Read our review of Duke #4 from Image Comics and Skybound, written by Joshua Williamson with art by Tom Reilly.
We reviewed the book on the Stack podcast. But in the interest of highlighting more about the title, here’s a summary of the conversation with our thoughts. And if you prefer the longer audio version, that’s below as well!
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Duke #4 Review:
In the latest issue of this G.I. Joe series, Duke is escaping from prison with The Baronness, only to run into a classic villain.
Our resident G.I. Joe fan Pete LePage kicked things off saying, “This is such a blast. And such a fun thing that they’re doing with these character reveals that if you are a G.I. Joe head, you were like, ‘Oh my god.'”
Specifically, LePage was talking about the reveal of the B.A.T. at the end of the issue, something that Alex Zalben — not a G.I. Joe fan — had struggled with.
“Let me talk about this for a second,” Zalben said. “Because I had no idea what was going on here at the end. I was trying to game through this in my head a little bit. And I think the place that I ended up is Joshua Williamson is doing a good job of, if you do like G.I. Joe, you’re like, ‘oh s**t, it’s a B.A.T. I can’t believe it.’ But otherwise, he’s working on the premise of: a dude who has a claw hand who is holding our hero is cool and terrifying. And I think it works on that level.”
“I really enjoy this,” Justin Tyler added. “I love making fun of G.I. Joe because it’s a funny idea that something that was named by people who worked at a toy marketing company is now something that we’re really building stories around, [but Williamson is] doing a great job of doing that. And Tom Reilly’s art is fantastic. Duke, as a character, is great. He has such great Captain America energy, it’s like Captain America and Nomad combined into one piece happening at the same time.”
Duke #4 Official Synopsis:
Duke is close to discovering the truth about the alien robots that have landed on Earth.
But who—or what—is M.A.R.S.?