Buy this comic book! NOW!

October 23, 2008 on 3:38 pm | In Comics, Movies, Television, Toys | No Comments

Folks, I ain’t gonna lie to you. Well, not like I usually do. Usually I talk out my ass and get away with it because, well, I live in a nonextradition country. But for once, I’m going to come clean with you.

GI Joe may be returning big time.

“But Ethan!” you cry, “GI Joe’s been around for a long time and they keep making hit toys and comics and there’s this movie and everything! And we really like whining!” And you’re right on all counts. But now IDW publishing is doing something that I think has been overdue for a while: they’re restarting the GI Joe franchise.

GI Joe #0 came out yesterday and costs only $1, so you don’t have much of an excuse to not buying it (unless you live somewhere where literacy is outlawed – I’M LOOKING AT YOU, KANSAS). It’s three short tales to set up the three new Joe series, GI Joe proper, GI Joe: Origins, and GI Joe: COBRA, each done by the artists and writers of their respective series. The goal is to reboot the franchise, starting at the early days when the Joes and COBRA were still unaware of each other, leading into how the Joes were recruited, and possibly the same with COBRA (the short COBRA story in #0 has Chuckles infiltrating the organization).

And normally, I don’t give a rat’s ass about GI Joe. I adored the show as a kid but lost track of it right before the animated movie. Now there’s been so many changes to the teams and the storylines and whatnot that I couldn’t be bother with it. Especially when everything from the 1980’s until now was all considered part of the same story. And because they released figures that looked like this:

But this new start looks very, very promising. All three stories had great writing and amazing art and after each teaser I found myself saying, “I want to read more of this! This will make me happy!” I haven’t kept up with any Joe continuity, but at this point I don’t have to! It’s all new! It’s perfect for me, despite breaking some of my major rules:

1) I don’t like war comics/movies/stories/shadowplays/flipbooks, etc.
2) I don’t like series that start out with an enormous cast of characters
3) I don’t like jumping onto a series that has an extremely rabid fanbase stretching back two decades
4) I generally stay away from books based on toy lines (see also “Centurions”. Dear God, why do I even have that issue bagged and boarded? I got it in a sampler pack.)

But for the first time since little 7-year old Ethan purchased his first GI Joe figure, I’m excited about picking up more GI Joe stuff. The issue #0 was that good. And I recommend it highly to anyone who’s intrigued by GI Joe but has been on the fence about learning more at you local library.

Now don’t drop the ball on this one, IDW. I’m trusting you.