G.I. Joe Origins #1

G.I. Joe Origins #1 (IDW Publishing)Jump from the Read Pile. Very, very early in the life cycle of the covert special ops team, Duke, Scarlett and Stalker are each given a secret mission the hard way -- with a parachute tossed out of a cargo plane ahead of them. Armed only with what they carry and mysterious code-words, they're dropped in the Nevada desert and forced to figure it out as they go. The results? Well, let's just say that Larry Hama has not only refused to lose a step in the years since the demise of the legendary Marvel series, he's stepped his game up in a major way. Meanwhile, a gun-toting billionaire is tracked down in a police standoff (sure are a lot of massed police cars this week) and even some obvious spell-checkable typos (parder?) don't malign the deep sense of research and backstory (the fifth general order, the Goya reference) that makes this issue so rich and content-dense with goodness. A great start to another IDW take on a classic franchise.