This review contains spoilers for GI Joe: A True American Hero #309, on sale now, from Sykbound Entertainment and Image Comics
When GI Joe: A True American Hero concluded its run at IDW (who famously, and much appreciated, resurrected the series from where it left off at Marvel in the 1990s), longtime writer Larry Hama, who penned the adventures of the GI Joe launched in 1982, concluded the series with a seemingly complete finale… and then hilariously inserted an over-the-top cliffhanger at the end of the issue, with Serpentor and Doctor Mindbender poised to release a mutant viral bomb and a number of key members of the G.I. Joe team about to crash land right where the bomb was about to explode.
So when Skybound picked up the series, Hama continued the story from that point, with the Joes on the run, but the bomb going off, mutating half of the Cobra forces. From that point, a fight ensued between Cobra Commander and his half of the Cobra forces (who are all still humans) and Serpentor and his half (who are all mutated beings, plus some cyborgs). That fight has now begun in GI Joe: A True American Hero #309 (by Hama, artists Paul Pelletier and Tony Kordos, colorist Francesco Segala and letterer Pat Brosseau), and it's a blast.
What is the Battle of Springfield?
The setup for the plot is that Serpentor's forces, led by a group of mutant cyborgs, are landing in Springfield (the seemingly idyllic suburban town that is secretly Cobra's base, with almost all of the citizens secretly being Cobra soldiers), which Cobra Commander and his troops are defending. The Dreadnoks are heading to Springfield for their anti-Cobra Commander MISSION, but the cyborgs don't know this, so they are forced to fight the cyborg invaders, and meanwhile, there's also the G.I. Joe ninja team in town, who were sent to investigate why there was so much chatter about Springfield coming from both sides of the Cobra civil war.
Adding EVEN MORE intrigue to this already intriguing setup is the fact that one of the Ninja Force members, Dawn Moreno (who previously filled in for Snake Eyes when the original Snake Eyes died, but don't worry: he's recovered), IS coming from Springfield, and her parents were recently killed by the local police, so she's not in a good mood and all of this is coming together into one big event, in an impressive mix of plots devised by the great Larry Hama.
How does Larry Hama manage so many plots?
Years ago, I did a Games Legends Revealed on Harry Nelson Pillsbury, a renowned practitioner of “blindfold chess,” which is chess played, well, you know, blindfolded. Basically, you have to memorize the board and where all the pieces are, and play accordingly. Pillsbury once played nearly TWO DOZEN games AT THE SAME TIME. It’s said that Pillsbury was driven insane by all those games in his head at once. That’s not true (hint, it was actually syphilis), but I think about it when I think about all the different storylines Larry Hama is able to balance in his head at the same time with these stories, and having them all come together like that is very clever.
Meanwhile, Paul Pelletier is one of the most under-celebrated mainstream comics artists of the last 30 years, and he does an excellent job on this arc, along with Kordos and Segala. It's amazing that this title has such good art from the FILL-IN art team, given that the book's regular artist, Chris Mooneyham, is taking on this arc. If you're a longtime GI Joe fan, or even if you've never picked up the book before, Hama makes the stories complex enough to be fun, but not so confusing that you can't figure it all out at once. It's a really fun storyline, and it pays off almost a year of preparation in a really nice way.
Skybound has built their Energon Universe (with their own version of GI Joe characters), but it's nice to see that they're still allowing for the original continuity as well. Much appreciated.
GI Joe: A True American Hero #309 is on sale now
Source: Skybound Entertainment