G.I. Joe #4 // Review
Duke and a few of his allies arae retreating on motorcycle. It’s not a great situation, but it would be crazy to try to stand and fight given how totally overpowered they are in G.I. Joe #4. Writer Joshua Williamson continues his personal reboot of the G.I. Joe franchise for the Energon Universe comics. Artist Tom Reilly brings the visuals to the page with the aid of talented colorist Jordie Bellaire. The Joe team continues its early adventures in an expeanded universe in Skybound Comics that includes the Transformers. The story has some weight to it that feels well-grounded.
Duke and a small group of Joes are completely overpowered by the Crimson Twins. They’re well-armed, which makes sense: they ARE arms dealers. But if they’re arms dealers, why are they on the field of battle attacking the U.S. military? Clearly something is going on. Meanwhile, Cobra Commander is working with advanced tech on a brainwave bomb. There are those who would consider this a bit silly considering there are far more low-tech ways of making people explode. Cobra Commander isn’t looking to blow people up though: The brainwave bomb will send a message directly into the minds of everyone within the blast radius. It’s a simple message that they won’t be able to resist: obey Cobra.
Williamson paces the issue pretty well. The chase at the beginning of the issue leads directly into more intricate trauma with the villains that it's somewhere around the middle. the action swiftly moves across the page with occasional moments of great intensity. The drama is not without its moments of nuance. And certainly the complexity of relations between all of the difference characters in the ensemble seem a lot more sophisticated than they ever did on early morning TV back in the 1980s.
Reilly doesn't go in for a great deal of complexity. What he's bringing to the page is very clean and very clear. There's a great economy of line with respect to rendering. Just the right amount of details seems to be on the page. The action is easy enough to capture. However, the, intricacies of the drama are captured quite well for the page by Reilly. His work is much more interesting on the page in explosive dramatic moments that it manages to be in and within the action. There’s a deligtfully murky mood that makes it to the page courtesy of Bellaire’s colors. Colors feel deliberately drab as the narrative engages in the murkiness of war.
Folded as it is in with the rest of the titles in the Energon Universe, G.I. Joe does a good job of landing old, familiar characters in a decidedly new world with more contemporary concerns than those that caused the franchise to come together back in the early 1980s. It’s nice to see what Reilly and company put together as the series progresses into what will doubtlessly be a slowly growing complexity in the dynamic between the heroes and the villains. A firm foundation has been laid over the course of the first few issues.
