Marvel Meow is a charming look at some peaceful, cute, and funny moments that happen when Marvels’ suite of heroes and villains spend some time with cats. It captures some rare quiet moments with the characters, drawing out their softer, more playful sides. Which can be unexpected when dealing with Venom or Taskmaster, honestly, but it adds some fun depth to them while telling many delightful stories without saying a word.
Chewie, Captain Marvel’s cat, has gotten loose in the Marvel Universe, aiming to do what cats do when they’re loose and allowed to do whatever they want. Which, as it turns out, is drawing out some wonderful moments of care and chaos from the various characters.
The work is a continual slew of surprising situations told in only a few panels. How would a cat deal with Ghost Rider’s Penance Stare? What does a cat do with the guilt it feels over a life of spilling dishes, scratching open cat food bags, and ripping up toilet paper? How does Daredevil cope with a cat getting into some of his fighting tools? What kind of mess can a cat cause in Deadpool’s hideout? The work offers many different quick stories that ask these kinds of questions, creating fun narratives that usually only last a page or two.
There’s an appeal to these kind of small moments throughout Marvel Meow. While most of the time, we see these heroes and villains squaring off in world-threatening conflicts or even in troubling personal battles, I feel it’s rare to see these almost-mundane times. The moments where they’re dealing with a pet misbehaving, or simply drawing support from the silly cat that’s keeping them company. These moments are so utterly normal that they ground the characters a little bit, and show off a side we rarely get to see. Finding out that certain Marvel characters really get along well with cats also makes them even more appealing. Grab the book when it’s out and look at the Wolverine entry if you doubt me.
Their interactions with the cats also show off more of their character. Having Taskmaster train his cat to fight isn’t exactly surprising or teaching us anything new about them, but you get to see that even killers can have a softness to them. Watching Venom leap to a cat’s defense (maybe just because the cat is already fighting with Carnage) made for what felt like a private look into the character’s heart. These various stories dig up different sides of these famous heroes and villains and show you something new about them.
The art style is just as playful as the stories themselves. Marvel Meow has a cute visual style, but not one that overwhelms the menace and power of its characters. You still get a sense of the X-Men’s strength, or the horror of Galactus bringing his power to bear on Thanos, but the art style still brings a sort of adorable nature to the events. Possibly because Thanos uses the Infinity Gauntlet to change his enemies into cats. Which is pretty dang cute in and of itself. My point is that the characters feel preserved as powerful beings, but adorable cats seem right at home alongside them.
Marvel Meow is a brief, but delightful look at the Marvel universe through the characters’ connections to felines. Through this, it tells some quiet, personal stories about them, drawing out compassion or kindness from the wicked and showing that human spirit that makes the heroes who they are. It’s quiet in places, and funny in many others, offering a light, but appealing book of stories that takes the characters to places the comics and movies rarely do.
Marvel Meow is now available.
