So this is a bit different to my normal format of comic reviews. I decided a while ago that I wanted to give more article-based posts a go, and have been trying to figure out a way to start them off...then all the crap regarding the current IDW Hasbroverse GI Joe series started and I had a subject (hooray!) So this post is not an information piece or in depth analysis on the comics involved, but rather an overview to look at what was done well and what was done badly.
So first off I'll give you a bit of personal background. I am not a GI Joe fan, however I do have a working knowledge on the franchise due to me having to research characters etc for the various Transformers crossovers that we've had over the years. When the Revolution event was going on I made the decision to collect ALL of the Hasbroverse tie in issues and decide based on those which series I would actually continue to read. Of all of them I only decided to pass on GI Joe and MASK, I just found their one-shots to be the least interesting of the series and what I read about the issues when they started just led me to agree with that decision. However I have been collecting the TPB's for both these series (as you can see for GI Joe in the picture above). I made the same decision for First Strike to see if anything had improved (it hadn't) but I figured I would collect the Scarlett's Strike Force series due to it only being a couple of issues long. And that's all there is up to now!
You may be wondering why I am doing a "retrospective" before the series is completed, but to be honest having read issue one of SSF I can pretty much guess how the rest of the story will go, and even if I can't, this series and even storyline will be incomplete due to external issues for the series (more on this later).
So let's get this started and hope it at least makes sense!
(PS The pictures used here are going to be random scans of "iconic" moments in the series and may not really match the content of that section)
Series Background
First things first, in case anyone reading this doesn't know about this series (and from the sales figures it is possible) I'll give you a bit of background for it.
When Hasbro and IDW decided to work their magic and create a shared universe for Hasbro's various properties under the IDW banner they decided to base it mostly around the existing Transformers comic series, and inserted the GI Joe comics into the continuity by fudging that all the events of the various comics happened in the time between the Transformers leaving Earth for the Chaos event, and returning following Dark Cybertron (a little less than two years). A few Joes started showing up as cameos for the Transformers and Rom comics, but were properly reintroduced in the Revolution event, for which they received a tie-in comic for the event and have made a few extended appearances in the other Hasbro comics including a team led by Talon in Optimus Prime having a regular role, the Joe member Countdown being a Dire Wraith and Beachhead and Grunt wanting revenge on Rom for "killing" Joe Colton in Rom's series, and various appearances from the Joes in the MASK series and finally a Joe named Mayday being a main character in the Revolutionaries series. Along with this, a solo series for GI Joe was launched and lasted for nine issues (excluding specials), which will be mostly covered in this post
Following Revolutionaries the Joes were the co-stars of the next Hasbro event, First Strike, which had them deal with a threat to Cybertron being committed by Joe Colton, their founder, then leading into the planned Scarlett's Strike Force, originally named "GI Joe: Unmasked", designed to be an amalgamation of the GI Joe and MASK series', much like how Rom and the Micronauts have now been merged as well.
Originally SFF/GI Joe: Unmasked was solicited as an ongoing series, which soon changed to an eight-part maxi-series, and then was reported as cancelled for "low sales" following issue three (before the series had even begun). And that's where we are! I will only be talking about the events and characters of the main GI Joe series, and not the event comics, or their appearances in other lines. If people would like me to, then let me know...
The Creative Team
The series has been written by Aubrey Sitterson throughout Revolution-Scarlett's Strike Force, and to put it nicely...he's a controversial figure, and this is one of the things that people blame for the decline of this series. Rather than just using ad-homonyms, I'll just post this screen-cap of one of his most controversial tweets:
Yeah...coming from the writer of a book that is about a patriotic group of military members...this wasn't taken too well. Several GI Joe fan groups refused to post about his work or support it, leading most people to attribute it to the failure of the book, as if people have no interest in following a book by someone who insults people like this, then it will affect sales, leading to IDW/Hasbro to drop the line or the writer at least.
The writing in general is clunky and filled with logic and continuity mistakes (I'll get to those later) with nothing really mattering in the storyline for the grander scheme of things.
Getting onto nicer things, let's talk about the artwork! The art credits for GI Joe: Revolution, and issues 1-4, 6-9 of the main GI Joe series go to Giannis Milogiannis with colours by Lovern Kindierski, and honestly I like the artwork, at first I was a little put off by the simplistic look, but it works pretty well. It just seems a bit out of place to have a relatively simplistic art style going next to the other Hasbroverse titles which have relatively detailed art.
