Cobra Annual 2012
Written by Chuck Dixon
Illustrated by SL Gallant and Gary ErskineThe brutal origin of Krake, the man who would be Cobra Commander.
Snake-Eyes #9
Written by Chuck Dixon
Illustrated by Alex CalIn the second part of Cobra Command, Snake-eyes and his covert Foxtrot unit embark on a mission to liberate Cobra occupied Nanzhao. But where Snake-eyes goes, can Storm Shadow be far behind?
Since the launch of their GI Joe line back in 2008, IDW has been playing the long game. Instead of giving readers issue after issue of over the top explosions and sword-wielding ninjas — something most of us who grew up on Joe had already seen — creators like Chuck Dixon, Christos Gage, and Mike Costa decided to take a more subtle approach, and built a story around the characters instead of the concept. Now, some four years later, what started out as a series about a highly trained special missions team trying to prove the existence of the a ruthless terrorist organization, is a full-fledged, nail-biter of a war story that’s just about as unpredictable as it is engaging.
Rendezvous after the jump and we’ll tell you all about it! As a note, major spoilers are ahead.
When most folks here “Cobra Commander”, they think about either one of two characters. The first one’s an over the top, would be-autocrat with a penchant for launching extreme schemes of world domination that so crazy they almost work. The other’s only slightly less manic; he’s a militant with a much better backstory and a major axe to grind with the American way. Sure, neither one was particularly successful at “RULING THE WORLD”, but both were pretty memorable and we can all agree that, without them, well… GI Joe just wouldn’t’ be GI Joe.
With those dudes in mind, IDW had some pretty huge shoes to fill when they decided to create a brand new Cobra Commander. Thankfully, what they came up with was pretty cool.
This new guy — called simply “the Commander” — wasn’t a refugee from a prehistoric society of Lovecraftian-reptilemen, or a dejected owner of a used car dealership. The Commander, who was a prominent businessman in public, ran Cobra from behind the scenes and a lot more like a business than a terrorist outfit. More importantly, he wasn’t trying to defeat GI Joe. In fact, it took him a while to even acknowledge them as a viable threat. This Commander, and the greater Cobra Council he represented, had their hands in everything, and basically, they’d already won.
And then Chuckles put a bullet through his head.
A single round took him off the board, but it moved GI Joe to the top of the Cobra Council’s hit list. To select a new Commander, the Council decided to pit some of Cobra’s meanest against each other and set them loose on GI Joe to prove why they deserved to be Cobra Commander. The rules were simple: whoever caused GI Joe the most harm, got the gig.
All of this led into the multi-part crossover, Cobra Civil War, which ran through most of 2011, and saw the GI Joe team either getting killed or running for their lives from the likes of the Baroness, Destro, Major Bludd, Krake, Tomax and — wait, “Krake?” Who the hell’s Krake?
Another character created for the IDW-verse, the enigmatic and utterly ruthless Krake took center stage in Cobra Civil War, where he racked up a sizable body count of dead Joes. But he didn’t just go after the Joes. Krake pitted most of his fellow contestants at each others’ throats, impressing the Cobra Council and ultimately — you guessed it — was chosen to be the new Cobra Commander. The finale of Cobra Civil War saw Krake take up the mantle and uniform of the Commander, and kicked off the latest multi-part arc, entitled Cobra Command.
The new Commander immediately unleashed Cobra on the drug traders of Nanzhao province, outing Cobra to the entire world but confusing any detractors by helping those oppressed for years by the drug cartels. In doing so, Krake Commander proves himself to be yet another different kind of Commander, leaving you to wonder what his deal is… where did this guy come from?
Continued belowThat’s where this week’s Cobra Annual comes in. Not officially part of Cobra Command, the aptly titled The Origin of Cobra Commander tells the story of a child born in the same heroin fields we see the Commander pillaging. We follow him from child to young man, where he burns bridges nearly as fast as he can build them. Somewhere along the way, he meets both Major Bludd and the Baroness, and eventually ends up with Cobra, where he literally transforms himself into the man known as Krake.
Origin is both moving and frightening. Considering how things start out for the guy, there’s a lot of sympathy to be had for him, but at some point he stops being a charity case and becomes a cold-blooded killer and from there, it was impossible for me to respect him. Oh, you’re totally afraid of him, but with every subsequent kill he becomes less and less understanding, and quite honestly, it’s hard to leave this story without being genuinely concerned for the GI Joes. Unlike the previous Cobra Commanders, this guy’s cold and detached and will without a doubt bring down some serious bad on the team’s heads.
Snake Eyes #9, part 2 of Cobra Command, sees GI Joe sent in to take care of business, and put an end to Cobra’s set-up in Nanzhao. Sadly, the post-Civil War Joes are still pretty banged up, with Duke having been almost poisoned to death and forced to operate on a shoe-string budget… which makes Snake-eyes and his team of very resource-lite operatives the perfect choice for the mission. We follow as Snake-eyes kills his way through a battalion of HISS tanks and into a Cobra base of operations. But unbeknownst to Snake , he and his team have attracted the ire of his one-time sword brother Storm Shadow, and the stage is set for what looks like it could be the series’ most vicious ninja throwdown yet.
Comics veteran Chuck Dixon has been at the helm of GI Joe since IDW first got the license, and he handles writing duties on both the annual and Snake Eyes. I grew up on Dixon’s Batman stuff, and I’ve always liked his sort of bare-bones style to writing, and storytelling. He never gets too fancy, but manages to keep things moving at a perfect pace, and while I sometimes wonder how others might write GI Joe, I’m never disappointed with what Dixon does. With Origin, though, Dixon does stretch his writing muscles to better accommodate what ends up being a fairly heavy story. Snake Eyes has a pretty nice groove to it that keeps you engaged, and that’s not always easy with a protagonist who doesn’t speak. But in giving Snake Eyes his own group of agents (Helix, Alpine, and Iceberg), Dixon gets around that little problem, and manages to create a non-language for Snake Eyes that’s all his own.
The art on the Joe-family of books is always sharp, but in the case of Origin, the art team of SL Gallant with Gary Erskine’s inking makes for one smart-looking comic. And in addition to just being really damn pretty to look at, Gallant does an excellent job of keeping an ethnically diverse cast from ever looking anything other than that, or heaven forbid, like a cast of bad comic stereotypes. Snake Eyes artist Axel Cal might be the hardest working guy in the Joe-verse, period. He’s drawn just about every book in the line at least twice, and yeah, his work can be a little too photo-reference-y, but it’s never kept me from enjoying a book, and when he’s just drawing, there’s some pretty great stuff in there.
If you can’t tell, I’m super excited about the direction of these books. As a life-long GI Joe fan, it’s really gratifying to see more than one person taking this stuff serious and in a direction we can all be proud of. I know some readers felt a little cheated when the whole “Who will be Cobra Commander” thing ended with Krake getting to wear the helmet, but not me. Seriously, we’ve never really known who’s underneath that mask, and all of the other candidates — Bludd, Tomax, the Baroness, etc… — make much better versions of themselves than they do a shoehorned-in, shock-inducing choice for Cobra Commander. Krake, in both story and as a fictional character was born to be Cobra Commander.
Final Verdict (Cobra Annual 2012): 8.5 – A good read, and a great place to jump on some of the coolest comics on the market.
Final Verdict (Snake-Eyes): 8 – Yo Joe!
