Cobra #8 – Review

By: Mike Costa (writer), Antonio Fuso & Werther Dell’edera (art), Scarletgothica (colors), Shawn Lee (letters) and Carlos Guzman & John Barber (editors)

The Story: Now that the new Cobra Commander has been named, how will the remaining high-level Cobra operatives organize themselves in the new organizational chart.

Five Things: 

1. Fuso is doing the best art on the GI Joe books right now. – With the exception of whatever book Robert Atkins works on and Fuso’s art on Cobra, the GI Joe books have had some really problematic art.  It isn’t even a question of, “I don’t care for the style.” but more of a “What the hell just happened?  I can’t tell with this storytelling!”  Fuso has no such problems.  His style is simple and angular and I don’t think anyone would ever call it “beautiful”, but the storytelling is perfect and his characters tell the story that needs to be told.  Sometimes it’s easy to overlook those basics, but given the problems that some of the other GI Joe books have had, I really appreciate what Fuso is doing in this issue.

2. Cobra is a much more interesting book than GI Joe. – It’s just more fun to watch the bad guys as their plans are so much more interesting than anything the Joe’s are up to.  Even though there is a new Cobra Commander, you wouldn’t expect that the other A-lister Cobras would just mindlessly fall into line behind the new guy.  No sir, they’re all got their hopes and dreams and schemes.  All the plotting makes for a very interesting read (especially now that the art is telling the story so nicely).

3. This issue is kinda between major events. – This issue feels a little like it’s killing time.  We just hit the climax of this Cobra Civil War event with the naming of the new Cobra Commander (after the various A-list Cobras were duking it out to be the new Commander by killing as many Joes as possible).  But, we aren’t quite into the next story cycle yet.  So, this issue is between story beats.  For what it’s worth, Costa does use the time to establish the major baddies like Major Bludd and Baroness in the new status quo, but there still isn’t a lot going on.