And now one last look into the world of G.I. Joe Vs. The Transformers. This was the fourth and final mini-series set in the JoeVTF Universe, but I forget why no more were made. Devil’s Due still had the G.I. Joe license until recently, when it went to IDW, the current Transformers publisher. It could be they lost the rights to the crossover, or maybe Devil’s Due didn’t think it was selling. However, rather than let the series end on a cliffhanger, they took what would have been a four-issue mini-series and produced a two-part comic, each double-sized so there was no stuffing things in. Sure, you had to pay more for a 48-page comic, but considering how many companies right now are giving you less for more (at least DC is trying to make up for it), it’s not a major complaint.
You can still find the comics at Devil’s Due’s store. However, if you haven’t read it yet, I’m about to spoil it like crazy.
G.I. Joe Vs. The Transformers: Black Horizon #’s 1-2 (Devil’s Due, January -February 2007)
WRITER: Tim Seeley
ARTIST: Andrew Wildman
COLORISTS: Wes Dioba & Art Lyon
COLOR ASSISTS (issue 2): Timothy Straub
LETTERER: Brian J. Crowley
NEMESIS EDITOR: Mike O’ Sullivan
various cover artists: again with the slagging variant covers!
Background information:
About partway through writing the synopsis, I realized that anyone not steeped in Transformers or G.I. Joe lore won’t have a clue what I’m talking about half the time. So rather than put up links all over the place, here’s the important information for this series.
Unicron: A planet-sized Transformer whose origin varies from continuity to continuity. Introduced in Transformers: The Movie, a theatrical release taking place in the future of the original animated series, Unicron exists by consuming other planets. It was the last role for Orson Wells. The character really took off in the comics, thanks to constant use by Simon Furman. He recently resurfaced in the joint continuity of Armada and Energon.
Cobra-La: Also introduced in a planned theatrical animation set in the TV Series, Cobra-La is the last refuge of a group of near-humanoids who utilize a sort of “organic technology”, where living creatures replicate technology. However, they claim that our tech is a perverted form of their “tech”, and that humans forced them underground in the mountains. Now their leader, Golobulus (voiced by famed actor Burgess Meredith in the movie) plans to wipe out the human race and repopulate the earth with his own people. Pythona is his second in command, and Nemesis Enforcer is his ultimate soldier. There’s more, including their connection to Cobra, that really aren’t important to this series. G.I. Joe: The Movie was never released in theaters (blamed on low numbers for their robotic counterparts’ film), but was released on home video.
Pretenders: Another Transformers reference, the Pretenders were one of Hasbro’s gimmicks to continue the line. The robots hid in humanoid (Autobots) or monster (Decepticon) shells to hide their robotic nature. Only Bludgeon, a character also made popular in the comics, and the Monster Pretenders, whose robotic alt modes were also monstrous in design, appear in this series.
Another perk? Being your own nightlight.
The Adventure Team: The one of the first spin-offs of the original Joe action figures (back when everyone was Barbie-sized) featured our heroes leaving the battlefield and going on amazing adventures. Joe Colton (aka G.I. Joe) and Mike Power, the “Atomic Man” were two of those characters. Colton leads the team, and Power is an atomic-powered cyborg, to capitalise on the whole Six Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman craze of the time. The team would also be joined by super hero “Bulletman”. The others were relatively normal, but you can see where the later, non-military oddities of the “Real American Hero” version got their start.
And now you know the rest of the back-story. Good day! No, wait, now comes the comic itself.
Synopsis:
He says that to everyone, actually. "I'll send a pizza, alright. TO YOUR GRAVE!"
The story begins in the Himalayan Mountains, circa 1978. Joe Colton, Chok-Pa, and Mike Power (the Atomic Man) are tracking down General Mihai, but as the enemy forces attack they themselves are attacked by weird plant weapons. Chok-Pa knows the legend of “Kohbrala” well, and begs his friends to make a run for it, when they are attacked by a giant samurai with a skull face. (Any Transformer fan immediately recognizes the Decepticon Pretender “Bludgeon”.) Bludgeon kills the Atomic Man, and the others are taken alive by Pythona and a group of Cobra-La soldiers.
Shift to “modern day”, as we learn what became of Hawk. The Matrix fallout has given him certain powers of technological devices, and a mental link with the Autobots communication network. He has also “retired” after blowing the whistle on all the secret technology the US government has been making out of Cybertronian tech. (Most notably Serpent O.R. last series, which must have been the final straw for Hawk.) Now he lives alone, his wife(?) having left him, and he is plagued by nightmares of a dangerous threat to both Earth and Cybertron. During an interview about his allegations, he is called away and takes a ride in Cosmos (right in front of the reporter) to stop a sale of illegal arms designed from Cybertron tech by Destro.
