G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #301 - Video Review by ComicBook.beer

November of 2023 it’s GI Joe A Real American Hero issue number 301 even though it’s the first issue. It’s the first issue on Image. The Joes have bounced around from publisher to publisher. You know, GI Joe’s been around forever. Many of us remember them from the 80s. Cartoons, were on Marvel Comics and then IDW. Now, Image.

As the Joe writes, this issue is terrific. This is the best issue in the new run of GI Joes. And it’s important to mention that Image, they have their brand Skybound, I always forget the name of that, but there’s a whole different series of GI Joe in their Energon universe. This is like the classic Joe series. In fact, Larry Hama is still doing the writing. For like 40 some years now, so 2023 and reading this is kind of laughable. Global terrorism, blah, blah, blah. Basically, like the whole concept of G.I. Joe’s, they’re always fighting Cobra Commander and Destro and Serpentor. Like they all just seem like jokes compared to the reality these days. But I would like to point out that it seems like Cobra is invested in casinos, cruise ships, crypto and artificial intelligence. The only thing they’re missing is social media.

Maybe Destro is on that. No, Destro. It’s like there’s all these different factions, so it’s kind of confusing. To be serious here for a moment, just diving into this book, not having been into G.I. Joe for a while, it might be a little bit confusing, but at the same time I have to give the creators credit for making it feel like an action movie. They just toss you into the middle of it, and you might need to read it twice to kind of figure out what’s going on. Like, I’m not sure why Storm Shadow is now a member of G.I. Joe.

There are a couple characters I’m not familiar with. Cobra Commander and Serpentor and Destro all seem to be bad guys, but like they’re doing their own things. And I didn’t realize Dr. Mindbender was an orthodontist. So not only can he make mush out of your mind, but he’s also good for retainer work. That’s nice. You can fix your teeth and your jaw if it hurts. Stalker, Scarlet, Snake Eyes. And there’s the whale in the background. Never had the whale, but I always feel like it’s one of those vehicles we never got to see enough. Like the whale was pretty cool.

And here we’ve gottha, t’s Cutter. Now, I’m pretty sure we all know what Cutter’s favorite TV show is. Except he’s not wearing a Detroit Tigers hat. When he’s not driving the whale, he does like a nice GTS. So the artwork and the storytelling in this issue is terrific. Seeing as how this was their, I guess, relaunch or whatever, they clearly put a lot of time into it.

Maybe Cobra Island or whatever. It’s about to blow up. So Serpentor and Dr. Mindbender have this, Dr. Mindbender kind of wanted to get out of it. Serpentor is just all in on getting blown up by some kind of biological weapon and everybody’s running away from this thing.

So the illustration work is really nice here. The frantic, frenetic nature of the storytelling is really good. I love the coloring. This is just a great issue. This is my favorite issue in this whole new series. And it definitely sets the stage for everything that comes after. So you may wonder, if you jump into the middle, you’ll be like, why is G.I. Joe fighting a bunch of mutated weirdos? Well, you have to start here, because this is where the mutated weirdos come from. And it’s a lot of fun. I do like this book a lot.

Getting back into GI Joe, I’d say pick up a few issues starting with this one and see if you like it. And maybe it’s your thing these days, maybe it’s not. The Energon universe is totally different. And we also get some cool bonus features here at the end of the book.

See, this is part of the Energon universe, so GI Joe issue number 301, highly recommended. Good to see some old friends and some new friends kicking ass even though I’m not entirely sure whose ass they’re kicking and for what reason. As long as things are blowing up and Snake Eyes is in there I think we’re good.