I'm fairly uninitiated to G.I. Joe in comics, but after seeing all the coverage of their recent big shake-up, with the assassination of perennial villain Cobra Commander and my enjoyment of the Cobra-centric Joe arm of the Infestation event, my interest was piqued enough to give this coming arc a shot. With the story winding through three books, G.I. Joe, Cobra and Snake-Eyes, Cobra Civil War kicks off with issue #0, containing prologues for the three titles. The central plot of the three is, in the search for a leader, the remaining heads of Cobra enter into a contest: whoever can kill the most Joes becomes the new Commander. The Joes have cut the head off the proverbial snake, but rather than kill the body, they've just left it pissed off, and now more centrally focused on eliminating the Joe threat. Overall, this was a pretty fun single issue but none of the stories particularly resonated enough with me to want to continue with the rest of the event. The Joe story, written by Chuck Dixon, focuses on a team of Joes on a fact-finding mission in an abandoned town with ties to Cobra, and a Cobra operative vying for the Commander position moving against them. The operative, Krake, is not a character I'm at all familiar with; apparently he's only had a few small appearances but this seems to be his proper introduction into the series. His appearance in this book is brief, and not particularly compelling, although it seems to be setting him up to have a major role in the Civil War. The Cobra story, by Mike Costa, is basically a large chunk of exposition, with several of the Cobra heads discussing the details of the contest via video screens. It's helpful in the greater picture of the three stories but on its own, it's ten pages of talking heads, many of which are copy-and-pasted between panels, which is probably why this was relegated to the middle story. The saving grace for this story is, for me at least, Antonia Fuso's art, which, as repetitive as some of the faces get, has a nice angular style that sticks out against the other two stories in the book. The Snake-Eyes branch is, obviously, a more personal tale focusing on the mute, uzi-wielding ninja and the characters with specific ties to him. Now, I have never cared about Snake-Eyes and that carries over to this; it seems like it could be a good story, I just couldn't be any less interested in it. And that is basically how I felt about the entire issue. There's some good and potentially great stuff in here, and pre-existing Joe fans might be way more into it, but there was really nothing that grabbed me as a new reader. Potentially trade-worthy at the end of the event, but I'll wait and see what the buzz is.
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| G.I. Joe: Cobra Civil War #0: Cobra, Antonio Fuso, colors by Arianna Florean |
Over in X-Men, Kieron Gillen took over as the solo writer on the Uncanny title, starting with last week's Uncanny X-Men #534.1 and kicking off the proper series this week with #535. Both issues are excellent, the point-one issue doing exactly what Marvel promising they would do and making a perfect jumping on point. One of the X-Men's major bullet points in recent years has been trying to get the team come out of the shadows and be a more publicly-accepted, approachable team; installing themselves near San Francisco, hiring a PR agent and effectively trying to establish themselves as a west-coast equivalent to the Avengers, rather than the mutant menace perception that has famously been a driving story-point for the team since the book's inception. This is complicated by the team currently consisting of two known terrorists, King Namor and Magneto, the latter of which is the focus of the point-one issue, as they try and find a way to make it believable to the public that fears and hates him that he's something of a superhero now. The problem with the public relations aspect of the story is there is so much else going on in the X-verse right now that it keeps getting shelved while some other threat or plotline gets sorted out. #535, which is slightly less new-reader-friendly but still a strong first issue, focuses heavily on story and character elements introduced by Joss Whedon in his Astonishing X-Men run and followed up by Gillen in his work on the X-titles and his sadly-defunct SWORD series, specifically seeing a return of Breakworld elements, dealing with Kitty's permanent-intangibility state, Magneto's obsession with the mysterious Breakworld metal and bringing former-Powerlord Kruul to Earth instead of sending the team back into space again. Obviously, a lot of this might not mean a lot to you if you haven't been keeping up with the X-verse recently, but even if you're a bit lost there's plenty to like in the book, Gillen writes a great story with a sharp wit and strong dialogue, and does a great job finding the voices of the characters, minimizing the amount of panel time you need to figure out these characters and where they're coming from because they're fleshed-out so well. He balances and ties together everything well, which is important, because there is a lot in this issue.
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| Uncanny X-Men #535, Terry Dodson, inks by Rachel Dodson, colors by Justin Ponsor |
Back in the mid-Sixties, Journey Into Mystery was retitled as The Mighty Thor, as the character had more or less taken over the anthology title in the handful of years since his introduction in '62. Since then, the title has bounced back and forth between the two or some variation therein over five decades and four volumes, and this week we see a return to Journey Into Mystery as Kieron Gillen takes the book back over with #622 and previous Thor writer Matt Fraction spins off the Mighty Thor into it's own ongoing. With Thor having more than a few titles to himself, this one, while still firmly rooted in Asgard, focuses instead on his brother Loki, who has gone through quite a lot in the past few years and currently has died and been reincarnated as a 10-year-old boy who is completely ostracized by the other residents of Asgard for the crimes his past-self has committed, with many half-jokingly suggesting killing him again, only not doing so out of fear of Thor's retribution. The book is steeped in the epic imagery and grandeur and magic you'd expect from such a mythic setting, but the focus is entirely personal, with the adolescent chaos-god struggling with the lot in life he's been saddled with. The book is a Fear Itself tie-in, but it can be read and enjoyed without keeping up with the other title(s), some scenes are shared with Fear Itself #1, and obviously things that impact Asgard and its denizens in one are going to similarly impact the other, but right now it's adequately seperate to tell a complete story within its own pages.
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| Journey Into Mystery #622, Dougie Braithewaite, colors by Ulises Arreola |
And a quick look at the one-shots of the week. Brian Clevinger (Atomic Robo, Avengers and the Infinity Gauntlet) writes Captain America: The Fighting Avenger, a delightful story of Cap back in World War II, being sent on his first mission so the military's poster-boy can get some actual combat experience and going up against Baron Von Strucker, Red Skull and castle full of Nazis. The book manages to be both an action-packed war story and yet totally accessable and all-ages-friendly, with enough humor to match the action beat-for-beat. The book is only enhanced by Gurihiru's art; while a bit of a lighter style than you'd generally ever see in a war comic, they as always put out some beautiful work, especially in their expressions. If nothing else, we get a Gurihiru'd panel of Schmidt becoming Red Skull and that alone, like the beafroed Beta Ray Bill in Thor and the Warriors Four, is worth checking this out for.
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| Captain America: The Fighting Avenger, Gurihiru |
And while, like Cap, Hellboy may be more at home fighting Nazis, this week's Buster Oakley Gets His Wish, sees him going up a more atypical threat: anal probes. Or, specifically, the aliens distributing them. But while the menace itself is outside of Hellboy's wheelhouse, the solution is not: he gets to hit things, hard. Though the settings may be different, this one-shot is in a lot of ways the perfect distillation of a Hellboy story. Hellboy has a problem, and he deals with it with his fists and a put-upon, seen-it-all demeanor. There's a lot of wry humor, a lot of action and a lot of weird things going on, both of the supernatural and science-fiction varities. And to top it off, I know I covered this in the review proper, but Kevin Nowlan does some amazing art on this book. Just on the titular character, maybe no one does a better Hellboy than Mignola himself, but Nowlan could give him some serious competition. The face barely changes between some of the panels, but even subtly, each of the expressions conveys the emotions perfectly. The rest of the book looks just as beautiful, even if the bulk of it takes places in the black void of the spaceship's interior.
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| Hellboy: Buster Oakley Gets His Wish, Kevin Nowlan |
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