GIJoe

[anarky]

I looked at the previews for GIJoe Vol 3 #2 and Special Missions #1.

Are they trying to keep these in the same universe anymore? Or is there some large time gap in between them?

In SM #1, Baroness is "on the outs" with Cobra. In Joe #2, she seems to be in charge. Not to mention Croc Master and Firefly, two of the most secretive operatives, are running around in the open, and Darklon has shown up leading Iron Grenadiers. (At this point, it kinda bugs me when previously unseen "named" Cobras show up in such high-level positions... if they're that important, they should've appeared before.)

[anarky]

When does the Trade come out so nark can answer this for me?

Apparently not for a while. I just got Target: Snake Eyes in the mail yesterday.

Read it and the latest ARAH trade. Man, it's like reading polar opposites. They're the same thing, but one sucks, and one rules. I swear, SE/SS is so fucking bad, if it wasn't necessary to read all three Joe titles (and Cobra being awesome), and if I didn't know a reboot was coming very soon, I'd drop it. Chuck Dixon just can't handle mainstream Joes for some reason. I'm kinda hoping he leaves Special Missions early on. He should stick to Robin and the Punisher.

One thing that really fucking irked me was the shitty artwork in the SE/SS sections of the book. (The Joe art wasn't bad, aside from all women being flat-chested and chunky.) One thing that was particularly unforgivable was, IIRC, in SE/SS 19, when Soft Master is leading Coil troops into Cambodia. There's a booby trap where a spiked ball swings down at their boat, and hits the Coil field leader in the back. It's a ball. Spikes protruding from every direction on a round, spherical ball. But the ball only swings from one direction. So how the fuck does the guy get impaled in every direction from the center of the ball? That's impossible. And that's a fucking Liefeld-level art mistake. Hell, Liefeld wouldn't even make that mistake; he'd draw some smoke to cover it up.

SE/SS art is generally hard to follow, and it's annoying how the artist jumps from single pages to 2-page spreads with no warning, and it's often not until you get to the right-hand page that you realize you read it out of order. Because the script is a disjointed mess to begin with. A lot of characters look too much alike. And, fuck, why the fuckity fuck is Helix even in this book, much less fucking fighting Storm Shadow in her fucking underwear on the fucking Flagg?

It took me a couple of reads to figure out the bald guy was a new Cobra cannon fodder guy. The art was so shitty, I thought it was Roadblock. Then I thought maybe it was Kwinn, since he had tats. But, no, it's some new redshirt, and the script doesn't even explain what the art's too crappy to do.

Snake Eyes might be dead. I'm so worried. Aside from the original comic, Resolute, and Renegades, the character is just really sucking ass everywhere else he appears. I actually wish this version would die. Scarlett is a fucking schizo, and, strangely enough, I'm liking the Mainframe dynamic that Dixon wants to push but doesn't seem to have the balls to really develop. Maybe the Chimera should come back and kill him. Who the fuck was that guy? They need to address both him and Mad Monk already.

And I'm sick to goddamn death of Dixon's bizarre back-and-forth of creating new characters to be cannon fodder and killing off characters with an established history in other universes in their very first IDW appearances. It would've been nice to have seen Spearhead and Cutter before today, wouldn't it? But, too fucking bad, they're both dead. Just like Bazooka.

On the flipside, ARAH is fucking awesome and getting better. This has the makings of a huge epic, because it's been going on the same subplots for months--yet never decompressed--and I'm assuming it's not going to nicely wrap up in the next volume. I doubt Tunnel Rat or Dusty are going to eat it, but Airtight's in serious danger, and the rescue team might be as well. Darklon is shaping up to be a serious threat for the first time ever. Loving the multiple levels of intrigue going on here. The only thing I can predict is that Clutch is going to be able to overcome his programming. Everything else is up in the air.

Oh, and art? One issue by Ron Frenz and Sal Buscema. Checkmate, IDW Joeverse.

[Tom Foolery]

It's a bit sad that I get fatigued reading ARAH because every other comic on the damn racks is so decompressed. Okay, not EVERY other book. But a majority of them.

[anarky]

It's a bit sad that I get fatigued reading ARAH because every other comic on the damn racks is so decompressed. Okay, not EVERY other book. But a majority of them.

You gotta admit, Regeneration One is anything but decompressed. There's more happening in one issue than occurs in the average 20-issue run by someone like Bendis.

[Tom Foolery]

Hmmm...the IDWverse is catching up to the ARAHverse in terms of how many total issues have come out. My roughly calculated math(in my head) says ARAH is still ahead by maybe 40-50 issues*. But considering IDW gets 3 issues per month to ARAHs single, it'll overtake them sometime next year.

I'm not sure where DDP is, but I'm assuming a distant third. And thats being generous and including the multiple Joe/TF series.

Ziff-Davis gets fourth, and Dark Horse brings up the rear.




*Edit. Strike that. It's higher. I forgot the European Missions series. (I'm not counting the actual Action Force series. That would be crazy.)

[anarky]

Action Force: Rendering the Transformers UK Universe tougher to reconcile with the American version since, what, 1983?

