What do you think?
Rate this book
Tales from the Cobra Wars: A G.I. Joe Anthology
A high-velocity collection of original fiction for G.I. Joe fans of all ages—including a new story from Max Brooks!
Just in time for the new film G.I. Joe: Retaliation,this action-packed collection features original fiction from today’s top crime and thriller writers, including a new story and introduction by Max Brooks, author of World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Featuring characters Flint, Scarlett, Destro, and the Baroness, Tales from the Cobra Wars depicts the ongoing war between G.I. Joe and Cobra from every angle. Eight tales about global covert conflict, penned by such writers as Jonathan Maberry, Duane Swierczynski, Matt Forbeck, and Dennis Tafoya, are accompanied by striking black-and-white illustrations by Michael Montenat. Chuck Dixon, IDW’s main G.I. Joe comics scribe, makes his prose debut with a new Snake Eyes adventure.
Just in time for the new film G.I. Joe: Retaliation,this action-packed collection features original fiction from today’s top crime and thriller writers, including a new story and introduction by Max Brooks, author of World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Featuring characters Flint, Scarlett, Destro, and the Baroness, Tales from the Cobra Wars depicts the ongoing war between G.I. Joe and Cobra from every angle. Eight tales about global covert conflict, penned by such writers as Jonathan Maberry, Duane Swierczynski, Matt Forbeck, and Dennis Tafoya, are accompanied by striking black-and-white illustrations by Michael Montenat. Chuck Dixon, IDW’s main G.I. Joe comics scribe, makes his prose debut with a new Snake Eyes adventure.
320 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 15, 2011
11 people are currently reading
279 people want to read
About the author
Matt Forbeck
212 books315 followersI'm an award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author and game designer and happily married father of five, including a set of quadruplets. For more on my work, see Forbeck.com.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
May 6, 2011
Great collection of GI JOE stories. They should have done this 20 years ago. I was very excited about this project, and wanted desperately to be involved, as a writer and HUGE life-long JOE fan. I read this book start to finish in the hours after it arrived at my house. I love seeing what people come up with in the GI JOE universe.
Maberry's story stands out as a very strong piece. I also enjoyed Tafoya's work. This is a good addition to any JOE fans collection.
YO JOE!
Keep up the good work!(and look me up for the next book!)
OK, back to watching Cold Slither on Youtube....
Kevin James Breaux
Maberry's story stands out as a very strong piece. I also enjoyed Tafoya's work. This is a good addition to any JOE fans collection.
YO JOE!
Keep up the good work!(and look me up for the next book!)
OK, back to watching Cold Slither on Youtube....
Kevin James Breaux
September 16, 2022
4.5 Stars
Great stories featuring the GI Joe team. The writers avoided overusing the obvious "cool" characters for the most part and instead focused on the Joes and Cobra as a whole. Nice variety of stories with different subject, although technology and its misuse is a theme touched on in more than one story.
Max Brooks took things to the serious side with his story, focusing on PTSD and using a GI Joe story as a thinly veiled attempt to get a real message out.
Overall this was a good collection, and if you're a Gi Joe fan it's worth a read.
Great stories featuring the GI Joe team. The writers avoided overusing the obvious "cool" characters for the most part and instead focused on the Joes and Cobra as a whole. Nice variety of stories with different subject, although technology and its misuse is a theme touched on in more than one story.
Max Brooks took things to the serious side with his story, focusing on PTSD and using a GI Joe story as a thinly veiled attempt to get a real message out.
Overall this was a good collection, and if you're a Gi Joe fan it's worth a read.
March 7, 2021
Like all anthologies I liked some stories more than others. But I do enjoy reading more adventures of GI Joe. I like the characters and can handle them in more adventures. Most of these centered around computers which brings Cobra into the age of the internet and brushes on the dangers of cyber hacking. It’s a good read for those who enjoy Duke, Scarlett, Snake-eyes and a couple of new characters.
April 10, 2013
Pretty entertaining and interesting to see a more modern take on the Joes. Well, for me it was modern. My last foray into the real of GI Joe would have been when I was 10.
January 13, 2017
(Book received for free for review from IDW Publishing.)
Tales from the Cobra Wars is a collection of two short stories and five novellas, each by a different author. Chuck Dixon is probably the most recognizable name of the group.
