By: Chuck Dixon (writer), Alex Cal (breakdowns), Beni Lobel (finishes), J. Brown (colors), Neil Uyetake (letters), Carlos Guzman (assistant editor) and John Barber (editor)
The Story: As Cobra is taking over the small country, Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow are going to have some business together.
Review: I honestly wasn’t planning to review this issue. Last week I reviewed GI Joe #10 and was a little hard on the art by Axel Cal. I knew that he was also doing the art on this issue and since here at WCBR we “sign up” for comics to review early in the week, I didn’t want to review something that I knew probably would be negative on. See…..I’m not a total creep. 🙂
But, you know what, this issue was a lot better and I felt that Alex deserved a bit of a pat on the back after I was hard on him last week. There are some artistic changes on this issue…. Namely, Cal has an inker on this issue. But, the effect is that suddenly this comic is perfectly fine from an art standpoint. It isn’t a comic that I want to be buried with me (or anything like that), but this will do just fine. I can see the action now! That is such a huge thing in a comic like Snake Eyes… I want to be able to tell how characters get into the positions they are in and how they threw that punch or kick.
It’s also worth mentioning that GI Joe comics are hard to draw. For one thing, you’ve got to get all of the equipment correct. Not only does that mean drawing accurate firearms which most comic artists barely bother with, but you also have to get all the GI Joe toys correct and make them look real. That’s not easy. Even the characters look like a pain in the butt to draw: Snake Eyes has that funky visor with six lines (and fanboys will complain if there are 5 lines), and pouches and kneepads. These characters are harder to draw than typical superheroes which are mostly nudes with costumes colored onto them.
Perhaps it helps on a comic like this to have an inker? When you think about it, it is a tall order to (a) layout the page, (b) decide what to draw in the panels to tell the story and (c) arrange all the detailed elements on the page, and then have to ink it yourself. So, maybe IDW would have better luck to consistently use a separate inker? It might just be too much work for one artist unless they have A LOT of lead time.
So, the upshot is that this book looks a lot better than the last few Joe books and if IDW can stick with this formula, they might have some success.
Conclusion: The story is pretty straightforward, but the art is a big improvement from last issue. These are difficult issues to draw and the addition of a separate inker seems to have helped the final product.
Grade: B-
-Dean Stell
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