G.I. Joe #4

The cover of this 2019 IDW issue presents Cobra Commander as a Chronos Magazine "Man of the Year," seated on a throne-like chair with his red cape draped dramatically, fingers clasped with quiet menace over a chessboard — a half-eaten apple resting nearby like a dark little punctuation mark. It's a brilliantly unsettling piece of visual storytelling from Niko Walter, whose linework and colors give the whole image the polished sheen of a real magazine feature, making Cobra's would-be legitimacy feel genuinely chilling. The tagline "Visions of a New America" promises that Paul Allor's story is playing in fascinatingly dangerous ideological territory.