G.I. Joe continues to roll forward into its next grand arc, and G.I. Joe #13 lives up to the hype as the Dreadnok War gets underway. If you were expecting a slow simmer before the sparks started flying, you are in for a shock, as the team of Joshua Williamson, Tom Reilly, and Jordie Bellaire hit the gas and never let off the pedal from beginning to end. Not only do we see the unconventional team-up of Duke and Cobra Commander against a legion of Dreadknoks, but there’s also a huge shift in power for one of the book’s core factions, and the team at the helm joined ComicBook to break it all down.
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If you’ve been following along with the G.I. Joe series, things pick up relatively soon after the events of G.I. Joe #12, but this issue is also a perfect place for new fans to jump in, and those who do will find an action-packed launching point that captures the bombastic nature of the series. If you were along for the ride during the first year, prepare for the series to get even crazier from here on out.
“I mean we’re, as we build things up, things just get crazier and crazier as we go. I just find myself drawing more and more stuff and that’s just kind of how it goes,” Reilly said. “I drew a lot of stuff in the first arc, and now I’m going to be drawing maybe twice as much stuff. You know, the stakes have to be upped as the story goes along, and it’s definitely a fun challenge to figure out how much stuff you can cram into those panels and cram just a little bit more in there.”
“When we had the first arc, it was like every issue was almost like a new location, a new thing. And then with this one, we’re all primarily in the same location. We’re primarily in this desert, and then we add a couple of locations and stuff like that, but then it was like, what are the insane things we can do in this desert? What are all the things we can throw into this,” Williamson said. “Because it is a war, and Tom just really, I’m really proud of these issues. I feel like issue 13 is probably the best issue we’ve done so far. I’m really proud of this arc. I think we built something really cool with this.”
When Reilly said he was drawing perhaps twice as many things this time around, he wasn’t joking, and you can see that in action during an impressive two-page spread that features a literal army of Dreadnok vehicles. What’s even more impressive is that Reilly says that’s still not even close to what’s happening down the road. “There’s a lot. That might be one of the tamer double spreads in the book, too. That might be one of the more basic ones,” Reilly said.
“We wanted to make sure that, like, there were a lot of Dreadnoks. Like, Dreadnoks were a big force, and not only just because we wanted that really big, Mad Max feel, but we wanted to be able to kill some Dreadnoks,” Williamson said. “Like, we wanted to have some (fodder).”
At the moment, Duke and Cobra Commander are primarily on the run, but Williamson teased that’s going to change sooner than later, and issue #13 tees up a huge sequence that will have Cobra Commander fans losing their minds. “There is a scene in issue 14, where Cobra Commander is fighting the Dreadnoks that’s nuts. Tom did this action sequence in issue 14 that is, people are gonna flip out when they see it. It’s so cool. It has high energy to it, the whole thing,” Williamson said.
As the war continues to ramp up between the various factions, there will be a number of surprises, and though a few of those have been revealed on covers, there are plenty of other surprises primed to shake things up in a big way.
“Oh yeah, it gets pretty, you’ll see. It continues to escalate, and we’ve already announced this, so it’s not a spoiler, but Road Pig shows up and other things,” Williamson said. “And you can kind of tell what’s going on by some of the covers, but we definitely want there to be surprises too. I’m always a big believer of, I give away one thing and you keep another is how I always see these things. It’s like solicitations, covers, and press. I think we’ve been giving stuff away knowing we have a lot of stuff that we’re holding tight, and so I think you’re going to see as we go, things get really crazy. I said this before, issues 13 and 14 are really action-packed, and then you get to 15. 15 kind of calms down a little bit. It really is like the center of the storm kind of issue, and then 16 gets really insane, and 17, you know, it’s like things just are really, it is a war. So it gets nuts. You’ll see it’s not just these two dudes in a desert.”
