By: Chuck Dixon (writer), Paul Gulacy (pencils), Aburtov & Grafikslava (colors), Shawn Lee (letters)
The Story: Now that most of the Joes are out in the open, someone still has to do the dirty, secret missions.
Review: This issue was a bit of a disappointment. The sorrow starts with the art. This just isn’t good enough. I was really excited when I saw that Paul Gulacy would be drawing this series. Gulacy isn’t my favorite artist, but there’s no question that he is highly competent; the man has had an almost 40 year history in comic art and has drawn just about everything. This issue is NOT one of his higher points. I’m really not sure what happened with the art in this issue. There are panels here and there that look like classic Gulacy, but there are also a LOT of rough images. I wonder if IDW just didn’t pay him much and he drew it in a hurry? I’ve heard rumors about what IDW pays their artists (~$40/page) and it’s really cheap….certainly not something a person could pay the rent with. I also noted that Gulacy is only credited as a “penciller” and that no inker is credited. If these are rough pencils (perhaps done in a hurry) where all the “inking” was added via Photoshop contrast adjustments and the spot blacks and shading by the colorists, that would explain a lot of the rough looking faces and inconsistency of the comic. Ultimately, all these potential excuses don’t matter: Gulacy’s name is listed and the comic costs $3.99.
Gosh, all I want is a Joe book where someone is drawing an attractive Baroness! Is that too much to ask?
From a story standpoint, those who have enjoyed Chuck Dixon’s long run on the Joe books will be right at home. It’s all the same stuff: decompressed and lots of references to military equipment. The basic premise of this series seems to be that even though the Joes are now out in public (in the main GI Joe book by Fred Van Lente), someone still has to do the “special missions” and that “someone” is to be Scarlet. That’s a fine concept for the series and I can get behind it. This initial issue is a little decompressed and mostly consists of a firefight between Scarlet’s team and some bad guys in Libya. With better art, this could have been a really snappy issue, but – as mentioned above – this art just isn’t strong enough to carry a story without much meat on the bone.
Conclusion: This series is going to struggle if it looks like this. $3.99 for a decompressed story with poor art is not going to move many units of the second-tier GI Joe book.
Grade: D
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion