CWR WEEKEND BLOG EXTRA

Welcome to the latest BLOG EXTRA. This week: two from Devil’s Due Publishing, celebrating its 5th birthday!

G.I. JOE #15 is written by Joe Casey and drawn by Josh Medors. When last we left the Joes, we discovered that one of the President’s advisors, a man with tremendous influence, was actually Cobra Commander in disguise. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he was working to convince the President to deactivate the Joes and fund a new anti-terrorist group he had created: the Phoenix Guard. With this issue, we see the Commander make his move, and if you can’t figure out what the Phoenix Guard’s first target will be, you probably flunked second grade. Casey keeps the military soap opera aspects moving along, though the pacing here is extremely clunky. This issue has a little too much standing around talking and not enough forward plot movement on the Joes’ end. Still, this remains decent, readable stuff, and Medors finally looks comfortable on the art.

The middle chapter of FAMILY GUY, subtitled “Peter Griffin’s Guide to Parenting” is written by Matt Fleckenstein and drawn by 17! different credited artists. That’s never a good sign. Of course, with as much as I hate the TV show, I tend to believe its existence is a bad sign. However, this story’s cracks at the issue of illegal immigration actually produce a couple of clever and amusing jokes here and there. When the immigrants flock to town to build a pipeline to send Quahog’s water to Scottsdale, Arizona, a local news anchor remarks about his co-anchor, “I think I speak for Diane when I say no one lays pipe better than desperate illegal immigrants,” there’s a hint that Fleckenstein has the ability to raise the bar for low-end humor. I still wasn’t enthralled with the book as a whole, but that glimmer of sharpness, and a couple of others along the way, made me appreciate this second issue much more than the first.

That’s all for this week. Be here through the week for site updates, and come back next weekend for an all-new CWR WEEKEND BLOG EXTRA!

/Mason