When I say that five of the seven stories didn't really work for me, it might make the book sound bad, but that's not the case at all. If I had paid for the book, the last story alone would have been worth the money, and one of the others was really enjoyable, too.
The other five were not bad stories, it's just their focus wasn't a match for my tastes. The five were all action-orientated, which is not at all unreasonable for stories set in the GI Joe world. The two I liked were more character-driven.
These stories were set in the same rebooted world as the graphic novel I reviewed two books ago -- that is to say, Cobra is known as an enemy, but no one knows much more about them than that. When an economy crashes, they might be behind it... or they might not be. New virus? Might be Cobra... or might not be. They're behind so many different sorts of trouble, it's impossible for anyone outside of the organization to pin down their goals.
I enjoyed how much darker and more realistic this rebooted world is than the 80s cartoon/comic book was. People get hurt, people die (duh, war), hard decisions have to be made.
I'm not going to go into detail for the five stories I didn't like, but I will for the two that I did.
Speed Trap, by Duane Swierczynski. Skidmark, GI Joe's top driver, is used to driving the fastest vehicles on the planet. Mid-mission, he's suddenly without a vehicle, and so is forced to carjack a single mother's Prius... with the mother and her young son in it. The three race cross-state, while being pursued by one of Cobra's drivers.
Either Swierczynski loves cars or he fakes it well -- all the car-loving details were almost a turn-off for me, but once Skidmark was in the Prius, the whole story took a turn for the better. The amusement of someone used to driving the best vehicles now stuck in a Prius as he's racing to save the American southwest was great, but more than that, his interaction with the mother and son were what made the story for me.
I'm going to be looking up other things by Swierczynski once I post this; he's a writer who trusts his readers, which is the best thing a writer can do. For example, I believe the son was autistic, but we were never outright told. I love that sort of thing.
Message in a Bottle, by John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow. Like I said, I would have easily paid the book price just for this story. Heck, I'd pay ten times the book price just for this one!
The story starts with an American teenager, a hacker of great skill. He hacks the wrong thing (Department of Defense system) and is caught. Instead of going to jail (due to his age, I assume), he's instead banned from using computers or interacting with the Internet at all. (The kid later claims (to himself) that he was doing it to help them, to show them where the weak points were, but I'm pretty sure he was lying to himself.)
***Spoilers from here on***
The kid is contacted by someone who offers him a job on some island, doing what he loves doing: Hacking. He jumps at the offer.
Written in first person, we get to see his reasoning for the things he does that hurts America and kills innocent people. ("If they weren't stupid, they wouldn't be in the wrong place at the wrong time...") Pretty poor reasoning, but it fits the character.
Then things get good. Really really good. (I'm sitting here grinning as I write this.) His mother sends him an email which gets him thinking about what he's doing...
The kid is no fool. He knows his mother was computer illiterate before he got caught, and hates computers now for the trouble her son got into with them.
Still, the news story she linked to (how someone can slowly be brainwashed to do bad things) hits home and gets him thinking. He replies back to the email. "Mom" replies to his right away, and eventually he figures out it's a GI Joe.
They email back and forth more (since he's a hacker with access to so much, he can sneak his emails out of the secure base), and the Joe convinces him to turn on the people he's working for and come back home... she offers him a job doing what he's doing now, except he won't hurt anyone anymore and his record will be cleared.
He accepts the offer. The Joes storm the island to both destroy it and to rescue him... except it's not the Joes. It was Cobra all along, testing his loyalty.
So after all that soul-searching, after realizing what a mess he made of his life, how badly he hurt so many people, after coming to understand he's been doing evil all this time... it's for nothing. All it accomplished was letting Cobra know he couldn't be trusted.
Do they kill him? Nope, why waste such a skilled hacker? They ship him off to Korea (my guess), and keep him in a tiny box with no net access, nothing more than what he needs to do his work. He went from working for Cobra on the island stronghold, where he had every luxury, unlimited net access, beaches all to himself... to doing the same job for the same people while living in a coffin-sized cell, never to see the sun again. And on top of all that? He now knows exactly what he's doing, how much he's hurting people, how wrong it is.
****End spoiler****
That story could have been written personally for me. I'm still grinning, just remembering it. All the things the main character went through, and ending up like that! I love these authors and must find more things by them.
