G.I. Joe continues to get by with me on some neat ideas, nostalgia value and the potential that I see in every Mike Zeck cover, but the rushed pacing of the story and some real difficulty with the layout of the artwork are making it hard for me to truly enjoy it. This issue, the second in the second story arc of the book, features a lot of characters, none of whom are very well-identified for the diehard fans, let alone any casual readers, with a couple solid action scenes and a weak central plot. For every neat idea or good piece of action or favorite bit of characterization, there's a storytelling flaw that makes the book hard to read or a sense that a scene was rushed through too quickly to get to another one that is then rushed through as well.
I'm all for the idea of a more realistic approach to the military aspect of the team, and having a group of guys in military outfits storming a boat off the U.S. coast seems like exactly the sort of anti-terrorism operations that G.I. Joe would be doing in a more realistic world. However, this realism comes with a price, as the "name" characters tend to drop into the background along with the faceless grunts, and Kurth is forced to put so much action into relatively few panels that who is getting shot and where is often hard to discern. Some key moments, including the revelation of a hidden turret or the Joes taking out the last guards, are not at all clear. The general point gets across, but without more precision or clarity, the action becomes something of a blur, a means to an end rather than an exciting scene.
Which would be fine if the end itself were all that interesting, but we're not being given enough of a sense of the threat that Cobra represents. The Joes have stopped a random Cobra incursion, but it doesn't figure into a larger scheme easily, and the scene is played largely as a chance to reintroduce a couple of old favorite characters, where it fails because the characters don't get much screen time or chances to show off. Basically, Blaylock and Kurth are trying to do it all (characterization, action and plot) in very little space, and so everything is getting the short end of the stick.
However, while I did have problems with many of the action sequences, and with telling characters apart, I thought that the book much improved by the tail end, where we saw Cobra invading Destro's stronghold. Though I still could have used clearer action storytelling, there were some terrific moments in this sequence, from the reconfiguration of Destro's citadel to the standoff between Destro's forces and Cobra Commander's to Zartan dealing with the sniper. So far, Blaylock has done pretty well with the politics of Cobra, now he just needs to give us a more interesting and focused look at the Joe side of things... and renaming the shadowy conspirators something less silly than "The Jugglers" would be a step in the right direction.
What I see in G.I. Joe is a lot of potential and some very genuine enthusiasm, but some clumsy and rushed follow-through. The difficulty of dealing with teams of this size is not lost on me, but it seems that Blaylock should get the roster he has under control before bringing in new members and further complications, despite almost certain demands for fan-favorite characters. Though the nostalgia boom is almost certainly limited, I feel certain that G.I. Joe has quite a few issues left before the novelty wears off for its readers again.
