Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews
GI Joe A Real American Hero #161
IDW Comics
Hama & Gallant
Hama continues to breathe new life into the old GI Joe series by expanding the roster overwhelmingly. This issue has a couple of great moments as Hama shows, yet again, how much command he has over certain characters. On the flip side the issue feels slightly out of place as if an issue was missing between this one and last one. It's also a rather slow issue as it relies on the rollout of the familiar characters more than telling a story as seen in the past few issues.
The bulk of the issue is the Joes at their base. They are dusting it off and characters are coming and going. It's a good re-introduction to the base called The Pit. The oddity here is how quickly the Joes open up and populate the place. Just last issue (at the end of it even) Hawk turns the tide and gets the Joes reinstated. All of a sudden they got everything up and running and the Joes are coming out of the woodwork to get back into duty. It just feels strange because none of the characters act as though there has been any kind of break from the team over any sort of extended time. I guess in an era where every little conversation takes five pages this leap forward just feels out of place.
Storm Shadow plays a big role in the issue which is a good thing because of how well Hama uses him. Storm Shadow is trying to gain some trust so he gives over some intelligence about the whereabouts of Chuckles, held captive by Cobra. However, that isn't enough to get the Joes to believe in him so he takes some more drastic measures at the end of the book to force the issue. This is the highlight of the comic.
One of the drawbacks of the issue is that much of the larger cast doesn't quite have their own voices settled yet. Lady Jaye, Clutch and Mainframe (to name a few) all seem to have hollow dialogue that could have been spoken by any of the other characters. Sure, some of the characters have their dialogue nuisances, like Gung-Ho and Wild Bill, but for the most part only Storm Shadow and one or two others have their personalities cemented in this book.
The artwork sits firmly in the middle for this issue. The action scenes are terrific mostly because of the clarity of the battle scenes, as well as the usage of familiar vehicles. This was a pleasant surprise in this issue. The layout and design of the Pit was also very good and brought a grand feeling to the scale of the base. On the other hand the character close-ups were not so great. The range of how Chuckles looked was borderline distracting and I found Duke to look completely different between just two panels. This level of detail is something that needs to be in the book to bring the characters to life.
On the whole this is a good issue of what has been a very good series so far. The story moves quickly and we get a good isolation on a couple of the key characters. The cliffhanger promises another great issue coming out next month. It appears the long term health of this series is getting more and more firmly planted. I enjoyed this issue.
3.5 out of 5 Geek Goggles
