Luke Owen reviews the trade paperback release of G.I. Joe vs The Transformers Vol 3…
The G.I. JOE vs The Transformers saga continues as the AUTOBOTS return to earth and with the help of G.I. JOE plan on destroying all Cybertronian technology. But Serpentor has other objectives.
Collecting G.I. Joe vs. The Transformers Vol 3: The Art of War issues #1-5 and G.I. Joe vs. The Transformers Vol 4: Black Horizon issues #1-2, this trade paperback compilation is a tale of two halves. The first story is actually pretty decent, but the second one doesn’t quite work.
Starting with The Art of War, the story sees the US government taking the destroyed head of Megatron in order to implant his war strategies/theories into that of a robot military army. But when Cobra Commander attacks the base, he releases Serpentor to be his personal slave – only now with the thoughts of Megatron, Serpentor bows down to no one. With Serpentor heading back to Cybertron to rebuild the Decepticons and capture the Matrix, the G.I. Joes and Transformers team up again to take down the destructive Serpentor.
I’ve been very critical of the artwork in IDWs Transformers comics as sometimes (like More Than Meets The Eye) it can be really messy and unviewable but other times (like Rage of the Dinobots) it’s fantastic. Thankfully the pencils by Joe Ng, James Raiz and Alex Milne are really, really strong with well defined characters and superb action set pieces. This coupled with Rob Ross, M3th and Alan Tam inking makes it one of the better looking Transformers pieces available.
The story itself isn’t really that great and I don’t think it had enough to fill all 5 issues, but some of the dialogue is absolutely fantastic. Tim Seeley has nailed every character perfectly and the exchanges between all characters from either franchise are really strong. My only real problem with the story as a whole is that, outside of Serpentor, there wasn’t really a decent villain showing. Cobra Commander and the rest of Cobra are only in the story for a few pages and due to the deaths of main characters from previous meetings, we’re left with basic, faceless Decepticons who pose no real threat. It does mean that Serpentor does have a lot to do and due to the duality of the character, it does work quite well – but it would have worked better if he had more recognisable counterparts.
And while I do have a lot of praise for The Art of War, I do not share the same enthusiasm for Black Horizon which is clunky, badly paced, pretty dull and not fun to read.
The story follows on from Art of War (and given the ending, that should have been interesting) and sees the Joes and Transformers team up again to take down Destro and the Cobra Lalas who have held the original G.I. Joe captive. It’s certainly a less engaging story than Art of War but its not helped by some horrendous padding and terrible dialogue. And, unlike the Art of War, this doesn’t have good leading characters, villains or character development.
The artwork, while good, is not up to scratch with the previous story and just feels basic at best. However, I will give some credit to the internal design of Unicron, which is very inventive. I’d have liked to have seen a lot more of it to be honest.
As a complete collection, G.I. Joe vs. The Transformers Vol 3 is well worth picking up despite some simple flaws. I can’t say that it’s a page turner that will keep you gripped, but you certainly won’t finish it disappointed. Black Horizon may be a bit of a let down, but The Art of War is pretty darn good.
Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of the Month in Review show for Flickering Myth’s Podcast Network. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Originally published April 25, 2013. Updated November 6, 2019.
