Yeah, I was waiting to find out that some well-known Cobra was a double agent. Maybe the Joes were paying Bludd to work for them; he is a mercenary and his loyalty could be purchased. Maybe a Dreadnok, or Zandar? or Alexander McCullen was still loyal to his father who in turn had turned against Cobra and sided with the lesser of two evils by his perspective...

But no. We have some long-haired dude named Rourke who we have never, ever seen operating within the ranks of Cobra. We've never seen him avoid shooting to kill. We've never seen him... ever. There was some build-up, some anticipation, but the reveal was downright nonexistent. I don't even understand why they bothered with this Agent Delta subplot. It makes no sense to me. Was he a Crimson Guard? A Cobra Medic? Where the hell has he been hiding within Cobra all of these years?

It's been said elsewhere in the thread, but Reloaded just never paid off on the potential of Cobra Reborn. The writing got blander and blander, the plot meandered into oblivion, and there was just Zero energy once the ongoing was launched. Whatever it could've been, whatever it seemed, it never got there.

Dead in the water is the best way to describe it.



The best idea I heard had him as Zartan. Here's a guy DDP made bad to the bone for a long time, with not a hint of the repentant and almost heroic man we saw for the last 50+ issues of the Marvel run. They also made him and out-and-out schizophrenic, with a dozen past identities he has no control over or recollection of. A great comeuppance would've been that early on, he joined up with GIJoe and was sent to infiltrate Cobra. While in the mix, he lost himself in another identity, and only barely managed to pull himself out by letting the Zartan persona reemerge.

After the events of the Red Shadows arc, Zartan seems to have lost control of his bad-boy persona, first appearing in AE 5,6 as a completely broken schizo. Later, in 19,20 he actually hands Zandar over to Duke and Rey to answer for his sins, almost a darker version of the Zartan we saw in the late Marvel run. And finally, In Storm Shadow #4 he's an active good-ish guy, making sure Onihashi's sword didn't fall into the wrong hands (which is enough to make Storm Shadow *give* him the sword at the end of the issue).

So seeing an older persona emerge, one that even Zartan never knew existed, would've been an awesome motivation to get big Z and the Dreadnoks involved in this story, rather than killing Monkeywrench to turn him against Cobra (who he hasn't really been allied with at all since AE started).



He's essentially a cypher. They bounce ideas off him, they used him t introduce the idea of WWIII. But he's mostly unnecessary: a guy who infiltrated Cobra and actually became a true believer (that's the point of him, apparently, that he was *turned* and wasn't hiding in Cobra, he was *fighting for them*).

That's as far as it goes, an interesting idea. It'd be an awesome a-plot for a totally different story arc, dealing solely with the internal torment of someone who sees Cobra go to far, and has to de-infiltrate *and* de-program himself from years of mind manipulation. But as one of over a dozen different plots going on in WWIII, there's no time for character development... and this guy only works if he gets *tons* of development.

So yeah, waste of page space in this, the final chapter.

I guess there's a chance that there will be more of a reveal to Agent Delta as the story unfolds. The Zartan idea does seem pretty cool, but it would take a LOT of explaining to make that work at this point.

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I agree that in many ways Cobra Reborn really hurt Reloaded. It was such a great issue and made the potential for the new line seem like it was going to be great. Then you get to Reloaded and it's seems rather bland writing at first and sort of like they were dragging their heals with the story to pad it out long enough for a trade paper back.

By the time we got really good issues again like the one that just focused on Beachhead it was sort of too little too late because they had lost enough readers that Devils Due had already decided to can the title. Ouch and the stuff they called art work there at the very end.

Ok, I must have missed a lick. When did Recondo die? He's the freakin' Indy of Joe-dom. Those Bastiches! I was pissed enough with Rampart, but now him. Take their blasted pens away!

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I know a lot of people say this, and do it immaturely. But I have seriously read dio-stories here that best their characterization and plots. Are dios that good or are they that bad? I'll let you judge.

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recondo's not dead.
DD was very good had some bad parts but it was gi joe and this joe is better than no joe.
They did frontline good and the arah comic was good for most of it. AE was bad for casey besidesthe phonex storyline, but after casey was gone it got good again.
The only really crappy stuff DD did with joe is reloaded and gijoe/TFS.
The only thing that can make the joe comic good if IDW gets it is have brandon jerwa write and have a good artist otherwise it'll be crap like the regular TF comic.

Rather, to update Tanstoys' teaser, Major Bludd thinks he's killed Recondo. In one of the Special Missions one-shots, the second story was Sparks' trek to find out why Recondo hadn't responded to the general call sounded after Bludd boasted killing a Joe. He finds out that Bludd and Recondo fought, apparently to Recondo's doom. Then he gets a secure email from Recondo, saying that he didn't die, that the Tucaros lied to protect him, and that he should be marked as dead to be a secret weapon against Cobra.

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He didn't get killed it's just that people had gotten so used to Devils Due killing off people that pulling that old movie cliffhanger thing where the hero finds a way to cheat death got kind of lost. Not bad really Bludd gets to run around thinking he's all big and bad for killing off a Joe and we doen't have to lose a Joe in process. Sort of win/win they didn't do enough of.