So, to conclude this long review: I highly recommend this book! If you like action over characterization, you'll love the majority of the stories. Like characterization better? You'll get two great stories. Love dark stories? Then that last story is for you!
Tales from the Cobra Wars is a collection of two short stories and five novellas, each by a different author. Chuck Dixon is probably the most recognizable name of the group.
When I say that five of the seven stories didn't really work for me, it might make the book sound bad, but that's not the case at all. If I had paid for the book, the last story alone would have been worth the money, and one of the others was really enjoyable, too.
The other five were not bad stories, it's just their focus wasn't a match for my tastes. The five were all action-orientated, which is not at all unreasonable for stories set in the GI Joe world. The two I liked were more character-driven.
These stories were set in the same rebooted world as the graphic novel I reviewed two books ago -- that is to say, Cobra is known as an enemy, but no one knows much more about them than that. When an economy crashes, they might be behind it... or they might not be. New virus? Might be Cobra... or might not be. They're behind so many different sorts of trouble, it's impossible for anyone outside of the organization to pin down their goals.
I enjoyed how much darker and more realistic this rebooted world is than the 80s cartoon/comic book was. People get hurt, people die (duh, war), hard decisions have to be made.
I'm not going to go into detail for the five stories I didn't like, but I will for the two that I did.
Speed Trap, by Duane Swierczynski. Skidmark, GI Joe's top driver, is used to driving the fastest vehicles on the planet. Mid-mission, he's suddenly without a vehicle, and so is forced to carjack a single mother's Prius... with the mother and her young son in it. The three race cross-state, while being pursued by one of Cobra's drivers.
Either Swierczynski loves cars or he fakes it well -- all the car-loving details were almost a turn-off for me, but once Skidmark was in the Prius, the whole story took a turn for the better. The amusement of someone used to driving the best vehicles now stuck in a Prius as he's racing to save the American southwest was great, but more than that, his interaction with the mother and son were what made the story for me.
I'm going to be looking up other things by Swierczynski once I post this; he's a writer who trusts his readers, which is the best thing a writer can do. For example, I believe the son was autistic, but we were never outright told. I love that sort of thing.
Message in a Bottle, by John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow. Like I said, I would have easily paid the book price just for this story. Heck, I'd pay ten times the book price just for this one!
The story starts with an American teenager, a hacker of great skill. He hacks the wrong thing (Department of Defense system) and is caught. Instead of going to jail (due to his age, I assume), he's instead banned from using computers or interacting with the Internet at all. (The kid later claims (to himself) that he was doing it to help them, to show them where the weak points were, but I'm pretty sure he was lying to himself.)
***Spoilers from here on***
The kid is contacted by someone who offers him a job on some island, doing what he loves doing: Hacking. He jumps at the offer.
Written in first person, we get to see his reasoning for the things he does that hurts America and kills innocent people. ("If they weren't stupid, they wouldn't be in the wrong place at the wrong time...") Pretty poor reasoning, but it fits the character.
Then things get good. Really really good. (I'm sitting here grinning as I write this.) His mother sends him an email which gets him thinking about what he's doing...
The kid is no fool. He knows his mother was computer illiterate before he got caught, and hates computers now for the trouble her son got into with them.
Still, the news story she linked to (how someone can slowly be brainwashed to do bad things) hits home and gets him thinking. He replies back to the email. "Mom" replies to his right away, and eventually he figures out it's a GI Joe.
They email back and forth more (since he's a hacker with access to so much, he can sneak his emails out of the secure base), and the Joe convinces him to turn on the people he's working for and come back home... she offers him a job doing what he's doing now, except he won't hurt anyone anymore and his record will be cleared.
He accepts the offer. The Joes storm the island to both destroy it and to rescue him... except it's not the Joes. It was Cobra all along, testing his loyalty.
So after all that soul-searching, after realizing what a mess he made of his life, how badly he hurt so many people, after coming to understand he's been doing evil all this time... it's for nothing. All it accomplished was letting Cobra know he couldn't be trusted.
Do they kill him? Nope, why waste such a skilled hacker? They ship him off to Korea (my guess), and keep him in a tiny box with no net access, nothing more than what he needs to do his work. He went from working for Cobra on the island stronghold, where he had every luxury, unlimited net access, beaches all to himself... to doing the same job for the same people while living in a coffin-sized cell, never to see the sun again. And on top of all that? He now knows exactly what he's doing, how much he's hurting people, how wrong it is.
****End spoiler****
That story could have been written personally for me. I'm still grinning, just remembering it. All the things the main character went through, and ending up like that! I love these authors and must find more things by them.
So, to conclude this long review: I highly recommend this book! If you like action over characterization, you'll love the majority of the stories. Like characterization better? You'll get two great stories. Love dark stories? Then that last story is for you!
May 28, 2020
A fun read if you're a fan of G.I. Joe. I only have two negative critiques, really. The first is that some of the tech and gaming jargon used was corny. The only people that ever talked the way Brainstorm did in Just A Game are poorly written actors on CBS shows that use overdone 1337 speak to frighten and amaze senior citizens. My second problem is with the narrator of Message In A Bottle. His casual implication of drugging and raping a model seemed unnecessary. He had already been established as a scumbag by admitting to callously killing untold amounts of people. If the writer wanted to cross that line, he should have jumped across instead of peaking a toe over with a single sentence. It almost felt as if that particular act was downplayed. That being said, overall this was a fun read for a lifetime fan of everything Joe.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 30, 2017
Top shelf authors in a variety of genres taking on The Joes and Cobra. I knew what I was getting into with the subject matter, but was pleasantly surprised at the depth of some of the writing. If you want a more in depth look at what Cobra or the Joes would be like if they were in 'our' world, then I definitely recommend this book. I won't say which one, but one story in particular will probably haunt me for some time to come. Good writing, gentlemen.
February 14, 2026
A surprising collection. There are a couple of duds, but overall it is a truly adult take on G.I. Joe. It manages to take some of the most well known characters and put them in realistic situations while also surprisingly addressing some real war issues like excessive use of force in cells, and PTSD.
November 19, 2017
The short stories collected here are, as a whole, smart and engaging and they actually have something to say about the state of modern warfare.
If only the movies could have been this good.
Editor Max Brooks put together a great collection that is better than it probably has any right to be.
If only the movies could have been this good.
Editor Max Brooks put together a great collection that is better than it probably has any right to be.
September 10, 2020
I loved this cartoon as a kid and even enjoyed the comic run so this should have been a winner for me. Instead it was a snooze. They didn’t use any of my favorite characters. The subjects of the actual short stories were pretty bland. I had hoped for better.
March 23, 2021
This wasn’t a comic, it was a collection of novella length written stories. I have to say I loved the added details and internal dialog that usually is left out of the comic book format. The stories themselves were very entertaining. Nicely done
February 11, 2020
3.75 Stars
August 1, 2023
Generic stories where you could plug any other characters in and call them something else.
September 17, 2023
Great GI Joe side tales. They are loosely set in the IDW GI Joe universe and so fans of the cartoon or Larry Hama's comics may be a little off put. But they are still good short stories.
November 13, 2023
If only they good do this justice as a show or movies rather than the ones that are already out. Yo Joe for adults.
May 21, 2013
You can find the full review over at The Founding Fields:
http://thefoundingfields.com/2013/05/...
Shadowhawk reviews IDW’s first full prose collection of short stories set within its G.I.Joe (licensed) franchise.
“Some of the best G.I.Joe fiction I’ve read to date, Tales From The Cobra Wars is a top-notch collection of short stories from some really talented writers.” ~The Founding Fields
I’ve mentioned before my love and fascination for all things G.I.Joe, both of which have remained undimmed for almost 18 years or so now. Well, except for the new movies, which I think are just plain terrible (review of G.I.Joe: Retaliation). The fascination I have for G.I.Joe is not something I can explain really well, even though the old Funskool toys were a huge part of my childhood and I’ve been reading IDW’s comics in the setting for almost a year now, having also gone through the original Marvel series in full at least once in the last seven years or so. Being as invested in the various comics as I’ve been, reading a fully prose collection featuring my favourite characters was something of a really welcome surprise. Given that Chuck Dixon, Matt Forbeck and Duane Swierczynski were a part of the anthology was a great boost to my expectations since all three are writers (comics and novels) that I’ve enjoyed reading to date and can always expect great things from them. They’ve certainly never disappointed, which is a huge plus as well.
Normally, I’d do a mini-review for each story here, but that is quite intensive to do, to be frank. Not to mention that I always end up repeating points, so I’m going to do something slightly different here, as I did previously for a couple other anthologies.
The anthology begins with Chuck Dixon writing his first fully prose fiction, Snake Eyes, and featuring the titular character himself. Right from the start, of both the anthology and the story, we are put right in the middle of the world of G.I.Joe as Snake Eyes is out and about on a top-secret mission. I could not have asked for a better start. Among all the G.I.Joe characters, Snake Eyes is my absolute favourite, since I love ninjas and Snake Eyes represents the peak of ninja perfection. He is a thoroughly badass character and Dixon has done a damn fine job of capturing the essence of what makes him what he is.
And this is something that I saw repeatedly in the anthology. Every character that the authors chose to write about, whether it is Flint or Scarlett or Duke, or anyone else, they’ve all managed to successfully capture the core concepts of the characters. They all behave as I expect them to behave, and there are some great callbacks to how these characters have been shown in the various comics and TV shows over the years, particularly the original Marvel run and the related animated show. Even though I’ve been reading G.I.Joe comics for almost a year now and have seen a lot of diversity in how these characters are… characterised, in this anthology I found the characterisations to be the truest.
Take Matt Forbeck’s Just a Game or Jonathan McGoran’s Unfriendly Fire for example. The common characters in both stories are Duke and Scarlett, two characters I hold in high esteem as much as I do Snake Eyes. The two short stories do a wonderful job of exploring what makes each of these characters tick, even though Scarlett is often in a supporting role and Duke is the point man here. The insights into each character are really what push the stories over into the awesome cateogry.
http://thefoundingfields.com/2013/05/...
Shadowhawk reviews IDW’s first full prose collection of short stories set within its G.I.Joe (licensed) franchise.
“Some of the best G.I.Joe fiction I’ve read to date, Tales From The Cobra Wars is a top-notch collection of short stories from some really talented writers.” ~The Founding Fields
I’ve mentioned before my love and fascination for all things G.I.Joe, both of which have remained undimmed for almost 18 years or so now. Well, except for the new movies, which I think are just plain terrible (review of G.I.Joe: Retaliation). The fascination I have for G.I.Joe is not something I can explain really well, even though the old Funskool toys were a huge part of my childhood and I’ve been reading IDW’s comics in the setting for almost a year now, having also gone through the original Marvel series in full at least once in the last seven years or so. Being as invested in the various comics as I’ve been, reading a fully prose collection featuring my favourite characters was something of a really welcome surprise. Given that Chuck Dixon, Matt Forbeck and Duane Swierczynski were a part of the anthology was a great boost to my expectations since all three are writers (comics and novels) that I’ve enjoyed reading to date and can always expect great things from them. They’ve certainly never disappointed, which is a huge plus as well.
Normally, I’d do a mini-review for each story here, but that is quite intensive to do, to be frank. Not to mention that I always end up repeating points, so I’m going to do something slightly different here, as I did previously for a couple other anthologies.
The anthology begins with Chuck Dixon writing his first fully prose fiction, Snake Eyes, and featuring the titular character himself. Right from the start, of both the anthology and the story, we are put right in the middle of the world of G.I.Joe as Snake Eyes is out and about on a top-secret mission. I could not have asked for a better start. Among all the G.I.Joe characters, Snake Eyes is my absolute favourite, since I love ninjas and Snake Eyes represents the peak of ninja perfection. He is a thoroughly badass character and Dixon has done a damn fine job of capturing the essence of what makes him what he is.
And this is something that I saw repeatedly in the anthology. Every character that the authors chose to write about, whether it is Flint or Scarlett or Duke, or anyone else, they’ve all managed to successfully capture the core concepts of the characters. They all behave as I expect them to behave, and there are some great callbacks to how these characters have been shown in the various comics and TV shows over the years, particularly the original Marvel run and the related animated show. Even though I’ve been reading G.I.Joe comics for almost a year now and have seen a lot of diversity in how these characters are… characterised, in this anthology I found the characterisations to be the truest.
Take Matt Forbeck’s Just a Game or Jonathan McGoran’s Unfriendly Fire for example. The common characters in both stories are Duke and Scarlett, two characters I hold in high esteem as much as I do Snake Eyes. The two short stories do a wonderful job of exploring what makes each of these characters tick, even though Scarlett is often in a supporting role and Duke is the point man here. The insights into each character are really what push the stories over into the awesome cateogry.
