Kobra: Resurrected (DC)
Written by Greg Rucka, Eric Trautmann, Jack Kirby, Steve Sherman, Martin Pasko & Ivan Brandon, drawn by Joe Bennett, Jack Kirby, Mike Nasser & Julian Lopez
Collects Checkmate #23-25, Kobra #1, DC Special Series #1, Faces of Evil: Kobra #1, JLA-Z #2 & Who’s Who #12 & 13,

Back before DC decided to do a complete reboot, it looked like Kobra and the villainous cult he ran was going to become a pretty big deal in the DCU. I have no idea if this actually happened or not, but he did get a rebirth in the pages of Faces of Evil: Kobra #1 a few years back that lead into the series I’ll be reviewing next. But even before that, Greg Rucka and Eric Trautman were doing some really interesting things with Kobra in the pages of the highly underrated Checkmate. I had a whole thing written about how I would be keeping this one trade pretty much just for the Jack Kirby issue, but then I did a little looking around and discovered that this book actually collects the as-yet-uncollected issues of Rucka’s run on the series. I assumed incorrectly they were in Fall of the Wall, but that’s not the case. So, this book now has even more value for me.

For most of my reading of this collection I was thinking it was kind of a bad collection. Tricky. The kind of thing thrown together to get you to buy another book if you liked JSA Vs. Kobra or to get the crazy completists to buy another book for a pertinent issue or two, but I don’t think that’s the case anymore (or at least not to the same degree). See, the Faces of Evil one shot directly leads into JSAVK, so it would make a lot of sense for it to be in that book, but then again the Checkmate stuff leads into both. You throw in the Kirby issue and a Batman story that gets referenced later on and these to actually work as pretty solid companion pieces. Could they all have been put in one book? Sure, but that would have been a pretty thick collection for a miniseries that may or may not have lead to anything or sold well, so I guess I get it.

Content-wise, I like the stuff that leads into JSAVK and love looking at anything Kirby drew, even if the story itself is somewhat plodding and not super interesting. Even if I wasn’t familiar with the history of Kobra, the big reveal of the book is right there on the cover for everyone to see which undercuts what could have been a pretty surprising moment. The Batman/Kobra story wasn’t very interesting, so I mostly skipped it, but overall, I thought this was a pretty good character compilation book that fills in a lot of holes for some people.

JSA Vs. Kobra (DC)
Written by Eric Trautmann, drawn by Don Kramer & Neil Edwards
Collects JSA Vs. Kobra #1-6

Much of my interest in the previous book comes from how much I liked JSA Vs. Kobra both when it first came out and upon a second reading. The idea behind this series is that a new Kobra has taken over the organization and has completely changed up their MO, which puts the Justice Society off their game. At it’s heart, story is a battle of wits between the heroic genius Mister Terrific and the new Kobra. It’s actually one of the few times where alternating thought box writing moving from the one main character to the other works. Jeph Loeb did this with Superman/Batman and it came off super corny in my opinion, but here it works really well and adds another layer to the drama and tension.

I’d say that the book works very well on its own as a taut thriller, the kind of thing you could probably give to non comic readers who are fans of procedurals, thrillers or mysteries and they’d enjoy it. Sure it’s got super heroes and super villains with longstanding relationships, but that’s not much different than jumping in on a long-running detective type series. There is a good amount of history that fans can dig into though–much of which is reprinted in the above trade.

Most of all, though, it’s just a good story that you’re not quite sure how the good guys will get out of. The downside of it being a comic book, especially a miniseries of an ongoing franchise, is that veteran comic fans know that nothing bad is going to happen to the heroes. That would be reserved for a big event or the main series, but not something like this generally speaking. It cuts out some of the tension–much like Kirby’s Kobra cover–but at the end of the day, I think it’s worth a read, even if you’re one of the many people not interested in reading superhero comics about old people.