G.I. Joe, already being an elite force, you’d expect action and adventure or at the very least explosions and cool tech. You also expect some Cobra butt being kicked. One question… where is it? This book is all talk and no action. Baroness is getting her precious cargo aboard the ship, billions of dollars in cash gold and riches. The rewards outweigh the risk as the seas are getting uncontrollably rough. A container drops onto the deck of the ship spilling cash and the crew starts planning a mutiny against the Baroness as their greed sets in. She kills it for the moment as she pops one in the head to show how ruthless she is to the entire crew.
Scarlet and Mainframe are trapped in a storage container and hear the engines of Baroness’ crew drifting away. They still aren’t alone as a shark goes to attack and Scarlett punches it right in the nose scaring it off. Scarlet now knows that she wasn’t the first to reach the container and action must be taken. The problem is she can’t do anything because she has to go through eight hours of decompression. The Joes come up with a plan to infiltrate in the rough seas silently and mark the bills by laser targeting them to encrypt the filament tags so they can be tracked across the world.
We have one more player, Serpentor and his role in finding Baroness for Cobra Commander. He uses his power to retrieve the kidnapped grandchildren of Sir Anthony. This also comes with a price, the GPS tracker of the ship Baroness. With this Serpentor plans an assault against Baroness.
This issue was a big letdown for me. The story leaves cliff hangers but doesn’t deliver and leaves you empty. It also doesn’t capture your attention to keep you paying attention. The art has its high and low points; now Scarlett looks proportional but in certain panel Baroness’ head looks strange and off. Is odd the men in the issue all have they different characteristics, but Scarlet and Baroness are drawn it a way that they could be swap hair color and clothes and they would be the same. They also are being drawn to sensual in every panel with unrealistic poses.
This issue feels like I’ve seen all the action in the preview of a movie, but when I got to the movie there was nothing new to see. You probably could skip this issue and go right to the next to conclude the story arc. The only thing going right is the retailer incentive covers which are fun and campy.
Score: 1/5
Writer: Chuck Dixon Artist: Paul Gulacy Publisher: IDW Publishing Price: $3.99 Release Date: 5/15/13