December 24, 2013
I posted some of the early stories reviews as I read them. Hopefully you can find them (GR isn't the easiest site to navigate and find what you previously wrote). If I missed a few shorts, my apologies.
"Unfriendly Fire" is a solid story w/ an interesting premise - The Joes as a humanitarian force. Of course, that only lasts for a short time given this is an action series, but it was nice while it lasted. The story has a few decent twists and moves at a nice clip.
"Just a game" is from Brainstorm's perspective. In some ways, it's a great story rooted in recent CIA exploits (though I'd dare say the story was out before the reality was made public that our real world had similar fears as what was depicted - it just didn't work out as well in the real world, at least according to reports). It had some twists, but the only weakness was the dialogue. Not that it was wholly bad, but it had a definite whiff of cheese in several spots. The worst being just as the villain shows his face on a screen everyone can see, we have a cut scene followed immediately with -
"Yo Joe!" Duke yelled. "Out of here, now!"
Scarlett and Barrel roll did as they were ordered, moving more on instinct and pure trust in Duke's judgment than anything else.
(snip)
What?! But all that withstanding, the story was good enough for me to overlook such moments that should've hit the cutting room floor. Or maybe I'm just a true mark for GI Joe?
"Message in a bottle" scratched an itch from the voice, a snarky Cobra operative w/ a nice penchant for modern pop-culture references. It had me laughing, and even when it went crazy gross, it felt more like watching Zombieland than their horror alternatives. It had a nice twist ending that fit the current Joe Universe and was probably my favorite in voice, the only sad element that it didn't have the Joe's highlighted much (mostly cursory appearances so you knew they were around).
The final story was Max Brooks own. It read well enough, making a statement about the costs of war.
Overall, the book was a joy to read, especially if you grew up on the old series (comic and TV) and can forgive the current movie franchise that should be rebooting with Chuck Dixon and the guys from IDW at the helm. The editing was poor in spots with misspellings and grammatical mistakes, especially the earlier stories, so that's a noted weakness. But I enjoyed it and hope you will too!
"Unfriendly Fire" is a solid story w/ an interesting premise - The Joes as a humanitarian force. Of course, that only lasts for a short time given this is an action series, but it was nice while it lasted. The story has a few decent twists and moves at a nice clip.
"Just a game" is from Brainstorm's perspective. In some ways, it's a great story rooted in recent CIA exploits (though I'd dare say the story was out before the reality was made public that our real world had similar fears as what was depicted - it just didn't work out as well in the real world, at least according to reports). It had some twists, but the only weakness was the dialogue. Not that it was wholly bad, but it had a definite whiff of cheese in several spots. The worst being just as the villain shows his face on a screen everyone can see, we have a cut scene followed immediately with -
"Yo Joe!" Duke yelled. "Out of here, now!"
Scarlett and Barrel roll did as they were ordered, moving more on instinct and pure trust in Duke's judgment than anything else.
(snip)
What?! But all that withstanding, the story was good enough for me to overlook such moments that should've hit the cutting room floor. Or maybe I'm just a true mark for GI Joe?
"Message in a bottle" scratched an itch from the voice, a snarky Cobra operative w/ a nice penchant for modern pop-culture references. It had me laughing, and even when it went crazy gross, it felt more like watching Zombieland than their horror alternatives. It had a nice twist ending that fit the current Joe Universe and was probably my favorite in voice, the only sad element that it didn't have the Joe's highlighted much (mostly cursory appearances so you knew they were around).
The final story was Max Brooks own. It read well enough, making a statement about the costs of war.
Overall, the book was a joy to read, especially if you grew up on the old series (comic and TV) and can forgive the current movie franchise that should be rebooting with Chuck Dixon and the guys from IDW at the helm. The editing was poor in spots with misspellings and grammatical mistakes, especially the earlier stories, so that's a noted weakness. But I enjoyed it and hope you will too!
October 16, 2014
This was a pretty interesting read and clearly written by authors who are major fans of the series. It really picks up and presents tales of the Joes after the live action reboot that occurred after the recent films were released. The result is that it is an enjoyable tale, but it doesn't tie into the original cartoons of the 1980s as much as I would have liked.
