G.I Joe: A Real American Hero #210 Review

For a series that has a lot to juggle and balance, G.I Joe: A Real American Hero #210 can be forgiven for some minor faults. However, there are a few that may get in the way for some people. Still, this is what G.I Joe is really about, with a series about robots, spies and ninjas, what big difference does an underground alien eye make?

The official description from IDW:

Revanche and the Blue Ninjas have set their sights on the Arashikage clan, bringing the fight to Japan! Meanwhile, COBRA members COPPERHEAD, SCRAP IRON, and FIREFLY set their sinister plan into motion…

In fairness, the alien eye is still pretty stupid, but it only plays a minor role in G.I Joe: A Real American Hero #210. For the most part, this series continues the arcs seen previously, such as Revanche, the underground base and some generic ninja action. It’s all good in small amounts, but it’s been a few issues now and it’s hard to grasp a sense of development at any point.

A lot of this, in many ways, is down to repetitive writing. Larry Hama often favors this long-wait over more useful segments. For instance, the current arc has the ‘Joes reviving a dead enemy with plans to slave them to a giant eye? Silly eye aside, that’s a very murky area ethically – especially for a clean-cut good force such as G.I Joe – so the fact that this morality is only coming into question now is worrying.

Visually, there isn’t much to report here. S L Gallant is very talented on the pencils but there isn’t much in the way of new things to look at – there is a silly robot-ninja-drone, however. Still, combined with some decent colors from J Brown the issue manages to hold up much more on a visual front.

All in all, regular fans will likely appreciate this issue, although I’m sure many will want the plot to get somewhere interesting, at least in one of it’s current narrative splinters.