Issue 5 of the main series was covered by Aaron Conley, with colours by Kindierski again. From what I can tell Conley is an alternative cover artist for the series, and I HATE his art style. The characters look ugly, they have weird proportions and all make goofy faces. That is all I will say on this matter.
First Strike: GI Joe and MASK (a two parter story to lead into the planned crossover title) had the art provided by Ilias Kyriazis with colours from Mark Roberts. This style pretty much emulates the art of the main series, but gives a few extra details, which kind of places it in a weird uncanny valley place where it seems to be trying to be simplistic like Giannis' work, but also trying to match the others titles in this universe, which kind of works, but also kind of fails.
Finally the art for Scarlett's Strike Force is covered by Nelson Daniel with colours from Ryan Hill...I don't like this artwork. It's not as bad as Conley's art, but I would describe it as inconsistent. It looks like the artist is trying to emulate the previous artists, but keeps forgetting which one he is emulating so it turns out to be a mess. If I had to give some direction for this stuff, I would say that he is good at wide shots with indistinct details, but HORRIBLE at close ups (just look at Quick Kick below!)
The Plot
Uhhhh....I honestly cannot remember the overall plot to this series, and I literally read it last night for notes! This is a bit of a problem, since in my mind, if you cannot give a basic plot for the series, as their ongoing mission, then the series is messy and confused.
Just as an example from other IDW comics, Rom's story is that the titular character is on Earth to fight the Dire Wraiths, along the way he finds the planet to be unusual so he investigates, shenanigans ensue! In this series, the Joes just do things just so they can have an action scene.
Okay, here's an attempt to explain the plot of the series:
Following the Revolution, GI Joe are investigating criminal activities on Earth, as well as hunting aliens and remnants of Cobra, along the way they discover the "Fatal Furries" and start to investigate them (neglecting their original goal at that point) after that they discover that Cobra has reformed under the Baroness and try to stop them from stealing some Cobra-themed artefacts from museums, after failing with that they start going after random mutated beasts on Earth and go after Cobra again....That is seriously what I get out of this series!
There are other sub-plots in this series, but most of them either go nowhere and just get forgotten about or they are just nothing plots. Two interesting sub-plots in this series are that Doc Sr is a Dire Wraith, thus his daughter, Doc Jr is a hybrid. However this story is mostly ignored except for in the profile cards after issue seven.
The other interesting plot is Rock 'n Roll having his "inner eye" opened by Crystal Ball, giving him a monstrous form and prophetic dreams. The former is rendered inert by the power of friendship, and the latter was only really introduced in the First Strike tie-ins, and thus will not be resolved before the title has ended.
The Cast
Okay, the cast in this series are a bit of a mixed bag, so I think I'll separate them into two groups: The "Main Characters" and the "Background Characters" as even though there is a lot of named and established characters in this series, a lot of them do pretty much nothing. Some of them are written in character and I can see working in other lines, but a few are just unlikeable or flawed in just too many ways, especially when you know the characters they are based on.
Main Characters
First off, the leader of the Joes is Scarlett, and she is written fine here. She is a strong leader, but has doubts about herself. This is more obvious when written outside of this series, but we can see glimpses of it even here. We see her acting a bit irrational in places in the series, such as when she keeps the Baroness as an illegal prisoner or starts threatening her Joes with brig-time if they question her judgement.
The second-in-commander for the team is Roadblock, who is usually seen as a tough guy who likes to fight, but here, he has been reduced to Scarlett's assistant, whose only real story in the entire line is that he's a secret spy for Duke, a former Joe member, who only really uses this to report Scarlett's illegal entrapment of the Baroness
Rock 'n Roll is a former band groupie who acts as the team's main firearms specialist, but as mentioned above he gains some mystical abilities that give him a bit more character. In the Revolution tie-in he cripples Grand Slam when he mistakes him for a Dire Wraith, which he continues to feel guilty for throughout the series. He develops a partnership with Skywarp and they become close friends by the end of the main story.
Grand Slam is the team's weapon's designer who has been building them more laser-based weapons to help them with the newer alien threats on Earth. As mentioned above he is crippled by Rock 'n Roll at the start of the series, and that is pretty much his character...he just complains in every scene he is in...it is annoying. To be honest I was hoping his storyline would come to introduce the Exo-Suits from Transformers into the franchise again, giving him the ability to walk whilst also being protected from further harm.