While the Dreadnok war is the central focus, there’s also a huge power shift happening directly due to that conflict. As we see in the issue, that’s thanks to Destro, who not only plants the seed of betrayal with Ripper but also then acts on Cobra Commander being out in the open and utilizes that opportunity to take control of Cobra. Now there’s a new leader in charge of the ship, and it’s likely going to lead to Destro finally finding out what Cobra Commander has been hiding from him all this time.
“We knew that that’s what this story was going to be. Destro was going to try to set Cobra Commander up, and then Cobra Commander would be on his own. You could help him, Duke, and then you get to see what Destro’s sort of moves are. I can’t get too deep into it because it’s like, that would give away all the stuff that happens across this, but you get to see that Destro is trying to make certain moves and then sees the challenges of those moves very quickly in the story, because we don’t want to dedicate too much time on that,” Williamson said.
“We knew we were going to build this moment where Destro was like, this is mine. We were building to it in the arc before this, where it was like, Cobra Commander has been doing so much without telling Destro about the experiments he was doing on people, and Destro is over here having Mercer investigate not only what’s been going on with the robots, but trying to investigate who is Cobra Commander,” Williamson said. “Destro knows Cobra Commander is lying to him, but he doesn’t know what he’s lying to him about. Like, he knows there’s something else missing, and even when he’s like, I know he’s experimenting on people, I know things are happening over here, but I have no idea where he’s from.”
“There’s something, there’s a big piece missing. We know what that piece is. He hasn’t told about Cobra-La. Destro does not know about Cobra-La, and he does not know about some of this stuff, but he also doesn’t necessarily understand Energon either, and he doesn’t understand these things, and so when we start getting into this, Destro will kind of become more aware of certain things. Destro is actually going to learn about something before Cobra Commander does in this. That’s the most I could probably tease about that,” Williamson said.
One of the critical story points of G.I. Joe from the beginning has been how it connects to the world of Transformers, especially in regards to Duke, who has a personal vendetta at this point. I wanted to know if we’ll start to see that brought back into the spotlight in the near future, and what Williamson could tease about that eventual collision, and things will hit the fan sooner than later once Duke realizes what’s being hidden right under his nose.
“He’s still mad. I mean, that’s something that we’ve kind of touched on. He’s mad, and he doesn’t really trust Hawk either. We’ve kind of set up a little bit of him being like, at the end of issue 12, he says to Hawk, you hiding anything from me? And Hawk’s like, no, no, but there are certain things that are privileged information. I’ll tell you when you need to know, and it’s like, Hawk is clearly up to something too. That’s what the Night Force thing is about, but yeah, Duke is still mad. He does not care. Duke does not know what an Autobot is. He does not know what a Decepticon is. He does not know the difference. He is like, there are robots out there doing bad things. That’s what he sees. That’s what he is aware of,” Williamson said.
“He sees that one image of Starscream over and over again,” Reilly said. “I have a notebook of how to draw that scene different times, because I’ve had to draw it, like, a dozen times. How can I do this differently? I should just draw one and reuse it.”
“Yeah, you’re gonna see that they are aware of what’s been happening in the Transformers book. We’ve been kind of skirting how much they’re aware of things at this point. It’s gonna happen probably faster than you think, but he’s still pissed about it, and that’s where in. And Clutch knows, it’s why Clutch kept Hound a secret. Like Hound is there on the base, you know, and Risk knows. Clutch knows. Duke does not know, and eventually that’s gonna come to a head. There’s no way you can keep that secret forever, and eventually, Duke is gonna be pissed. So, yeah, those pieces are definitely coming,” Williamson said.
“We don’t want to drag it out. We don’t want to spin our wheels with it too much, you know? You’ll see. I feel like there’ll be some images sooner than later that you’ll see and be like, oh, okay. They’re going that direction. Just trust me, yes, we’re going to go there. There’s a reason we remind you of it. We want to hit these touchstones and be like, remember this, this is key to Duke’s whole arc, is this thing happened to him, and this is part of where he’s been, and this is where his headspace is. And so we want to always sort of key into those pieces,” Williamson said.
G.I. Joe #13 is in comic stores now.
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