G.I. Joe #22 // Review
Cobra Commander sits on a throne with a glowing sword. He’s addressing Destro. Cobra Commander wants to send Destro out looking for energon. Destro’s a tactical expert. He would advise against it. After recent events, there ARE multiple targets on their backs...which isn’t a great position to be in for a. secretive terrorist organization. Nevertheless, Cobra Commander wants energon...and so Destro’s going to have to investigate a possible energon deposit. He’s not the only one out looking for it in G.I. Joe #22. Writer Joshua Williamson and artist Andrea Milana enter a new story arc with colorist Lee Loughridge.
The site in question is in a country called Bhadhikistan. When Destro and his squad arrives...G.I. Joe is there. Cobra and G.I. Joe don’t engage each other immediately. The city that they’ve arrived in feels like a ghost town. It’s been totally abandoned. Like there was some kind of a radiation attack. The file said that peole left because the city is haunted. Of course...nobody believes in ghosts, but...this IS a group of people who have come face-to-face with a giant robot from another planet that can transform into a Freightliner FL86 cab-over semi-truck, so it’s best for everyone to keep an open mind as they enter potentially dangerous territory.
The Energon Universe provides an interesting opportunity for slowly unveiling a very well integrated space for science fiction action stories. Williamson is working well with the integration between have a two major properties within the universe. It really is pretty remarkable just how much changes with the existence of something like energon. It provides a convenient McMuffin for a bunch of little story arcs that fit within a larger framework. Williamson paces, the adventure, quite well as protagonist and antagonist alike, find themselves juxta post against another figure entirely.
It could be really difficult to get the specific brand of G.I. Joe-style action to the page. It didn't always work that well in that dynamic form for. on screen back in the cel-animated 1980s over the TV airwaves. And the action was always perfectly aligned for the Marvel comic book. Milana’s style fuses, the sci-fi action amplification of the military, with more traditional, modern military feel to the action on the page. It feels like a really sharp hybrid between the kind of science fiction that was making the old cartoon animate, and how much more contemporary look at modern warfare. It's a really nice hybrid.
The two opposing forces need a third force in a world that is tilted a bit by the presence of extraterrestrial elements. It's a really interesting combination of different things which all come together to create a remarkably enjoyable adventure, serial that fits into a larger picture. It will be interesting to see how things developed from here. The challenge is going to be finding a way to keep the action moving with novel adventures while still maintaining those aspects of the property that made it so successful back when it was just extremely repetitive and tedious. It's a weird challenge to try to tackle. But they're doing a pretty good job of it.
