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At a fundamental level, G.I. Joe is an epic good vs. evil battle that should, by all accounts be almost unbearably awesome.
However, with this said, crafting a good G.I. Joe story is not an easy task because, let's face it, G.I. Joe, on another fundamental level is, at worst, painfully cheesy and, at best, a half decent gay joke. The $175 million dollar budget, live-action mind-crap G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra proved that even money couldn't save the Joes from this darker facet of their nature. The G.I. Joe movie is not the only example of this creative property being reduced to a heaping pile of doo, and the world of comics is not exempt when it comes to the shitification of the Joes. In fact, my recent breakdown of trends in G.I. Joe storytelling has revealed that only 7% of G.I. Joe stories are worth reading.
This blog entry is about one of these stories.
I picked up the G.I. Joe: Cobra trade at the Montreal Comic Con for a very economical ten bucks. Initially, I figured Cobra would be a nice complement the above-average Chuck Dixon/Robert Atkins (& others) G.I. Joe series I had been collecting, a book (although plodding) I feel does a pretty good job at capturing the broad scope and characters of the G.I. Joe universe, not to mention the interest of my nostalgic self. Cobra proved not just to be a gritty complement but a vastly superior series to Dixon/Atkin's more traditional take on G.I. Joe.
G.I. Joe: Cobra is a four issue mini-series (an additional one-shot rounds out the story) that tells the story of a single Joe's mission to infiltrate a terrorist conglomerate that eventually proves to be Cobra. The series features a scant four, yeah, count 'em, four characters from the Joe-verse: Joe C-listers Chuckles, Jinx, and Cobra mainstays Tomax and Xamot. Other characters make brief appearances, mostly for the sake of driving the plot forward.
My initial reaction to Chuckles as the series protagonist was mostly negative. Many years ago I received the Chuckles figure as a Christmas gift and, based solely the fact that he sports a Hawaiian shirt, was almost always a victim of friendly fire in the massive wars I staged in my bedroom. Fortunately, although he has retained his poor taste in clothes, Cobra's Chuckles is characterized by a controlled recklessness and a taste for the toughest jobs. Tasked with maintaining his cover as a mercenary and gaining admission to Cobra, Chuckles has to deal with isolation in the field and the emotional burden of being a hired gun. His only contact with G.I. Joe headquarters is through Jinx, another covert operative.
What separates Cobra from other Joe stories is that it doesn't rely on all the gimmicky shit that makes G.I. Joe suck. Rather, Cobra relies on all the crazy shit that made The Bourne Identity fucking awesome. Cobra is a hard-boiled G.I. Joe grounded in reality - as Chuckles gets closer to the truth, many innocent people will die and we are never left with the sense that he will emerge unscathed from his venture into the world of terrorism. Moreover, Cobra is entirely character driven and features only a slice of the goofy sci-fi stuff that has come to define G.I. Joe. Interestingly, the brief glimpse we are given of Cobra makes us want more, lots more.
That's all I'm going to leave you with. Currently, Cobra's story is being continued in G.I. Joe: Cobra II, which is now an ongoing series. I plan on waiting for the trade on this one, but, in the meantime, will be reading G.I. Joe: Cobra again because it's that damn good.
Check it out.
