G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero Sssilent Missions – Zartan #1 // Review
He’s a mercenary who can speak countless languages and will himself to look like anyone else. Had he not simply been a vllain in a major toy. franchise, he could have really been a fascinating action hero in his own right. He gets a close-up in G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero Sssilent Missions – Zartan #1. The one-shot is written by former Marvel Editor-in-Chief Tom DeFalco, who also served as a major architect for the Real American Hero Franchise going all the way back to its debut back in the 1980s. The story comes to the page courtesy of artist Pat Olliffe.
A car blows-up on a commercial street. Duke is watching with binoculars. Zartan has his own binoculars. And he’s watching Duke. Major Bludd is watching Zartan watch Duke from a distance through a rifle scope. Everyone seems interested in a MacGuffin that’s in a crate the size of a coffee table that’s being hauled into a large helicopter and then into a truck that’s being driven by someone who couldn’t possibly be a shapeshifting mercenary. That would be entirely too strange. But if it WAS Zartan, then both G.I. Joe and Cobra are going to have to act quickly.
There’s a real. trick to telling a story without any captions or dialogue. DeFalco has been writing for decades, so there’s no question that he knows what he’s doing. Zartan gets a close-up in a story that allows him to maintain the basic sense of mystery that has always made him such an interesting character. DeFalco holds Zartan at just the right distance to maintain his mystery without being so distant that he loses his central appeal at the heart of the narrative. There’s nothing totally groundbreaking about basic nuts and bolts of the story, but DeFalco makes it fun.
Aside from a few notable action, sequences, Olliffe’s work has a tendency to look a bit static. This is perfectly fine for a cloak and dagger, espionage thriller style of a story. It just feels a little less than dynamic, but it really needs to move. And it's just too bad that Zartan isn't allowed a little bit of nuance in and around the edges of the operation that he's doing here. He's always very calmer. And that aloof sense of detachment can be kind of hard to connect up with.
Once again, it's nice to visit this particular franchise in a silent moment. And it's really cool to read something that DeFalco had written recently. Been very influential with Marvel and pop culture in general in the 1980s. It's nice to see him continue to work and it's fun to read something new from him even if it doesn't have any words at all. Once again, the Real American Hero franchise that DeFalco helped to launch feels fun and engaging for the another trip between the covers of a comic book. There isn’t a whole lot of depth in it, but there doesn’t need to be.
