By: Chuck Dixon (writer), Casey Maloney (pencils), Juan Castro & Chris Dreier (inks), Simon Gough & Romulo Fajardo, Jr. (colors), Neil Uyetake (letters) & Carlos Guzman & John Barber (editors)
The Story: Snake-Eyes and Duke try to find a cure for a Cobra engineered bioweapon.
Four Things:
1. Generally been enjoying GI Joe comics recently. – I don’t know how this happened. I read some of the old Marvel GI Joe series when I was a kid and had enjoyed the GI Joe/Cobra series from IDW featuring Chuckles as a spy within Cobra. But, something clicked in me that I needed to read this Cobra Civil War series a few weeks ago and via the beauty of digital comics I was able to mainline the whole story in a week or so. And, it’s a really good and strong story. There’s one big caveat with the books that I’ll get into below, but the storyline behind the GI Joe books is pretty hot.
2. Snake Eyes busting the place up. – This story is pretty basic: Cobra has released a bioweapon and Duke has also been infected. So, Snake Eyes and Duke go charging into the Cobra lab facility to find the cure. Duke has some kind of armored hazmat suit that’s kinda cool. And they fight all kinds of Cobra troops with Snake Eyes being all bad ass, and that’ definitely cool. There really isn’t a whole lot of subtlety to a comic like this and there are plot holes galore (what happens to the Vipers if they shoot Duke’s suit and the virus spills out?), but it is exciting to read. Duke is in really bad shape and IDW has demonstrated that they’re not afraid of death. A LOT of GI Joe’s have been killed recently and a few “named” Cobra guys too. So, this issue isn’t something you can read thinking, “Oh sure…..Duke will be fine in the end because it can’t end any other way.” That threat of DEATH adds some weight to these scenes of Snake Eyes fighting all these Hasbro-toy-line inspired Cobra bad guys.
3. The art is pretty challenging. – There isn’t much redeeming about this art. This isn’t just a case where I’m being an art snob and wanting everything to look like it was illustrated by Top 10 artist…..it’s that half the time I couldn’t really tell what was going on. The storytelling is way too disjointed and that’s problem that is pervading the GI Joe books right now. Gotta do better on the storytelling. It really makes you appreciate that storytelling isn’t a given in comic books. IDW really owes the property better. On the other hand, even an art snob like me can enjoy this comic because I don’t expect a GI Joe comic to have great art. In this case it really is about the “story” and as I mentioned above, this issue is all about whether Duke will die or not.
4. Unclear where this happens in the whole Cobra Civil War timeline. – Maybe it’s because I mainlined the other Cobra Civil War issues and that’s ~21 issues spread among GI Joe, Cobra and Snake Eyes, but I don’t know where this story fits. All throughout this storyline, the Snake Eyes issues have been somewhat off to the side, but it would be nice to know if this is before or after the new Cobra Commander has been named.
Conclusion: This is a comic that succeeds mainly due to the editorial decisions that IDW has made that major characters CAN die. So, as readers, we’re legitimately worried about Duke. And, it’s always fun to watch Snake Eyes killing a ton of Vipers! These things help the comic to overcome some problematic art (but just barely). This isn’t a good comic, but it does have it’s redeeming features.
Jumping on Point?: – No way. You should either go back to issue #6 (which is the beginning of this Snake Eyes/Duke story) OR read the whole Cobra Civil War (which is great) OR just wait until the Cobra Command storyline starts in a month or so.
Grade: D+
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion