G.I. Joe: Origins #12Written by Marc Andreyko
Art by Ben Templesmith
Covers by Tom Feister & Templesmith
- Cover A by
Tom Feister
G.I. Joe Origins #12 tells the story of the young woman who would become the Joe-verse's most fatale femme. The Baroness.
This is a great comic book that a lot of Joe fans are going to hate because of the art work. I am going to spend most of this review speaking directly to you if you find yourself in this category.
The rest of you... if you are reading this, you are most likely a Joe fan. If, on top of that, you are into comics enough to know the names Andreyko and Templesmith, then all I really have to tell you is that it is as good as you expected. If you are kind of into The Baroness, or just kind of into comics, or just giving this book a shot to see if you like it. Just read along with what I am telling the first group. The haters!
Listen up, haters!
Just kidding. I'm not going to talk down to you like that. Nor am I going to get all defensive or condescending. If a review started like this in a snobby music magazine, it would go on to explain how you are not smart enough or cool enough to really “get it”. That is not what I am trying to do here, and I honestly hope it doesn't come off that way at all.
I understand. I can see where you are coming from when you look at these pages and say “that doesn't look like G.I.Joe.” I am a big fan of Ben Templesmith's work and I don't think I would have ever listed him among my dream-team artists for a G.I.Joe book. This is quite simply a look that this line has not had before. We are used to clean, angular shapes, hard edges, and dark shadows. And then along comes this work that looks so...sloppy.
But it's not. Trust me, it's not.
Look more closely and you will find not a single line out of place. Not a pen-stroke wasted. Don't believe me? Try this experiment if you can. Grab a few comics by some of your more “solid” artists. Flip through each one and really take a close look at the faces of the female characters. If you took away the hair and the skin and eye color, could you really tell most of them apart? In a lot of cases you will be looking at “generic-female: blonde” and “generic-female: red head”. They are differentiated by their hair and they way they dress. Many artists achieve that more “solid” look because they are not actually drawing new images, but posing manikins. I admit, that does come off harsh. I am overstating my point. All artists have their strengths and weaknesses.
Now go ahead and look at Templesmith's Baroness. Look at her as a young aristocrat. Look at her as hungry revolutionary. Look at her as a dangerous young woman getting more dangerous as she gets less young. In every panel it is very clearly her. Whether she is Anastasia DeCobray, “Little Snowflake”, or The Baroness, she is clearly the same person throughout. And not simply an action figure put in different poses... I mean that her face looks like a distinct, unique, individual at every point in her story. When her big jaw is tucked in, it looks awkward and almost shy, when it is thrust out we see haughty impudence, and when she cocks her head coolly to the side as she tosses away her family's riches we see the exact same detached conviction that we see when she strikes the same pose for the issue's culminating act of violence.
Templesmith draws characters that can act. They do real stuf and they show real emotions. And not just The Baroness, either. Watch the expression of even minor characters as they pas through the story. These aren't just props and costumes.
Ok, you are still not convinced that this is what you want. Ok, hopefully you will at least agree to give the art another chance. You can see now how it is not quite as sloppy as you thought it was at first glance. But, it is still not what you expected.
You wanted the ice-cold, thigh-high, stiletto-strutting, pistol-packing, armor-plated banshee, right? Of course you did. How could you not. Yes, there are flashes of that version of the character in here (notably on Tom Feister's beautiful cover), but that is not who this book is about.
The Baroness's original file card tells that she went from student activism to international terrorism. Quite a leap! Well, this book tells how that leap was made. And that is who this book is about. It tells the story of how she went from a frightened and angry child to one of the most feared terror agents in the world.
THAT is what you are getting here. Not simply a story spotlighting how cool The Baroness is, but rather a story telling how she got that way.
I guess that is my main point here. The Origins comics are not about how cool the characters are NOW. We already know that. Seeing The Baroness as we have always known her to be would be doing a disservice to this story, because she wasn't always like that.
By the end of the comic, when we finally see her looking and acting how we have come to expect her to act, we know what she had to go through to get to that point. We have seen the beginning and end of her emotional journey from angry and impudent child to stone-cold murderer. And Ben Templesmith is the ideal artist to show it to us.
This is an emotional story and he is an emotionally expressive artist.
I think most of you are convinced enough to give it another chance. So here is a little something for those of you who need more. Ok, The Baroness that you know, she had to go through the turmoil and moral uncertainty of her past to emerge as the sexy, hard-edged, killer that she is now. And that's what this book is. It not only tells that story, but it visually represents her journey from vague ethical boundaries to sharply focused moral indifference.
Having been through Origins is what made her a woman who is capable of doing all of the things we love and hate her for doing. In a way, the emotionally expressive and psychologically vulnerable girl you see here is exactly what is being so fiercely protected by all of that sharp and shiny armor.
If that still doesn't win you over, then maybe this one just isn't for you But trust me that it is really a fantastic issue.
- Cover B by
Ben Templesmith
Oh, and I wasn't just making all of that stuff up so that I could gush about Ben Templesmith's art. Marc Andreyko is an extremely talented writer and every intricate turn I talked about was in there because he put it there.
5 Flag Point RatingUnless you still couldn't get past the art, in which case the story alone still gets
4 Flag Point RatingYou can check out
a 5-page preview of G.I. Joe: Origins #12 here »
