Broken Frontier

The shrouded history of a popular character is revealed as one man learns the price of war.

An all-American kid is shipped off to the frontlines of a foreign conflict, leaving his loving parents and sister behind. In the jungles of a distant land, the young man rapidly distinguishes himself and begins to cultivate a legend—a silent and efficient soldier with a near perfect record. But the harsh realities of war and the shameful conditions of the local peasants lend a nasty aftertaste to the whole affair. Though his close friend Tommy Arashikage has his back at all times, fate has more in store for the man called "Snake Eyes" than he could possibly imagine.

I have to confess that while I was a child of the 1980s, I was never swept up in the G.I. Joe craze. The cartoons with a more fanciful element held my interest at the time and as I grew older, my distaste for war kept me largely away from the military comic genre. Still, while the significance and nostalgia of this miniseries are mostly lost on me, I’m not one to shy away from a free preview or a chance to expand my horizons.

Issue one of Snake Eyes’ journey seems very much like a story we’ve seen before in various sources—bright young man goes off to serve his country and gets a picture of the true horrors of warfare. But while the material is familiar, it’s told in a solid enough fashion and with an air of mystery lurking in the corners. Snake Eyes’ true name is never mentioned in the issue. He’s presented as a deeply internal person whose thoughts and emotions are difficult to read, for his squad members, his friends, and even his father. A brush with death is accompanied by inexplicable images of sun and rain washing over him, visions which his ally Tommy may know more about than he lets on. All this makes me curious to know more about Snake Eyes and where his story will take him. The war he is fighting is never directly referenced (presumably to keep the story from becoming dated) but the jungle locale and appearance of the enemy leaves little doubt as to what was intended. This was the one aspect of the issue I was uncertain of. The writer seems conflicted over whether to make his tale universal or to tie it to a particular era.

The artwork by Emiliano Santalucia and John Rauch delivers a solid illustrative style that is elevated to something more by the technique of coloring directly over the finished pencils. This gives the comic a kind of soft focus glow and lends an eerie dream-like quality to the story, an appropriate choice for what is essentially a flashback to a character’s early history. I particularly liked the images contrasting a helicopter’s blades with the rotating spout of a sprinkler. It’s a simple touch that effectively conveys the world our protagonist has left behind.

While I’m not the target audience of this series, I found this issue to be a fairly engaging and decent beginning. Those with more knowledge of what Snake Eyes became will no doubt be eager to learn what he once was.