G.I. COMBAT #1
What did the
iFanboy
community think?
Pulls
Art by Ariel Olivetti & Dan Panosian
Cover by Brett Booth, Andrew Dalhouse, & Ariel Olivetti
Size: 40 pages
Price: 3.99
While a wonder a little if G.I. COMBAT isn’t a bit too similar in outward appearance to one of the titles it replaced, MEN OF WAR, the internal bits are…well, like the cover, not really the same at all.
There’s two stories here: the cover story, “The War That Time Forgot”, and the backup, “The Unknown Soldier”. Both are fine. The first (and better of the two) sees American special forces investigating a blacked-out area in North Korea. Sensibly, they fear this might be an indication that North Korea is preparing something bad. What they find, of course, is stranger yet. I figure it doesn’t really count as a spoiler to say that dinosaurs are involved.
The art is interesting…half painterish figures, half sort of 3D computer generated stuff – or something like it. I like the look a lot of the time, but occasionally it comes off the way bad special effects do. Then again, maybe that’s the point: this is the kind of story you could totally imagine as a B-movie.
“Unknown Soldier” is a bit more pedestrian, introducing us to the exploits of a severely-scarred soldier with no identification and amnesia besides. If the first story is the B-movie, this is the generic action movie. I find it tricky to really get into that in comic form, though. The imagery just isn’t different enough, isn’t imaginative enough, and the writing doesn’t elevate the hum-drum concept above simply satisfactory.
Art: 3 - Good
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Two stories in one…and I kinda liked both of them. I think the art by Ariel Olivetti on the first story “The war that time forgot” was totally mismatched to the story, and found the storytelling to be weak at times. The Art on the second feature, The Unknown Soldier”, worked really well for me. Dan Panosian is an old-timer, and his storytelling is rock-solid. The writing on both features was sufficient, but I would have liked to see the stories more fleshed out-the characters are interesting, but I felt everything was rushed and there could have been a lot more story told. Was this just a case of DC saying “Hey, let’s revive these properties just to revive them?” Kinda felt that way to me… I know Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray are a talented writing team, masterful at creating ongoing sagas, so I am on-board for now and looking forward to a fun ride.
I feel like this is part of DC’s attempts to broaden their audience without really broadening their catalogue…I think they realize that not everyone’s going to go for superheroes, but they’re hoping to bring in some of their existing comic fans with names they might recognize while attracting a different demographic altogether with the subject matter. I doubt it’s working.