Written by: Tom Scioli and John Barber
Art by: Tom Scioli
Publisher: IDW
IDW seems to like to crossover as many of their licensed properties as often as they can. And why not, right? Crossovers between two properties allow IDW to tap into the fan bases of both of those properties. They have tons of licensing contracts, and tons of different universes, to play around in. They’ve done crossovers of all of their Cartoon Network properties. They’ve crossed over Judge Dredd and Mars Attacks. Ghostbusters and X-Files. Star Trek and Transformers. Star Trek and GI Joe. Hell, they even teamed up with DC last year to crossover The Rocketeer and the Spirit. And now, they’re tying together GI Joe and Transformers. They’ve done this before; adding Star Trek to the mix, but this time around, Star Trek is completely cut out of the equation. Of course, the connections between the universes are tangental at best, and so the set up for this crossover is fairly generic. Regardless, I’m going to be honest. I actually really enjoyed this premiere issue of the crossover. There, I said it.
Now, unlike many people, neither of these properties has any form of nostalgia factor for me, so that plays no role in my perception of this comic. I wasn’t even born by the time these properties had begun to fizzle out, and when they came back I was too busy falling in love with comics to realize, or even care, that the properties were returning. My exposure to both franchises is limited to the most recent outings into the area of cinema, none of which have impressed me all that much. But even though the nostalgia factor doesn’t appeal to me, I love how stylized this issue is, and how it was created in such a way that it feels like a comic of the 80’s or 90’s. The 15 or so covers to this issue are actually fairly indicative of the inside of the comic. The interior panels all are drawn in a style evocative of the past, and I applaud that particular creative decision on the part of artist Tom Scioli; who also co-writes the book with John Barber.
For those interested in knowing what the premise is; essentially the GI Joes get an extraterrestrial signal from Cybertron, and it ends up being the Decepticons (or at least a group of them) who touch down, and page after page of awesome action sequences ensue. The book never feels like it takes itself seriously, and that’s definitely a good thing. The writers understand that all of this is, to be frank, kind of mindless. So what do they do? They add in aspects of self-deprecating humor, poking fun at past eras of comics, as well as at the action genre in general. It’s cool to see this level of self-awareness, especially from a comic like this, that could have taken itself extraordinarily seriously, and fallen flat as well. As soon as one of the Joes made a comment about how he had too many pouches, I was onboard with this book. (Side note: Funnily enough, Rob Liefeld actually does one of the variant covers to this issue)
Still, that doesn’t quite excuse the mindless nature of this comic. Despite some of the self deprecating humor, it’s mostly style over substance. The plot trades a coherent plot for massive action scenes, and this doesn’t benefit the comic. It’s certainly cool, but, beyond that, there’s not much to this comic. Character development? Nope. In fact, all the characters really seem to blend together. Maybe for GI Joe fans, that won’t be the case. However, for fans who are new to the franchise, there should be some type of introduction to the characters, because honestly, I don’t really care about any of them. Again, maybe that’s because I’m not a part of this book’s target audience. I’ll be the first to admit that, but still, this issue is marked as a #1. As such, it seems logical that there would be some form of introduction. Otherwise, as this book does, the writers run the risk of cutting out a large swath of readers who are unfamiliar with the franchises.
For the time being, this seems mostly like a GI Joe comic with giant robots as the enemies. The Transformers really have no huge role to play – yet. The entire issue is told entirely from the perspective of the GI Joes, and the Transformers barely get any dialogue, which is unfortunate, considering that this is meant to be a crossover. The real bummer about this, at least for me, is that I know more about the Transformers after sitting through three horrible movies and two great video games concerning the characters. I feel like I would have enjoyed this issue better had they been at the center. Still, that’s arguably not the most legitimate of criticisms. For fans of the properties, this is definitely something worth checking out. Even for those who aren’t fans, this is a pretty cool comic because of some of the self deprecating dialogue and the stylization choices.