As the mission winds down, the Autobots receive a signal that simply states “IIIIIIIIIIIII Retuuurrrnnn…”, and it’s the same voice form Hawk’s nightmare. Optimus Prime decides to go to Earth to investigate himself, above the protests of Hot Rod (who unfortunately accuses Prime of putting himself in danger because of Bumblebee’s assassination last series).
At some point, Joe decided counting the minutes was a bad idea.
Meanwhile, back Cobra-La, Pythona brags to a still captive “G.I. Joe” Colton that Dr. Mindbender has gotten their signal beacon working, thus summoning Unicron , and that he’s on his way to clean out the trash (that would be us) so that Cobra-La may inherit the Earth. However, the Autobots have been able to track down the beacon, and Hawk requests Flint’s help (even though both Hawk and the Autobots are considered “renegades” by the US Government) to join him and Optimus Prime to find the source.
In space, a trio of space aliens come across Unicron, and at Destro’s “Silent Castle”, we learn that he is an unwitting part of Pythona’s plan. Spores left on the ship allow Cobra-La to track the Autobots’ ship (travelling in a sort of organic carrier) and attack them with the Monster Pretenders, while back at Cobra-La, Bludgeon and the soldiers attack Prime and the rouge Joes. The latter is aided by Colton, who escaped his cell, but the Arc II doesn’t fare as well. Only Cosmos and Firewall, who joined Hawk in leaving G.I. Joe, escape and head for Tibet to join the others. She also uses her master hacking skills to call in the reinforcements, the aforementioned “special missions force”.
Our heroes in the Himalayas learn the history of Unicron and Cobra-La. 160,000 years ago Unicron came to Earth for lunch (Earth itself being that lunch), but Cobra-La had a spore capable of eating metal–including Unicron. Instead, Golobulus’ ancestor made a deal with the planet-eating planet that when Earth was “ripe” Unicron could return, wipe out the human race, and leave enough of the planet behind for Cobra-La. Now it’s ripe.
Cosmos and the humans arrive and take down Monstructor, the “Combiner” form of the Monster Pretenders, and Prime defeats Bludgeon. Flint and Colton head into Cobra-La to find the spores to destroy Unicron, and end up seeing Firewall about to be sacrificed by Mindbender and the Cobra-La Yeti slaves. Cosmos and Flint take the spores into Unicron, and dump them into the entity’s “brain”, killing him and saving the world. Meanwhile, Colton, Hawk, and Optimus rescue Firewall and takes out Golobulus, who has sent Nemesis Enforcer to kill Colton. However, Colton injures Nemesis Enforcer, and Pythona (who has gained too much respect for Colton’s inner strength during his captivity, even after Chok-Pa’s killing) finishes the big monster off.
Mindbender, Pythona, and the Cobra-La warriors are taken into custody by the Joes, Colton goes on to become a trainer for new Joes, and Hawk reconciles with his wife/girlfriend/I don’t know while Unicron’s dead body orbits the Earth. A happy ending for all the good guys.
Analysis:
OK, so maybe the other kind of "fanservice" was used after all.
Tim Seeley returns as author, making him the only writer to do two seperate archs, as well as the only one involved with three out of the four series. (He was part of the art team on the second mini-series.) Again he does a great job having the humans and Autobots working together, which has happened this well in none of the other team-ups, including the Marvel years (which I didn’t go over in SMC because they were–sort of–in continuity with the main comic, so I plan to get into that in the future). Interestingly, this is probably the biggest piece of fanservice (the non-sexual kind, for you anime fans out there) of the series. If you dropped in for the first time with this arc, and didn’t know anything about the old animated movies, you would be completely clueless. That’s why I went back and added some back-story on this review. Being the last arc, and part of Seeley’s plan from the beginning, it’s not a bad thing. Sometimes the long-term fans need something for them.
(Not to the lengths of Marvel and DC go to, mind you, since they don’t seem to care about ever bringing in new readers, and I’m trying to remember if it was Quesada or Didio that outright stated they didn’t care about bringing new readers into the mainstream titles. Despite the little baby fight they’re having now, they’re more or less interchangeable at this point.)
Seeley also brought in some new characters to play, some minor at least to the Transformers titles. (I’ve read very little G.I. Joe, so I don’t know if Firewall is all that obscure, or even a Joe pre-JVTF.) Eject was one of the “tapes” added by Hasbro to give Blaster some back-up when dealing with Soundwave, but he was seldom used outside of Japan’s Transformers: The Headmasters cartoon. Cosmos also makes his debut in this series, as do a few others.
