Cobra Kai #3: Don’t You Forget About Me (Early spoiler-free review!)

This book is just straight-out fun. Last issue author Denton J. Tipton showed us how Johnny really wasn’t the high school bully/jerk that we thought he was for the last thirty-six years. This issue, he sweeps our leg and shows us that Johnny actually is a piece of human garbage. We spend most of the issue in 1984, where Tipton continues to show us a whole between-the-scenes story that we never got to see. It’s fantastic and throws a big wrench into what we thought we’ve felt since seeing the original movie. The story itself is very interesting. We get a couple of pages of modern-day Johnny training his students and there he’s a sympathetic character. In the flashbacks to 1984, not so much. Yet even though he’s a total jerk this issue, there are times you can’t help but feel that he really IS a victim of circumstance. Listen, it’s a really enjoyable issue, but after reading it my head hurt. Do I hate Johnny? Do I like Johnny? Daniels a jerk, but he also gets crapped on a lot. This issue will take you through the full gambit of emotions and guess what? That’s what a really good story does.

Artist Kagan McLeod continues to impress with his ability to blend realistic looking art with a comic book style. Even though it’s not done in a retro style, whenever I read look at this book, I feel like I’m reading a comic that was drawn in the mid-’80s. His style is great because it’s not really highly detailed, and that lends itself to this story very well. My favorite thing about his art continues to be his ability to draw fantastic likenesses of the actors without making them look awkward or like they were drawn by McLeod while he had a DVD of the movie paused. Again, another fantastic looking book!