Speaking of Transformers, Skywarp is a former Decepticon, who made a deal with the humans to help them if they helped to fix his faulty teleportation drive. In general Skywarp is okay, I only have two problems with him in this series, and only one is important. First is just cosmetic, why is Skywarp a generic fighter jet? The last time we saw him before joining GI Joe, he was in a Cybertronian jet mode, so obviously he rescanned an alternate mode and changed. I am fine with that, my only question is...why didn't he take on a GI Joe franchise vehicle mode? Maybe have him turn into a Cobra vehicle and have that as a source of conflict between the group and play it for laughs. DO SOMETHING WITH IT!!
The second point is more serious though...why do the Joes trust Skywarp? Now for those of you reading this that do not know, I am something of a snob on Transformers trivia and media, and in this continuity, Skywarp was a major player in the Decepticon invasion of Earth from All Hail Megatron. In fact, Skywarp claimed to kill millions of people in China alone. Now even if he was being hyperbolic, shouldn't this be an issue for his new teammates?! In another Hasbro series, More Than Meets The Eye, one of the characters, Cyclonus was on the other side of their final battle on Cybertron and even led an attack that killed most of the staff on an Autobot weapons station. During MTMTE, Cyclonus was disliked and mistrusted throughout the series, but slowly he made friends and alliances, and even proved himself to be trustworthy, over a storyline that is still going on now! Why is Skywarp already forgiven for killing a chunk of humans!?
Quick Kick is an extremely arrogant and sociopathic character in this storyline. His main goal in this series to that he wants to prove that he's better than Snake Eyes, which he shows when about half of issue eight of the series is given to them having a sparring match and Quick Kick wins (by doing some stupid Dragonball style weighted clothes shit). Following that he continues to be arrogant and flaunts his win, until Storm Shadow appears and knocks him out, leading to him now being obsessed with proving that he's better than HIM instead. It's just an endless cycle with him!
Doc, Jr. is the daughter of the original Doc, and is the team's medic. She is revealed to be a natural born Human-Dire Wraith hybrid, but as mentioned above, nothing really happens with that knowledge. She appears to have a mutual attraction with Rock 'n Roll, but I doubt that will be resolved before the end of the series.
Shipwreck runs the Lemuria (formerly the Decepticon warship Nemesis) and also acts as the base's cook, which usually consists of algae and other horrible ingredients. He has gained weight before this series, most likely due to him being more of a behind the scenes character in this series.
Duke appears in the series as a background "villain" for the team as he relieves Scarlett of her illegal prisoners and ends up losing them to Cobra, essentially allowing the new Cobra forces to be formed under a new leader.
Salvo is the first of the new "international" recruits for the team and comes from Samao. She is overweight and likes to use big laser guns instead of traditional weapons. This character caused a bit of controversy in the GI Joe fanbase as she is a reimagining of the 90's character of the same name, however it is not that she is a reimagining that is the problem...it's the given reasons by Sitterson that was the problem. Basically he said that the original character looked like a white supremacist and that he was "problematic" for his looks. Now if he hadn't of said that, and just said this was a new character who just took on the codename, as has happened in the other Hasbro series recently, then no-one would have cared. He just caused a "controversy" for the hell of it. (link to archive of the tweets in question: Here)
Spitfire is the second new recruit, who is a British footballer with a past in the RAF. He uses a flight suit, somewhat akin to Marvel's Vulture and Falcon from the Movies, and doesn't do much else.
In general I'm fine with Spitfire as a character, but my main issue with him is how he is introduced...it just felt clunky. He gets introduced in an aside scene where he is shown to be a footballer and famous, then again when he gets rid of an IED, then he is just randomly there to save Duke when the Dreadnoks are about to kill him, then he gets invited onto the team.
Would you like me to tell you an easier way for him to have been introduced into the series? Make him an agent for the Action Man Programme...say he was assigned to Duke's team to retrieve Baroness, and have him develop as a character that way, impressing Scarlett to the point that she applies for him to have an official placement on the team with the Action Man Programme. Simple. WHY DIDN'T THAT HAPPEN?!
Okay, onto villains now, there's not many that do much, so don't worry:
Baroness starts off as being an illegal prisoner on the Lemuria, who gets found out about by Roadblock, who informs Duke, and he escorts her to a proper jail After the Dreadnoks rescue her she gets named the new Cobra Commander and basically just orders the others around. She's an okay character and it's a pity we wont see a real resolution to her story here.
Crystal Ball is the mystical expert for the Cobra team and is responsible for Rock getting his own mystical powers and appears to be pulling the strings of the series, despite not really having a position of power of the group.
The Dreadnoks are a biker group led by Zarana and Zandar, who pretty much act as the main "muscle" of this series for the Joes to deal with. They appear to die at the end of the first storyline, but end up alive and well by the end of issue eight...weird
And finally, the VENOM members are brought in as new troops in the First Strike tie in comics, which was literally just so there was SOMETHING MASK related in the crossover, otherwise there was nothing! They end up arrested at the end, and Baroness has no interest in freeing them....yay....
Background Characters
And now for the fun part of the series, the slew of random characters that appear for some important looking reason, only to basically do nothing!
Wild Bill was introduced as a member of Scarlett's team to investigate the Dire Wraiths on Bikini Atoll, but is revealed to be one himself, he dies after a short fight.
Doc, Sr. is the father of the newer Doc, and is in fact a Dire Wraith, he is a friendly one however as he jumped in front of debris from an explosion to protect Grand Slam. He's apparently still alive, but we haven't seen or heard from him since issue 4....I think they dissected him...
Helix and Snake Eyes are two experienced Joes, they go on a solo mission or two to discover the weaknesses to the Fatal Furries, and get sent to the Brig in issue 8, never to be seen from again
Dial Tone is reduced to a receptionist...seriously every scene with her is just her giving a memo to someone else!
Cover Girl likes cars....yup!
Lady Jaye uses electrified staffs to fight with, and Gung-Ho might be gay, he also hates shirts and has laser-powered knuckle dusters
Lifeline is the backup doctor for the team. Stretcher appears to be a nature conservationist. Deep Six does stuff in the water, Spirit is a tracker and Tunnel Rat seems to use explosives I think? Lift-Ticket appears just to fly the others to the Arctic in SSF, and Matt Trakker joins the team as totally not Gung-Ho's replacement in SSF too.
As for the villains, we have waves of Red Shadow ninjas, Cobranarchists, Dire Wraiths and Fatal Furries as the generic villain cannon-fodder for the earlier issues, with Vipers introduced following the switch to SSF
Dr Mindbender makes a cameo at the end of the Joe series along with Destro, who is strangely on Earth, despite him being on Cybertron during the First Strike event, and is even detained there afterwards. Maybe one of them is a Dire Wraith. Along with Destro, Cesspool is shown as a businessman who works with Cobra, and two new troops are introduced to not do much, Croc Master and Raptor.
Scrap-Iron is brought in to show how the VENOM member's vehicles have been upgraded, whilst Firefly robs the various museums to steal the Cobra artefacts for Baroness to use for her next scheme.
Oddly, the believed to be dead Male Storm Shadow appears at the end of the MASK portion of the First Strike tie-ins just to sucker-punch Quick Kick, then he leaves...I bet this plot will go nowhere too. (This is especially odd since we already have a popular female Storm Shadow in this continuity!)
My Conclusion
Hooray! You made it through my babbling! Now what do I think about this series on the whole? Well...it's a train-wreck! The characters are mostly either unlikeable or just there to be there, and they completely ignore the whole concept of a shared universe. They do not involve anyone from outside their own series in anything.
Just as one example, early in the series Grand Slam and Doc, Sr. are working on a scanner to detect Dire Wraiths. Why don't they ask Rom for help with this? He is known to them, and would even trust them to just copy the Analyzer part of his weapon. The only issue would be that he would probably kill the two Docs for being Wraiths, but even then only Doc, Sr. knew about that at this point in the story.
Other things that would be simple would be my Action Man link for Spitfire, mentioned above, or even just reference other events happening in the world during these events (like the Junkion attack on the world leaders at Autobot City!?!?)
If the writer had of been more professional, or even cared about the product like the other creators in IDW's roster seem to, then this series could have worked, but instead it was doomed to failure from the early days. If I was to choose a successor for the writer's position for this series or whatever comes next for GI Joe, then I would say John Barber of Revolutionaries and Optimus Prime would do great. He has experience with both the Joes and Transformers, and would make this series work fine, if not make it a great series.
So that's my blog on this matter, let me know what you think and give me more topics to discuss in the future!
Byeeee!
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