GI Joe: Cobra

GI Joe: Cobra 1-4

GI Joe: Cobra Special 1-2

GI Joe: Cobra II 1-9

I’m always amazed when a creative team successfully reimagines a well-known IP into something completely new but still familiar.  (Battlestar Galactica is the one that immediately comes to mind.)  Then there are the less comprehensive reboots, like the Marvel Ultimate universe, Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, and JJ Abrams’ Star Trek - places where creators put spins that are just different enough to subvert the audience’s expectations.

GI Joe: Cobra, as written by Mike Costa and Christos Gage, is closer to the former than the latter.  Gone is the overt military organization comprised of people pulled from every conceivable martial specialty.  Gone are Cobra’s outlandish plans to conquer the world through might of arms and implausible science. And, perhaps most noticeably, gone is the certainty that GI Joe will prevail at the end.

Here now is a Cobra that seeks global dominance through much less flashy, but much more effective, means.

It’s scary because Costa and Gage have tapped into something that’s rooted in the truth that I see around me.  Large corporations safely snuggled behind the law have rendered themselves immune to both public opinion and legal recourse while placing themselves in positions of enormous influence.  The people General Hawk send in to infiltrate these branches are woefully unprepared with little to no support. They might as well be one of the many ordinary people screaming at a society that ignores them without a second thought.  

The arcs with both Chuckles and Scoop read entirely like the noir works from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, following the stories of men tasked with piecing together puzzles with no idea of what the pictures looks like.  But instead of ground-level mysteries, these Joes are embroiled in conspiracies that they’ll most likely never unravel - Scoop dies at the end of his tale, disavowed by his country and comprehensively brainwashed by the cult he was sent to investigate.  Chuckles isn’t doing much better either. (Total props to the comic team for making a compelling character out of this guy:)

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Pretty good