Cobra Kai #4: You’re The Best Around

This excellent mini-series based on the hit streaming tv series based on the 1980’s blockbuster film The Karate Kid comes to a close with this issue, but it’s far from the end of the story of one-time bully Johnny Lawrence and rival Daniel LaRusso. Author Denton J. Tipton tells the story of the final 10 minutes of the film through the eyes of Johnny, a viewpoint that we haven’t seen before, and it really challenges your feelings of heroes and villains.

Tipton manages to show us that Johnny was really a victim of a bad teacher, but that he doesn’t make that an excuse, rather a lesson to be learned from, and the reason that he himself strives to be the best around when it comes to teaching his students. As much as this issue deals with the movie, it does deal with the tv series, also, giving us a between the scenes story that doesn’t disrupt the one we see on the screen, it’s one that ads to it.

I really hope that Kagan McLeod picks up another book right away. His art is amazing anytime, but when he’s doing sequential art, it’s the kind of art that you actually don’t want to look away from. He has the unique opportunity to render these characters when they’re 16 and when they’re 46, and the way he realistically ages them is not just by using gray hair at their temples, he ages their faces in ways that the human body actually ages. He has a fantastic eye for likenesses, but I think it’s tone, mood, and layout where he’s vastly underrated.