[Tom Foolery]

Other than the European Mission series and the two TF issues reprinting the UK books, I've never read a single UK issue of Transformers OR Action Force. So as far as I'm concerned, they don't exist. And therefore don't conflict with continuity.

[anarky]

You probably should. In Furman's US stories, they occupy a pretty weird position in that they're not canon, but constantly referenced. (The Deathbringer flashback in Matrix Quest is the most obvious example, plus guys like Xaaron and Rack & Ruin have a long history over there.) They're also mostly quite good, despite having to juggle the US continuity that eventually un-canonized them (Furman took over after the first original story, which was the somewhat mediocre "Man of Iron" that was reprinted here).

But trying to rectify the two, with the Joes being an American team that blew up Bumblebee, vs Action Force being the exact same people from the UK who had different run-ins with Transformers who had all the same adventures but many additional ones, and where they never blew up Bumblebee because they knew him and Death's Head killed him when the Transformers were fighting a time-displaced Cyclonus and Scourge, holy shit, brother, your head will melt.

[Tom Foolery]

So, after Action Force got cancelled in the UK, it just kinda got folded into the TF book as a backup feature?

You could always look at the UK stuff as an "alternate universe".

Also, perusing my copy of Overstreet, I see DreamWave had a second TF/Joe series called Divided Front. But only the first issue was released before they went bankruptsies. I was unaware of that.

[anarky]

I really wish the Dreamwave stuff could get resolved. If nothing else, I want the Joe/TF crossover and the War Within series of miniseries to finish up. (War Within has to be one of the best TF series of all just based on the recurring "Me Grimlock, badass!" bit.) Frankly, the ongoing TF book was finally getting pretty readable as well when it died, IIRC. And, hell, who wouldn't want the Peter David TMNT series to be collected?

[anarky]

I realized today, totally out of the blue, the many layers of subtext about good vs evil, and armed vs unarmed in the Battle of Benzheen. Most obviously, the SAW Viper (the theoretical most-heavily armed of the basic Cobra ground troops) kills several unarmed prisoners (which every other Cobra was too scrupulous to do), then Duke refuses to kill the unarmed SAW Viper in retaliation, which prompts the SAW Viper to laugh at his morals. And then the SAW Viper is killed by four unarmed ninjas, despite carrying his SAW, after laughing at how ridiculous they are.

There's also Sneak Peek, whose specialty involves not shooting, killed (fuck the retcon for now; he was dead until Hama slipped up and had to explain) while trying to save an unarmed child.

Cool Breeze was killed by a man thought to be unarmed, who had grabbed a pistol.

Despite theoretically having the most advanced armaments, Battleforce 2000 was destroyed by one of the most primitive of modern weapons.

Then there's the entire Metal-Head sequence, where the characters start out heavily-armed, and get progressively less equipped, until finally, when the cease fire is announced, all kinda just shrug and say "fuck it" (like the old WB cartoon where the sheepdog and Wiley E. Coyote are just doing their jobs and eat lunch together off the clock). And the finale is sneaking in without any weapons to prove that Cobra's motive was to sell weapons to Benzheen.

That shit's a lot deeper than I ever realized. This could be in an English textbook, seriously.

[Tom Foolery]

I remember thinking at the time I read it, it was ironic that the deadliest Joe conflict ever ended because of a camera and not any weapon.

[anarky]

How many characters in Joe died of "normal" fairly-matched, combat related deaths?

I'm coming up with folks killed in cold blood, poisoned, exploded, etc. But, unless I'm forgetting someone, the Star Viper and the homicidal SAW Viper would be the only two (disregarding background characters). Serpentor's probably the next closest.

[anarky]

After reading Vol. 7, I have two big questions: whose side is Pale Peony on, and what exactly are the Red Shadows? (Don't spoil!) Red Shadows clearly aren't the mega-badasses they were in DD, but the suicidal devotion makes them almost as bad as Cobra. And who provided their tech?

[anarky]

The re-re-reboot at IDW is okay. The art is kinda 90s Image-ish, only with better anatomy. Not crazy about the entire team hooking up all over the damned place (especially Duke and Cover Girl--where the fuck did that come from?). Duke's officially a pimp here, which seems odd since Van Lente also tries to portray him as both almost robotic and devoted to his brain-dead ex.

The story jives with itself, but seems pretty bonkers in the larger IDW picture. Okay, Cobra and Joe are both known to the public. You've got a whole town that's okay with allying themselves with an organization that fucking nuked an entire country just because? Why do all the bizarre Cobras suddenly show up, and how do the Joes know what they are? Bizarre-ass Bulletman Joe existed in this world? Where did Darklon come from, and is he Destro's cousin? Why is Firefly totally cool with being in the open (and when did he lose weight)? When did Croc Master go from a scrawny weirdo to a dude who can almost beat up Roadblock? Why is Shipwreck acting like that's not been his codename for years? How is the Baroness conducting multiple operations at once, in both a public and clandestine capacity?

But, like I said, it jives with itself, so it's at least better than All Hail Megatron, and they at least made some effort to work in previous continuity when they want (unlike AHM again). And I see Mad Monk is coming back (and appears to have some ties with Duke) and the tone might work better for dealing with that apparent time-travel anomaly Mindbender discovered in the mines several issues back.