Friday, January 22, 2010

G.I. Joe: Master & Apprentice #1-4 (2004)

This book may be written by Brandon Jerwa, whose take on GI Joe I always enjoyed, but there is very little that interests me. I'm not a ninja fan, so I shouldn't be surprised that a mini featuring Snake Eyes and his newest apprentice wouldn't be my cup of tea. In fact, this is pretty much "Call All Ninjas" even if you are a samurai like Budo. The main bad guy is my favorite Cobra villain, Firefly, but he is pretty generic and doesn't have a whole lot to him, he acts as a hired gun.

I can' help but be suspicious that Jerwa doesn't love the ninjas either, since he introduces Duke and Chuckles into the story for no real reason. By the end, the book is kind of stacked in the Joes favor. I'm not surprised that Firefly had to cut and run when he was up against Snake-Eyes, Storm Shadow, Jinx, Kamakura, Budo, Chuckles, and Duke. Speaking of Kamakura, he's the main POV character, but I wasn't too fond of him. He's a generic special forces grunt except that his Dad was a Crimson Guardsman back in the day. I do find it quite interesting that the newest ninja-Joe is another white guy.

Stefano Caselli brings his dramatic, action paced style to this book and I do like it. It is easy to see this is one of his early books though, because there are a ton of scenes where you can't tell who is who or which masked guy just slashed which other masked guy. The seeds of his later development are here, but at this point, he needed some work.

Average

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