TRANSFORMERS VS. G.I. JOE

Artwork and lettering by Tom Scioli

Written by Tom Scioli and John Barber

Edited by Carlos Guzman

Published by IDW

Available: Amazon / ComiXology / Comics Stores

The modern iteration of Hasbro’s G.I. Joe toy line has been around since 1982, while their Transformers line has been around since 1984. In the last 30+ years, the armies of characters from each line have starred in dozens of cartoon shows, hundreds of comic books and even a few live-action movies. At this point, it might seem something of a challenge to find new takes on characters that have been rebooted and tinkered with so much over the decades. Even mashing the two franchises into one another is played out at this point. Marvel Comics first tried that in 1986, and every publisher to hold the licenses since has done the same. Repeatedly.

Is there really anything left to say about warring races of giant alien robots that can disguise themselves as vehicles and cartoonishly colorful soldiers battling a fictional terrorist group composed of supervillains?

I’d like to answer that question in the form of a comic book: Tom Scioli and John Barber’s exceptional Transformers Vs. G.I. Joe series.

Scioli, an artist best known for his Kirby-influenced works like Gødland and American Barbarian, hardly seems the ideal artist for a licensed comic, but his rough-hewn, volcanically-energetic style brings an auteur version of G.I. Joe and the Transformers. He and Barber plunge into the toybox and cartoons and comics with enthusiasm, unearthing obscure characters, places and devices with which to fill every square millimeter of every page, while simultaneously reinventing the characters as they do so. They also reverse the most standard plot devices of past encounters of these characters, in a way that almost seems contrarian.

Where the book transcends its licensed comics origins is in its construction. The creators don’t simply reinvent and redesign the characters, and flip various concepts, but they lay-out the comic so that every scene reads like a story of its own, often complete with a title, a unique style and mini-climax of its own.

Only five issues of the series have been published so far (starting with a #0 issue), but already it reads like one of the biggestTransformers and/or G.I. Joe stories ever told in any medium, with so many big, new, crazy ideas per issue it’s easy to imagine Grant Morrison or Jonathan Hickman reading the book at home, shaking their heads and muttering “Why didn’t I think of that?”

The latest issue alone, for example, featured a Duke vs. Snake-Eyes battle for the ages, a Tales From The Crypt homage involving “The Decepticonecronomicon” and Transformer necromancy, a team consisting of all the G.I. Joe pets outfitted with high-tech harnesses bristling with weaponry flying in a rocket shaped like Snoopy’s head, a reimagining of the Oktober Guard as an army of horror movie antagonists, a G.I. Joe/Transformers dance party, the history of Cybertron told as Kamandi-inpsired cave painting and dim-witted Joe Bazooka eating a techno-organic plant and tripping balls.

Scioli and Barber aren’t just offering up a relentlessly entertaining, astoundingly imaginative take on these two done-to-death franchises, they’re, well, transforming them into something bigger and better.

- J. Caleb Mozzocco