Customer Reviews

G.I. Joe - Dreadnoks Declassified (G. I. Joe (Graphic Novels))

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On the heels of several good Declassified miniseries from Devil's Due, Dreadnoks: Declassified is a major disappointment. Josh Blaylock was responsible for most of the good ideas in the early days of the Devil's Due Joe comic, but he ran out of steam quickly, and this seems like it's by a totally different writer than the man who wrote the first several issues of the ongoing series just a couple of years earlier.

An insane amount of misspellings and minor composing issues really detract from what story there is, which is confusing and at times contradicts itself in major ways. (One example: Zartan's siblings Zandar and Zarana are young teens in one scene, but in another, stated to be SEVENTEEN YEARS LATER, are still teens! And this is a major story point, not a minor detail.)

Also, this story undermines the excellent character development of Zartan over the past two decades, reducing him from a villain searching desperately for redemption for his past actions (and, finding none, remaining a villain) into a schizophrenic, delusional sociopath who cannot remember even his own identity without constantly reminding himself. (In fact, he's not even really Zartan. According to this story, he replaced another guy named Zartan, and it's not clear if he remembers that.)

Save the money and pick up GIJoe: Declassified or one of the upcoming reprints of the Marvel series published by IDW.

This is a pretty good collection of stories from Devil's Due about the history of Zartan and the Dreadnoks. The art is a little spotty and the production of the copy of the book I got was poor with wrinkles down the back cover. That aside, the content of the book was pretty good.

This goes more into the background of Dreadnok leader Zartan than has ever been covered before. Also I like the back ground of the Dreadnoks given in this book especially that of Torch and Ripper. I found the background of Buzzer pretty far fetched and not really in the Marvel spirit of the character.

This book also features many of the other Dreadnoks over the years, although there aren't exhaustive biographies of anyone other than Zartan and Buzzer and to a degree Torch and Ripper.

G.I. Joe - Dreadnoks Declassified is a great read. It reveals the story line of Zartan and his motorcycle gang the Dreadnoks. The back story of Zartan is a lengthy one, as its a graphic novel, and the story jumps around a bit, but over all I was able to get the big picture when I finished reading the novel. It tells the reader how Zartan the Master of Disguise began his trade as a mercenary and becomes the Master of Disguise. If you like Zartan and his Dreadnoks, you will like reading this novel. Also the art work in this novel is done very well.