Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: The Cabal Part Four
Written by: Josh Blaylock
Penciled by: Brandon Badeaux
Inked by: John Larter and Andrew Pepoy
Colored by: Hi-Fi Color Design
Lettered by: NA
Editor: NA
Publisher: Devil’s Due/Image Comics
“GI Joe: A Real American Hero†has always been blessed and cursed by its’ more outlandish elements, which makes the series much more of a super-hero-type franchise than the straight-up military version of the franchise’s earlier incarnation. Most notable is the overt kinky sex/fetishism nature of the ARAH line.
If you look at the comics and the 1980s cartoon, you can see the obvious sexual overtures. Snake Eyes is obviously a subservient leather fetishist who dresses like the Gimp from Pulp Fiction. Baroness is obviously a dominatrix and her lover Destro’s mask is a piece of S&M gear designed and worn to remind Destro that Baroness is the boss in bed. Drill-Instructor Beachhead wears his balaclava hood because he gets off on the anonymity of bossing around the rookie grunts that have no clue as to what Beachhead looked like under the mask. Shipwreck was a flamboyant male nymphomaniac who chased after everything remotely female. Dr. Mindbender had his machine that turned his captured collection of super-models into faceless and mindless coma victims for him to molest. Serpentor was the ultimate himbo created in a lab by a group of high-ranking Cobra leaders who were tired of putting up with the overly emotional and flamboyantly gay Cobra Commander. And let us not forget the various faceless Vipers, whose uniforms often come off as being a mix of just about uniform every fetish known to man and woman.
So with that in mind, we go to the current arc which features Baroness and Flint involved in an extremely kinky situation: kidnapped and tied up together and tortured with only each other to save the other from being killed or breaking. The kidnappers are agents of various international crime cartels who are pissed off at how Cobra Commander took advantage of their offers of sanctuary during his run from the law in order to raid their organization for new Cobra members. This is a story where one would naturally expect to see the sexual tension between the two being exploited along with some gratuitous scenes of Baroness in various bondage situations as she gets pumped for information about the Commander’s location.
Sadly Josh keeps the kinky action and sexual tension to non-existent levels and despite the cover image of Baroness and Flint having a passionate kiss, Josh keeps the two true to their signifigant others. GI Joe #19 opens with Baroness and Flint storming their kidnapper’s mansion headquarters after escaping and catching the villains bringing in the members of the GI Joes and Cobra who went looking for the two. Luckily Destro, Snake Eyes, and Destro’s evil son Alexander (who is riding the new Hiss Tank) storm the mansion to save the day. The villains are defeated and reluctantly turned over to the proper authorities by the ultra-pissed off Destro. As Flint and Baroness reunite with their lovers, Baroness takes it upon herself to expose the fact that the two were forced to endure long-term bondage and torture, and proceeds to kiss Flint passionately, which causes Lady Jay to hit Flint in the face with her fist.
Which leads me to make the following aside, as to how I absolutely HATE how Josh writes Destro. Josh writes Destro like Cobra Commander-lite with no compassion or sense of decency in him. That is not Destro. Not one bit. Destro has always been the exact opposite of Cobra Commander. Destro has honor and a clear sense of what is right and wrong. Yes he hangs out with Cobra and helps out in his crazy schemes but he does so only because Cobra Commander is an idiot and Destro can’t sit ideally by while his best customer runs around like a chicken with his head cut off. He is not some obnoxious twit who kills off henchmen left and right when he is in a bad mood. Granted his new attitude could be explained away as Destro dealing with the stress of having his homicidal bastard son showing up out of the blue and usurping control over his organization, but you’d think that Josh would at least explore this instead of throwing Destro out there and have him act like a monster.
The issue ends with the set-up for the next arc, as Storm Shadow is revealed to be missing. Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Spike, Storm Shadow has always been more interesting as a good guy than as a bad guy. Plus having Cobra Commander lose Storm Shadow back to the side of the angels means that Cobra Commander’s life will be even more screwed up, which means Cobra Commander will be more neurotic than ever and crazy, miserable, and neurotic Cobra Commander is pure 100% comedic gold.
