Cobra Commander, Volume 1: Determined to Rule the World Review (Joshua Williamson, Andrea Milana)

Cobra-La. An underwater snake-themed kingdom weakened from lack of resources. Except its chief scientist has uncovered a powerful new energy source to restore it to its former glory: Energon. That scientist’s name? Cobra Commander. His mission? Find and bring back a buttload of Energon so that Cobra-La can rule the world moo-ha-ha!

Joshua Williamson’s second GI Joe book for Image/Skybound is Cobra Commander, the iconic metal-masked definitely-not-Vader-knockoff, and it’s actually better than his first - Duke - though it’s not without its problems.

Inherently, anything GI Joe-related is going to be goofy because it was a toy-line aimed at youngsters - you’re not going to get subtle storytelling here: Joe good, Cobra bad, and that’s that. Cobra Commander’s goal to, of course, RULE THE WORLD is a cliche and so it’s hard to take seriously and feels unimaginative, even if Williamson is tied down to keep things this simple if he’s to stay true to the source material.

Although this comic is definitely not aimed at the kiddles. The violence is bloody and mostly not hidden and there’s even a prolonged torture sequence. I liked that Cobra Commander uses his mind to get out of danger in that scene - to an extent anyway, before he plays his convenient get out of jail free card and then things become dull and predictable.

Cobra Commander’s character is derivative of so many more famous characters rather than stand out as his own. Besides looking like a lesser Darth Vader (although for most of this book he looks almost identical to the DC character The Question), he’s written like any other mad scientist-type you’ve read before (Doc Ock, Lex Luthor, et al.) and when he’s wearing his large hat and coat, wandering about looking for Energon, he put me in mind of a comic book version of Daniel Plainview (“I’m an Energon man…”).

I didn’t watch the GI Joe cartoon as a kid so I knew absolutely nothing about Cobra Commander except for his design - I remember thinking his shiny metal face and blue uniform looked really cool. I was amused to discover years later that he was voiced in a high-pitched raspy way but I chose to read him in this book in a less silly way.

As a result, I was caught off guard with the opening scenes of this book. An underwater snake kingdom - what?! “Golobulus” - huh!? Ok… It was unexpected and not especially in a negative way. The motivation for why he was kicked out of that place to begin with though was shaky at best and it feels unconvincing that he’s at all loyal to Cobra-La, given how his character is written.

It’s interesting to note that the first two GI Joe books don’t feature Joe or Cobra fighting each other (yet) and that this book has more of a connection to Transformers than GI Joe proper with that unheralded cameo in Cobra-La. Instead of the Joe crowd, Cobra Commander goes up against some Aussie rednecks called the Dreadnoks for most of this book, though there are betrayals a-plenty too, before introducing a character to set up the next book in the series (it just launched as well so if you’re paying attention to the release schedules it won’t surprise you). Generally it feels like Skybound’s creators are setting up the Energon Universe successfully and in a way that doesn’t feel forced.

Andrea Milana’s art is pretty great at times, conveying awe and energy in his splash pages - like when Cobra Commander uses the Energon in his hand weapon or the Cobra-La throne room. This book feels more grown-up and exciting than the kid’s cartoon Cobra Commander and Milana brought that necessary edge to Williamson’s darker script.

The ending was weak - what Cobra Commander becomes is just another cartoon supervillain and the unsubtle comparisons to a certain controversial recent president were disappointingly unimaginative. You can pretty much tell the political views of the creators when the new Cobra crowd are depicted as the guys we all saw storm the US capitol on January 6th. Le sigh.

The story is uneven throughout but it’s also never boring. It’s a driving quest narrative and I like stories where there are no heroes, only degrees of villainy, so I was into it and wanted to see what was going to happen next. That said, it’s also hard not to ignore the weak points that appear more often than not - the contrived beginning, the unoriginal characterisation, the predictability of the plot, and the eye-rolling ending.

Don’t expect anything incredible with this one - it remains essentially as deep as you’d think a toy-brand spinoff would read. But Cobra Commander, Volume 1: Determined to Rule the World is entertaining enough and a fine companion-piece to Daniel Warren Johnson’s first Transformers book.

Cobraaaaaa!!