Written by Chuck Dixon
Illustrated by Alex CalCOBRA ON THE ATTACK! The new COBRA COMMANDER begins a global strategy to turn the super-secret cabal into a legitimate world power. But those plans are only known to the highest levels of COBRA, and the invasion of a sovereign Southeast Asian country continues. The Joes and UN Forces are outmaneuvered and outgunned in a war of total annihilation!
This has definitely been a good week for GI Joe fans. Not only did we get an early look at the Super Bowl spot for GI Joe Retaliation (and WOW), but an additional sneak peak at the film’s upcoming toy line, and then on Wednesday, the release of GI Joe #10, the action-packed fourth chapter of IDW’s latest GI Joe multi-part epic, Cobra Command.
Check back with us after the cut and see if we don’t explode from the excitement!
Okay, first off, there’ll be no exploding.
The truth is, despite my having been extremely vocal lately about how much I’ve enjoyed the GI Joe books, it’s possible that with this week’s issue, I have at least lowered my rose colored glasses, if not completely taken them off. What do I mean, you ask? Well for example: the cover to GI Joe # 10 features Roadblock — the team’s heavy machine gunner, and not coincidentally, the character portrayed by Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson in the forthcoming blockbuster — just unloading on some out of sight enemy that probably won’t be going home in one piece. It’s a truly incredible cover image, and a pretty spot-on depiction of the character, but what it does is remind me how much better I would have preferred Terry Crews as Roadblock (sorry, Dwayne).
Now let me just say that GI Joe #10 is as good, if not better, than its previous issues. The new Cobra Commander’s mysterious occupation of Nanzhao takes a turn for the worst when he begins a forced military evacuation of the province, causing the Joe team to show more than a little interest in CC’s plan and his short and/or long term goals in the country. The story moves along nicely and offers up plenty of on the ground action that we’ve come to expect from Chuck Dixon and crew, and some nice character touches that are more prominent in these pages than it’s been in at least the last month or so. We’ve got drama, intrigue, and even a little bit of romantic tensions — there’s plenty here to like, and I promise you, guys, I do like it. But what it’s missing is fun.
There’s a realism to the modern GI Joe books that makes them super cool, and elegant in a way that previous version of the book have maybe not been. While nostalgia’s a big part of it, I have to also imagine that it’s the realism and grittiness that keeps people around. And while I really do applaud the various creators for taking a toy line comic to the next level, I do wonder if sometimes it gets distracted by trying to be GI Combat instead of GI Joe.
Dixon has a lot of material to pull from when constructing his Joe stories. Not just the characters, but a surplus of vehicles and weapons and locales, too. To really make it worth IDW’s and Hasbro’s time, it makes sense that they’d occasionally trot an item or two out. In this issue, we get to see two old-school GI Joe vehicles get the modern treatment, as Cobra sets loose an assault team of Buzz Boars against the GI Joe Mean Dog, and while it’s handled well and generally looks pretty awesome, it felt wrong because, well… the Boar looks like this:
And was traditionally piloted by a guy that looks like this:
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I get that Cobra’s supposed to be an ultra sophisticated terrorist outfit — the dudes are way out there, and utilize super-tech and WMDs the Joes can’t even fathom most of the time. But whenever the book decides to update some of the more questionable, later wave toys and gadgets, it tends to only accentuate how singular and underdeveloped some of the characters are, as they pretty much react to everything the exact same way.
While it might seem hooky now, the classic GI Joe had a kind of beautiful shorthand that you could use to rationalize just about anything. Think about it: A Real American Hero Destro’s fashion and engineering aesthetic were one and the same. All you had to do was stand him up beside a Cobra Stun and it was like, “Oh yeah, that guy totally designed that thing.”
Without the luxury of being hard-wired into a current toy line, IDW’s GI Joe has the freedom to do just about anything it wants. However, it also has to work just a little bit harder to establish the rules of the world it lives in, and not just rely on the way things used to be.
Final Verdict: 8.5 — A good comic. Not exactly fun.
