4th March 2010

IDW is pulling me back in to the G.I. Joe comic universe

posted in Comics and Cartoons, G.I. Joe Comics, IDW |

I’ve been somewhat hesitant to accept the IDW G.I. Joe universe for a variety of reasons, but with the release of G.I. Joe # 15, they’ve finally started pulling me in, at least to a degree.  Even with Dixon’s slow pace, this issue kicked it up a notch.  We got some early seeds of discontent between Mindbender, Destro, and the Cobra cabal.  We got one of the world’s top scientists joining Cobra of his own free will, upon seeing the level of their resources and funding.  We got  the death of a Joe character that has been accused of being a punching bag, but at least it was handled in this issue with some sort of respect.

But, really, it comes down to the character designs.  Old Joe pal Fred from JoeBattleLines really summed it up nicely when he pointed out to me in a private email…  there were just a few frames in the issue.  Flint, Beachhead, and Cover Girl ready to bust down the door.  The Cobra Vipers emerging from the MASS Device teleportation.  To me, it’s always been about the toys, and these designs would make for some awesome toys.  Hell, if the movie could find a way to work designs like these into it, it would have been much more appreciated, I think, even with the same story and subject matter.

It’s the little things…and as we get deeper into the G.I. Joe: COBRA II series, and has the mainstream title picks up some steam, I’m finding myself more and more drawn in, which is something I never expected.  Good job, IDW.

EDIT – Spoilerific image replaced with non-spoilerific image.  Woops!

Related posts:

  1. IDW announces 2010 Free Comic Book Day comic – Marvel fans rejoice!
  2. United Kingdom sees the Rise of COBRA universe continue in Panini comic books
  3. IDW G.I. Joe Comic Solicitations for April, 2010
  4. IDW Comic Solicitations for May, 2009
  5. Little preview from the upcoming comic that comes with the video game
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 7:18 pm and is filed under Comics and Cartoons, G.I. Joe Comics, IDW. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
  • http://sklabah.livejournal.com Nas

    Nice SPOILER panel you pulled, Justin. ;-)

    That’s what I get for waiting for trades I guess. ha-ha.

  • Mysterious Stranger

    Definitely picking up the pace. About 10 issues later than it should have been but its moving now so hopefully they keep it up.

  • http://admin Justin

    Nas – My bad! Didn’t even notice that. :shifty: Image changed. Sorry, bro.

  • http://www.yojoe.com/comics antarctica

    Yep, got some good stuff going on finally NO DOUBT.

  • http://grapedrank.blogspot.com Strider

    Robert Atkins sure does some great looking art doesn’t he? Guy was born to do GI Joe.

  • http://www.joebattlelines.com Fred Meyer

    D’oh! Did you put the pic I emailed you in the post originally?

    Still, this is what the live-action movie SHOULD have looked like! The designs are evocative of the classic 80′s and yet highly modernized for a contemporary audience! I still know who Duke, Scarlett, Flint, Vipers, Mindbender, etc are but they don’t look 100% the same!

    It’s like a monthly Resolute comic– especially after this month!

  • Silent Master

    I quit buying the IDW junk after issue #6 of both the main and Origins titles, because the story was way too drawn out, art went crappy and cheap, I detest the new “reality” almost completely (though I did give it a chance to hook me with 6 issues and wasted money in the end), and the characterization/dialogue was just overdone with the military/boys club tripe.

    I’m going to give them one more chance with the upcoming continuation of the Marvel run with 155 1/2 and 156 picking the original stuff back up. If they can’t do something good to draw me back in with that, then I’m writing IDW off for GI Joe, since Cobra was so dismally done and Origins was just more of the same retarded pre-main crap, slopped out by Hama (which has allowed me to see just exactly why Hama was so happy with how the movie turned out…because he DIDN’T want it to follow the Classic vein of Joe fandom, for his own selfish reasons, so we got stuck with RoC).

    IDW is proving to be quite deficient with how GI Joe is handled, and once again, “reiventing the wheel” wasn’t really needed, only good art and good stories told with some semblance of passion and abject respect for the classic franchise. How many characters you can kill off isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, the measure of a good comic, especially with GI Joe, although, at this point, I wish they’d kill off every single character in the series and put it out of my misery. THAT would make this new Joe book an incredible success, In my opinion. The ONLY thing it has going for it is Atkins’ work at this point, and everytime he steps away for an arc to draw another arc, it ceases to be anything but bad.

    Even so, with that being said, and as much as I hate the current Joe series of comics from IDW (should be pronounced: A-duh!), I have to agree, that if the movie had even been given the costuming and design of even this series, I’d have been much more positive about it and actually would have bought so many more of the figures. Unfortunately, the movie was worse than the comic, and so was the toyline. I guess we’ll see how badly Hama/IDW botch things up with the classic run, although I really hope that they surprise us with a job well done.

    (Based on the fact that the series artist apparently can’t differentiate between a HISS Driver and a Crimson Guard soldier, and that Hama’s writing would even allow for a MASKED/(helmeted) soldier to access Cobra cCommander’s room without so much as a retina scan or anything, is pretty weak. I could buy Zartan getting in easily enough, but not with that choice of disguise, one of the Crimson Twins maybe, but not a CG/HISS Driver. Come on Hama/IDW, wake up!)

    Don’t give in to the dark side of the Force, Justin. Resist the problem, don’t become part of the problem, lol.

  • Silent Master

    Side note:

    Even though they callously killed off Bazooka and Major Bludd (among others) in RESOLUTE (Cobra Commander survived, Storm Shadow isn’t dead, probably not Zartan either…), I would actually rather see a comic based on that (mini cartoon movie) than anything IDW has done so far with GI Joe. Even the figures and characterization were closer to what GI Joe should be than the movie mess, though I admit, the crappy “nanomites” idea WAS hokey enough to have made it into the cartoons, back in the day.

    My only wish right now is that Hasbro would actually do something more to draw me back into GI Joe rather than pushing me away from it, as they have slowly been doing over the last few years. They’ve already pretty much lost me on Transformers, except for the occassional one here and there, maybe 2 that I’ve bought in the last year. I’ve basically boycotted the mainstream movie lines for both already…

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