G.I. Joe #2 // Review
It’s a shard. They’re protecting a shard. And things aren’t looking really good. It looks like one of them might have to lose a life in order to protect the shard. Then Duke shows-up in n one-man Covra attack copter and tells them to fight. When Duke tells you to fight…you fight. The battle continues in G.I. Joe #2. Writer Joshua Williamson continues his entry into the newly-emerging Energon Universe with artist Tom Reilly. It’s a well paste action story that manages a great deal of drama as well. It’s a huge on sample that Williamson is working with, but he seems to be struggling at quite well in a largely satisfying issue.
Cobra Commander respects Duke’s relentlessness. He’s also capable of seeing the larger picture in a conflict, which is only just beginning.Destro doesn’t exactly have the commanders patience. There’s a bottom line to be looked after. There are some a rather serious and constantly potential outcomes if things don’t turn arohnd. It may be a rather large and drawn out a chess match involving quite a few variables, but there is a competitive edge to be maintained, and it’s not going to be easy, given the power of a technology in question.
Williamson is in the enviable position of being able to completely re-define the pacing of a large franchise that has maintained popularity over the course of a very long period of time. There are some interesting decisions being made with regard to the technology that’s being used in the first meetings between the heroes and villains. it allows him to work with ideas and concepts on his own time. There’s a really clever sense of pacing that’s moving around all of the elements on the page. It’s sharp, smart stuff, even if it’s just working with commercial properties that have been around for decades now. It’s still a lot of fun.
Riley has an explosive sense of action, and a very simple and sharply focused sense of a line economy. He doesn’t need a whole lot of a rendering to bring across a sense of drama to the page. It is quite a bit of it to go around. And there’s quite a bit of that drama, but seems to be moving in every possible direction. It’s a lot of fun to see him work. It’s a lot of fun to see everything come together on the page with familiar images, that are still somehow, I knew the way he renters them for the page.
There is a lot that could be done around the edges of everything to make it a little bit more sharp and a little bit more defined. It’s really difficult to work with the elements in question without having them all rush onto the page a little too eager to be too terribly coherent. And this is an action story, so that’s kind of a Requirement. However, bringing it to the page in a way that’s going to be compelling is always a challenge.
