Thunder! Thunder Thunder! ThunderCats !! HOOOOOOOOOOOO!

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Lion-O

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Snarf

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<a+class='autolink'+href='https://stars.ign.com/objects/111/111986.html'>Panthro</a>

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Welcome to the first installment of Thunder Thursdays here at IGN, your one-stop weekly shop for all things ThunderCats . Be sure to bookmark our Thunder Thursdays Hub Page , where you'll find new and exclusive information unveiled over the next few weeks about the Warner Brothers Animation reboot series, coming to Cartoon Network later this summer. To kick things off, IGN had a chance to talk to writer/producer Michael Jelenic (Batman: The Brave and the Bold) about the updated ThunderCats team."ThunderCats was different from a lot of the properties you saw in the 80s," Jelenic told us. "It wasn't a robot show. It wasn't a superhero show. It was an unusual mix between sci-fi and fantasy. And all that stuff that made it so successful is what we're really trying to bring to this new iteration."One of the big changes on the new series is that Thundera is not a separate planet from Third Earth, merely a dominant realm. Also, Lion-O will not be prematurely aged like he was on the original show due to the fact that the ThunderCats, as a race, will not have the sci-fi "tech" that they had when we first saw them decades ago, fleeing from their dying planet in spaceships."We might have taken some big departures story-wise, but we still latched onto what the themes of the show were," Jelenic told IGN. "A boy becoming king and growing into that role."Jelenic said that he wanted to make the very idea of mixing fantasy with sci-fi "a bigger deal." "On the old show the Cats used basic tech like staffs and swords and whips," Jelenic continued. "We wanted to explain more about how they're cast off from this fantasy world and introduced to a world of technology. So because of that, the ThunderCats are in a world of no technology when we start so we weren't going to have that opportunity to tell the story of Lion-O aging.""And even though we twisted it we're still keeping the same theme: a boy learning how to rule as a king. So if you cut out the artificial aging, the story still plays out in a similar fashion. It's very much his story and how he comes to handle himself. He doesn't know how to be king in the beginning and he makes a lot of poor decisions because he's brash."One of the things that was most memorable about the old Lion-O were his inner monologues of struggle ("Under…water…can't…breathe…"). "I think we won't do that," Jelenic laughed. "You know one of the things the old show did a lot was they sent Lion-O off alone. Him and Snarf would go off and then reunite with the others at the end. So there was probably no one to talk to when he was in trouble and in those situations."Speaking of Snarf, will he still be an annoying 70 year old woman trapped in the body of a cat? "Ah, the old grandmother cat who everyone loved to hate," Jelenic laughed. "No, it's a pretty different take on Snarf. He looks mostly the same as the old design, but now he's more like a house pet. So he doesn't really speak and he communicates with Lion-O in the same way your dog or your cat would communicate with you. So the annoyance factor has now decreased tenfold."I think we can all agree that one of the coolest characters on the old series was Pantho, who not only got to be the ninja, but also the tank driver and the engineer of all the tech. So he was pretty much three team members in one."Panthro's pretty similar in this one," Jelenic revealed. "He's the oldest character and he's the only one who's seen the larger world of Third Earth. He has a lot of skills and talents and experience that the other characters don't have. He's actually experienced technology before, while the other ThunderCats haven't. He knows things like the ThunderTank and when we see the ThunderTank he's going to be the guy driving it just like on the old show.""Panthro used to be a general in the king's army in Thundera. So he's the one always shaking his head when Lion-O wants to do something stupid on the military front. And on top of all that he's still the best fighter of the group. He's actually turned out to be a pretty cool character, just like on the old show."

Check out the new Tyrga, Cheetara Mumm-Ra and more on Page 2 as "Know Your Thundercats" continues!