That doesn't mean the stories aren't interesting, but they are tied to fewer "familiar," long running characters and the relationships of those who are present are not quite what they are supposed to be. In the end, the stories are pretty interesting "war" stories that are well developed and fit in with the new G.I. Joe universe.
This is definitely not a book for the really young fans since the violence (and related injuries) is presented in full force. That does make for stronger storytelling, but will likely scare younger readers. There is no shortage of action, and there is the creation of a lot of "new" Joes to the bunch.
It is a worthwhile read for fans, but probably more for those not looking to re-enact their own childhood fandom.
That doesn't mean the stories aren't interesting, but they are tied to fewer "familiar," long running characters and the relationships of those who are present are not quite what they are supposed to be. In the end, the stories are pretty interesting "war" stories that are well developed and fit in with the new G.I. Joe universe.
This is definitely not a book for the really young fans since the violence (and related injuries) is presented in full force. That does make for stronger storytelling, but will likely scare younger readers. There is no shortage of action, and there is the creation of a lot of "new" Joes to the bunch.
It is a worthwhile read for fans, but probably more for those not looking to re-enact their own childhood fandom.
February 7, 2014
Most of these stories felt a little too long and a couple of them reuse the same concept of haywire robots/drones attacking the Joe team. The best one was the first story by Cobra comic book writer Chuck Dixon. It's about Snake Eyes and read like one of Ian Fleming's Bond stories, only no seducing hot women or drinking martinis. If you're a fan of the 80s toys/TV show/comic book then this is an attempt to update them for the post-9/11 world. It's far less cartoony as Cobra in this is more akin to SPECTRE, acting behind the scenes rather than hanging in some impractical giant lair and building Weather Dominators.
Brooks's story at the very end is probably the weakest of the bunch and there were some typos and such throughout the book to indicate he isn't much of an editor. Invest in some spell check, my man.
That is all.
Brooks's story at the very end is probably the weakest of the bunch and there were some typos and such throughout the book to indicate he isn't much of an editor. Invest in some spell check, my man.
That is all.
July 4, 2013
This book was given to me my a good friend who always thinks of me when he sees GI Joe related paraphernalia. Thank you Chris :)
At first, it was with much trepidation that I embarked on the cover to cover journey, seeing as how the live action movie... failed quite badly.
I was greatly relieved. Other than the occasional sex change, the characters are very much the same that I grew up getting to know. Small things had changed, allowing for character updates. That is to be expected. But the heart, the soul of GI Joe, as a whole, and as individuals remained.
Kudos.
At first, it was with much trepidation that I embarked on the cover to cover journey, seeing as how the live action movie... failed quite badly.
I was greatly relieved. Other than the occasional sex change, the characters are very much the same that I grew up getting to know. Small things had changed, allowing for character updates. That is to be expected. But the heart, the soul of GI Joe, as a whole, and as individuals remained.
Kudos.
May 6, 2014
People of my age have generally fond memories of GI Joe. An anthology is a fun way to revisit that time. As one expects with an anthology, some were better than others. The stories were all competently written; none were bad. All in all, a fun read. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if the stories were more tightly integrated with one another, telling a more continuous tale as has been done in shared world anthologies like the Wild Cards series. However, that's more a matter of wanting icing on the cake. The anthology is fine as it stands.
August 17, 2013
While I enjoy GI Joe as a pop culture phenomenon, this particular collection did not pique my interests, and thus I did not read it cover to cover. For me, this could be due to a bad timing state of mind; there are so many books but not enough time to read them all. However, I certainly recommend this to anyone interested in short stories and/or individual accounts of GI Joe characters.
August 3, 2011
Huge fan growing up, still am today, but for the most part not happy with the story telling in these "novellas". Ironically the best story was the one that the least to do with actual GI Joe members and more about a "computer nerd". Too bad, it seemed like it could have had a ton of potential.
March 18, 2013
Quite an eclectic collection of stories... not much character development, but I guess Joe doesn't really lend itself to that. Some fun stories, some dark stories, plenty of action and combat and tech. The Joes find themselves in all kinds of situations within these stories.
April 29, 2013
Would read again, lots of fun, but has some real flaws.
http://www.staffersbookreview.com/201...
http://www.staffersbookreview.com/201...
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews