One of the joys of reading the new Energon Universe G.I. Joe is that it’s sent me back to one of my favorite web 1.0 sites still in service, YoJoe.com, which has an expansively detailed collection of information surrounding the original 1982 toy line. And I mean detailed: looking for a certain character (as you come across them in the comics) yields images of the toys, a catalog of all the accessories that came with that toy, and even a look at what they looked like as you would have found them, carded, in the store.
Why do I look up each compelling character in Joshua Williams and Andrea Milana’s new series? Because, as someone who only ever read bits and pieces of Larry Hama’s original Marvel series (scrounged from drug store spinner racks) and only saw sporadic episodes of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, my best relationship with these characters is with those old action figures. I want to know if I ever played with these characters. It’s how I knew them.
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In issue #9, I knew I already had a connection with the book’s lead protagonists, Baroness and Cover Girl; my major question mark lay with the issue’s most active bad guy, Raptor, a mercenary with mechanical wings and a bird fetish. The issue does something the series hasn’t done much of: it provides a brief flashback on the character’s origin, as if even in a world of snake people (and, in the larger Energon Universe, black hole-dwelling world destroyers), Raptor is a weird dude who is worthy of a one-page deep dive.
It turns out I didn’t know Raptor, whose action figure first appeared in 1987 (and included a pet falcon all his own); he’s such a distinct figure that I would have recognized him even as my famously bad memory grows dimmer and dimmer.
This issue makes that lack of connection a bummer: Raptor’s whole deal feels like the stuff that makes all of the greatest G.I. Joe characters magical. He is weird, he is unique, and he is 100% obsessed with the one thing that makes him so. He’s custom-engineered to capture a kid’s imagination.
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This new volume of G.I. Joe leans into its appreciation of these characters, telegraphing their eccentricities and playing with them much the way kids might have. It might not manage to deepen all of the characters right away – there is only so much room in an action-packed comic to provide each Joe with more than their action figure-limited pathos – but they’re trying. Baroness is enriched, this issue, as is Major Bludd; giving Raptor a hero moment is a nice, concentrated bonus. Almost as if he were a favorite plaything of the creators.
As a whole, the issue is well-balanced and non-stop: Raptor’s attack on the women in Paris (begun last issue) escalates, Bludd is introduced, and civilians are put in peril. Clutch and Hound, meanwhile, get some one-on-one exposition time, and we’re left on a bloody cliffhanger.
G.I. Joe continues to be a driven, exploratory series that appears eager to look back on forty-odd years of weird action figures and zany comics without becoming reliant on what came before. It’s introducing and deepening even the most oddball of characters, and each issue layers on compelling new complications. There’s a lot going on, but issues like #9 streamline their action without dropping any of the balls in the air.
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