| Author: Mark Powers | Series: Sins of Our Mothers |
| Reviewer: Jay | |
| Genre: Comic Book | Publisher:Devil's Due |
| Pages: 32 | Orig Pub Date: May 2007 |
| Binding: Comic Book | Illustrator: Mike Bear |
I never thought I’d say this but G.I.JOE is back – and not just in the musings of the twentyish eyeing thirty; a mid-life guilty pleasure masked as fashionably retro. The truth is that this comic – a continuation from a line that raised young men of my generation – has been a valued part of my pull list issue#18, when suddenly a legitimately uneventful title of hudlin-like proportions recaptured hamaesque magic.
Issue twenty-three of G.I.JOE: America’s Elite, the third in a four part arc titled Sins of the Mother begins as all comics should: With some quality bondage. A downright Diana princely splash of one Anastasia – better known to casuals as the Baroness – sets the tone of the issue and recent run. It’s a trimmer team but a broader playing field; still an elite anti-terrorist unit, the same world, but with the added dimensions that comes with the world for the reader a generation removed from knowing is half the battle. The Baroness, a new mother, had been captured and fruitlessly interrogated by G.I.JOE before breaking out during a government sanction assault on the JOE compound by Cobra agents and since has been on a warpath that includes (apparently) previously killing Wraith, a newish, much over hyped, poor-man’s Boba Fett of the Joeverse – someone who truly had no point but just showed up with a fan club because of a cool costume. Yes – people die in today’s Joeverse.
In the Middle East a Joe force including, Snake Eyes, Scarlet, Spirit, Roadblock, Stalker, and led by Duke pursue Major Blood on the trail of the Baroness, a path that will eventually lead to yet more bondage and to Destro’s seat.
Remember Lady Jaye? Well forget about her because she’s dead – that’s the advice Flint needs. In Vietnam, Flint is spying on the Red Shadows when he finds himself observing a meeting with the Baroness. It would not be an overstatement to say that Flint is becoming one of the most interesting characters on my pull list – the death of his wife makes his journey to the long time fan a dynamic one. My most recent Cup of Joe notes the debut of Flint in the Marvel series, a brash, arrogant, but competent new addition to the team and to see the transition of a solider who lost his soul, to a melancholic, brooding warrior displays to me that interests based in nostalgia can evolve and do so without blasphemous results.
The new look, the art to the series is at first unnerving, I found myself naturally rejecting it until I started viewing it as a departure in the way to view G.I.JOE. The art style is more mundane, when grouped together the JOE’s look like a military unit, no longer a poster or image on a toy box. Snake Eyes looks like a commando, not a power ranger in the trenches. This is not a knock on the iconic appearances of these characters – the version II Snake Eyes figure is classic – it is however an art choice that works for the reader of today, including those from yesterday.
All the threads have a sense of immediacy to them, an urgent tension underneath the panel. The woman scorned and the hollowed widower offer a feeling of ever present calamity with the perpetual threat of, in the middle of a comic that successfully takes the elements that makes for worthwhile high adrenaline action/drama experience and wraps it into embarrassingly gushing moments by tugging the fan boy strings by offering a mere glimpse of the Phantom with Ghost Rider ready to take our favorite Native American tracker and ass kicking, masked commando in a thread that took me back to reading a Hama Special Mission within the comic itself. Each story has players on the edge, hinging on decisions that retain a true unpredictability that comes with showing in earlier issues that there will be casualties, there is loss, and with that what remains behind grows.
I dare say G.I.JOE is cool again. It’s unfortunate it was ever otherwise.
Jay Tomio
The Bodhisattva
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