldn't have considered buying a WildCATS book, but since this particular one advertised that it had art by Travis Charest, I couldn't resist. The guy it talented!
Of course, it turns out only two and a half out of five (or is it six?) of the stories in the book are drawn by 'ol Travis, the rest being done by fill in artists who have no where nears the same level of talent.
That, and if you actually bother to read the stories you'll find that the compilation seems pointless as nothing is resolved.
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