Other characters took center stage, like Flint, who really didn’t do much since the first arc, and in the bringing-in of the “Adventure Team”. Flint bantering with Joe was a fun sequence, and I wouldn’t mind seeing the two of them “buddy picture” style in a future story. Seeley even has Joe using “Kung-Fu Grip” on one of the yetis, a nod to his doll action figure.
The absence of Snake Eyes and Scarlett, two staples in this series (and most of the G.I. Joe series I’ve seen) is obvious only after the story. Usually you can’t get very far without Snake Eyes and his amazing plot device ninja skills. Instead, Optimus (who has been mostly background, an odd place for him if you ask most Transformers fans) finally moves up to main character status.
Man, Eject will bet on anything!
My favorite “couple” (non-romantic, I hope–let’s not repeat this again) in this series were Eject and Firewall. Eject uses the sports vernacular his tech specs and both he and Firewall like to watch bad television to unwind after a battle. (They even invite Optimus to join them at the end, which I’m betting he regretted in the first five minutes. 🙂 ) It’s amazing how quick Seeley establishes characterization so quickly for the characters. Even the soon-to-die cameo by the Atomic Man gives you a hint as to who he is before Bludgeon kills him off-panel. I like how Firewall admits hacking Duke’s dating profile, though, and right over communications while calling to warn them about Cobra-La and Unicron. She’s just so darn cute, and I don’t mean that wa…OK, maybe I do.
We also get to see the results of Hawk being zapped by the Matrix. He also is having visions that I wonder if Optimus was also suffering from. Dark visions of Unicron’s impending attack on the Earth. He decides to leave G.I. Joe after all the secret government experiments. Actually, he’s been at odds since the first issue, when the government boys told him to fry Wheeljack and Bumblebee to use as study pieces while they fried the then-Cobra controlled Transformers. After helping save the world, I wonder if he still has his powers, and whether or not he and Firewall every returned to the Joes, or if they’re still recovering Cybertronian tech with the Autobots.
Andrew Wildman is a name well know to Transformers fans, being the artist for most of, if not all of, Simon Furman’s original run on the Marvel Comic series. (Thankfully, Simon himself was never asked to write this series, leaving it one of the few continuities untouched by his overblown epic, “too many stories running at once” style.) I’m so glad that his robots have improved. During the Marvel series, Wildman’s Transformers looked more like people in high-end Transformer costumes than robots, and until the just plain awful art in Generation Two (which has its fans, and I have no idea why) was the worst Transformer art I had seen. Now his robots look like robots, and rather good ones as well. His humans seemed to have slipped a tad, which I would have blamed on the inker, but that was him, too. Sometimes the lines seem too dark, and a few features are lost from further back. There’s a panel with Flint while invading Unicron and the one where Hot Rod and Ultra Magnus are missing their faces while trying to convince Prime not to go to Earth. Sure, he’s a better artist than I am (which isn’t saying much–in some ways Rob Liefield is a better artist) (some ways–my women may be ugly, but they don’t look like someone took a bicycle pump to Kate Moss’s chest), and there is a lot of improvement from his Marvel days, but he still needs to slow down a bit. He’s a good artist, but he could be a great one.
So what about using the animated movie “special guest villains”? Was Cobra-La ever used outside of the movie before? Unicron’s been done to death in the comics, thanks to Furman and the eventual return in the Armada and Energon series. However, they’re used rather well and if the live-action movie writers ever end up using Unicron in the Movieverse (please say “no”), I hope they look at this for a good example. Sadly, they’ll probably go the Furman route and make me cry.
Best moment of the story
Guess who doesn't need a chiropractor anymore.
So a good finisher on a rather good crossover series, certainly better than Dreamwave’s offering, and perhaps even better than the old Marvel run. (Transformer fansite The Disciple of Boltax is currently reviewing the original comics, if you want to take a look.) Devil’s Due no longer has the license on either series, as IDW now has the rights to both. Since they just obtained the Joe license (I don’t know why DD lost it, but if they’re poor showing on the Voltron series as far as deadlines are any indication, I can come up with a theory or two), it may be quite some time before we see a crossover again outside of fan projects. (Stop by Saturday when I put one such project in the Showcase, my second online comic entry.) After all, they need to establish their own Joe Universe first. But who knows what the future holds, or how long before “Yo, Joe!” and “Transform and Roll Out!” are once again heard on the same battlefield!
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