G.I Joe #2 Review

After my previous views on the first issue, G.I Joe #2 needs to feel a lot more, well, G.I Joe. Less dialogue, less politics and more action. Isn’t that what this series is all about?

The official description from IDW:

THE FALL OF G.I. JOE! Scarlett’s last chance to save the G.I. JOE team’s existence is threatened on all sides—the U.S. government, shady spy organizations, two warring factions in a nation in the throes of civil war… plus the benevolent peace-keeping forces of Cobra?!

This issue offers the same politically-charged themes as the first, which still presents a problem. I want to like this series, I do, but it’s getting in it’s own way. “The fall of G.I Joe” is meant to ask the important question: do we need G.I Joe? When this involves focusing on a country the plot has never cared about before, bringing in characters we don’t care about and leaving all the typical cast (such as Scarlett, Baroness and pretty much any other Cobra villain) to small cameo’s away from the action doesn’t help. How can I care about this all important danger when the characters I know aren’t in the fray? There’s only so much command room drama I can take.

Perhaps, if this was any other title, I’d like Karen Traviss’s writing. She has a sense of youth with some of the new members, especially the Cobra traitors, but all goes to waste when I don’t feel the importance in relation to G.I Joe. While Traviss does her best to tie it in, I think her style is too realistic and gritty for the series. It’s a nice change, but her writing is a very blunt change in direction.

Visually, Steve Kurth still has a way with pencils. He understands the human figure, which allows the panels to show more complex angles and action poses, when he gets the chance. Yet the colors, courtesy of Kito Young, focus on earthly tones and colors. Sure, it’s better than bright vibrancy, but now everything’s too dark and nearly always some shade of brown.

All in all, it’s not a bad issue – it’s just not G.I Joe. Not yet, anyway.