“Cobra” #12 continues to clean up the leftovers of the multi-part event, Cobra Command! In the wake of the G.I. Joe team’s major restructuring, former honcho Hawk is left to oversee the dismantling of the team’s old Pit headquarters. But a dead Joe’s final mission report turns out to be the perfect distraction for an old soldier beleaguered by uncertainty, and closes the door on another epic chapter in writer Mike Costa’s Cobra saga.
Written by Mike Costa
Illustrated by Antonio FusoCOBRA COMMAND AFTERMATH! Devastated by the events in COBRA COMMAND, the team reflects on the life and death of fan-favorite character, CHUCKLES. Meanwhile, the survivors of COBRA COMMAND make peace with horrors of the past… and prepare the horrors of the future.
Months ago, in a Newsarama interview, Saga creator Brian K. Vaughan responded to a question about his partiality towards creator owned comics with this:
“…I don’t think people should support work just because it’s creator owned. There are some pretty shitty creator-owned books out there. That said, I do think writers and artists tend to do their best work on creator-owned books because nothing is as creatively, emotionally, and — surprisingly — financially rewarding as working on characters that you helped bring into this world.
But I also think Mike Costa’s Cobra is one of the best comics being published today, and a licensed book about evil toys from my childhood is pretty much the opposite of creator owned, so I’m not a fundamentalist. Good work is rare, so support it wherever you find it.”
That’s a tremendous endorsement, and I wholeheartedly agree with BKV. Cobra is one of my favorite comics, period. However, being one of the best comics out there hasn’t kept Cobra from being its own worst enemy. See, no matter how good it gets or how many times it shocks and awes, for a large segment of the comics reading public, anything G.I. Joe or Transformer will not be seen as anything other than a toy comic, or even worse, a comic that’s less than authentic or somehow invalid. For those people, “toy comic” will forever overshadow “great comic”, keeping Cobra just out of range from where it should in the echelon of the day’s best books.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is, being off the radar lets Mike Costa and Co. do just about anything they want to, making Cobra the most interesting and volatile “toy comic” of all time.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but what Mike Costa does best is take the most outlandish pieces of the G.I. Joe catalog, like Croc Master, Big Boa, and Cobra-La, and molds them into something new and different and valuable, while never quite running away from what they were to begin with. Before Costa got hold of him, the G.I. Joe known as Chuckles was a sort of Magnum-ish, Hawaiian shirt sporting undercover Joe field agent. He made a few appearances in the Marvel series, but was never what would be considered a major player. Chuckles’ animated counterpart appeared only once in G.I. Joe: The Movie whose defining characteristics were mute, strong, and shoulder holster.
Using the toy’s file-card as a starting point, Costa and former co-writer Christos Gage would introduce us to a new Chuckles in the pages of Cobra, and quickly became the heart and soul of the book, and central to the overarching story of G.I. Joe at IDW. Sure, Snake Eyes might be everybody’s favorite, but Chuckles was the best G.I. Joe; he exemplified what it means to be America’s elite, and he never backed down from making the hard choices for the greater good.
Without giving too much away, “Cobra” #12 is not a happy comic, but it’s an excellent one. Those of us who’ve been reading this book since it started needed this, even if we didn’t know we did. It’s two Joe’s saying goodbye in two very different ways, and it sets the stage for what’s to come. It’s an exciting time to be a Joe fan, and just like I’ve said before, things do NOT looks good for G.I. Joe, but they’ve rarely looked better for us readers!
Final Verdict: 9 – All. The. Way!
