G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #304 - Image Comics

G.I. JOE: A REAL AMERICAN HERO No. 304, February 2024

Spending a fair amount of time spotlighting Dawn Moreno covertly following a trio of deadly Blue Ninjas in Springfield , Larry Hama’s script for Issue Three Hundred and Four of “G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero” should easily have kept its audience thoroughly entertained. Indeed, the Inkpot Award-winner’s ability to imbue the long-running sequence with a palpable sense of rising tension may well have caused many a reader to exhale in relief when the former Snake-Eyes’ reconnaissance mission is finally brought to an abrupt end, and she can decisively engage her foes with her truly deadly blades; “Come on… Let’s see what else you’ve got!”

Impressively however, this isn’t the only action which the American author is able to squeeze into his twenty-page plot, as the Joes rather naively attempt to recover the remnants of the augmented Blue Ninjas which had previously ambushed Scarlett, only to discover their mechanical corpses were actually only in sleep mode as opposed to being dead. This sudden realisation comes completely out of the blue, and does a great job in giving any onlooker a surprising jolt of adrenaline when they were probably simply settling down to listening to Airtight and Black Hat wax lyrical about reverse engineering Serpentor Khan’s latest minions.

Furthermore, the narrative also contains some nicely penned moments of humour, such as Timber hungrily slurping down the meatballs in tomato sauce Snake-Eye’s used to fake his bloody wounds, and Wild Bill coming to Corporal Kurt Schnurr’s rescue during the Blue Ninjas aforementioned reactivation. Such moments should genuinely prompt a smile upon the lips of any perusing bibliophile, and provide a brief respite from all the sense-shattering secret shenanigans taking place as Cobra faces “an existential crisis.”

Clearly aiding Hama with all this engrossing storytelling is Chris Mooneyham and colorist Francesco Segala, who together provide the plot with some wonderfully convincing visuals. Of particular note has to be their artwork on the three Vipers who penetrate the Pit’s outer security cordon and make their way to Camp Greer’s perimeter. The villains’ desperate dash across open ground to the supposed safety of the complex’s shadows are so well delivered that even the most sceptical of bibliophiles should be able to imagine the stealth agents furtively peeking into the various buildings to establish whether they are occupied or not.

Writer: Larry Hama, Artist: Chris Mooneyham, and Colorist: Francesco Segala