YO JOE! Skybound’s DUKE Miniseries Kicks Open the Doors of the Energon Universe

Duke #1–5 (2023–2024) | Writer: Joshua Williamson | Artist: Tom Reilly | Colorist: Jordie Bellaire | Letterer: Rus Wooton | Publisher: Skybound / Image Comics

I’ve been a G.I. JOE fan for as long as I can remember. I used to read the file cards on the backs of action-figure packages, argue the Snake Eyes-versus-Storm Shadow question with total seriousness, and sit through Saturday-morning cartoons while my cereal went soggy. So yes, I came to Skybound’s five-issue Duke miniseries with baggage. This isn’t simply another JOE book to me. It’s a test of whether Conrad “Duke” Hauser can carry a story while G.I. JOE is being rebuilt inside the larger Energon Universe. After five issues, the answer is emphatic: he can. More importantly, this feels like a real story about a soldier whose understanding of the world has been forcibly knocked loose.

A Fresh Start That Blows Up Duke’s World

Joshua Williamson makes a smart choice from the opening pages. He doesn’t treat nostalgia like a museum display; he uses it as fuel. Duke begins as a soldier who sees something impossible, a transforming alien robot, and then watches the institutions around him decide that the easiest way to handle the truth is to discredit him. The result is part military thriller, part conspiracy story, with the Energon Universe arriving as a genuine rupture rather than a marketing label. New readers can follow it without homework. Longtime fans, meanwhile, will enjoy seeing Duke, M.A.R.S., Destro, the Baroness, and Major Bludd rearranged into something sharper and less predictable.

The setup keeps tightening. Duke is pushed aside, buried beneath official lies, and forced to investigate the event that supposedly never happened. Every lead brings him closer to M.A.R.S. Industries, while every answer creates another problem. Williamson lets the conspiracy grow through misdirection, compromised alliances, and double-crosses instead of stopping for long lore explanations. By the assault on the Pit, the book is moving at a satisfying sprint. It has the breathless quality of a thriller that knows exactly when to stop explaining and start detonating.

The Characters: Duke at the Center of a Powder Keg

The danger with a JOE ensemble is that familiar names can become labels. Scarlett is “the tough one,” Snake Eyes is “the mysterious one,” and Duke is “the leader.” This miniseries avoids that trap by keeping Duke at the center and letting the supporting cast push against him. He is capable, but he is also angry, uncertain, loyal, and increasingly aware that obedience may be costing him his sense of self. That tension gives the story more weight than a simple march from mission to mission.

Duke’s investigation brings in Clutch, Rock ’n Roll, and Stalker, each recognizable without feeling like a cameo delivered for applause. On the other side, M.A.R.S. feels less like a faceless corporation than a machine with a worldview. Destro has the calm menace of someone already planning several moves ahead, while Major Bludd supplies the blunt-force brutality. The Baroness, meanwhile, moves through the book with a cool, precise intelligence. Nobody dominates every scene, but nobody feels ornamental either.

Even the smaller roles have texture. Soldiers, handlers, corporate operatives, and shadowy officials appear briefly, yet their dialogue and rhythms distinguish them. Williamson clearly knows this roster as a fan, but the affection never turns into a lore dump. You can feel the history between Duke, Stalker, and Rock ’n Roll without being told to admire it, and the M.A.R.S. side of the story feels genuinely alien in its clinical attitude toward human life.

Tom Reilly’s Artwork Is an Absolute Revelation

The writing is strong, but Tom Reilly’s pages are what kept pulling me back. His art sits in an unusually effective space between grounded military drama and clean, confident superhero action. Faces carry doubt and fatigue; body language tells you who is lying, who is scared, and who is one bad order away from snapping. When the robot technology and M.A.R.S. hardware enter the frame, they feel like an intrusion from another genre, exactly the right kind of wrongness for this book. The action remains easy to read even when the choreography gets busy, and the vehicles, weapons, and machines suggest science fiction without losing the grime of a war story.

Jordie Bellaire’s colors deserve equal credit. Military bases, back alleys, and corporate rooms each carry their own temperature, while night operations sink into shadow and paranoia. Then the explosions and Energon-charged technology cut through the page. The familiar JOE visual language, camo, helmets, gear, looks purposeful and modern rather than costume-like. Rus Wooton’s lettering completes the effect with clean balloon placement and sound effects that land with real force. This is the kind of artwork that rewards slowing down, even during the loudest set pieces.

Action That Delivers — And Then Some

Action-Flix readers will not be disappointed. Across five issues, Duke moves through firefights, covert extractions, hand-to-hand fights, vehicle chaos, and a siege that feels like an ’80s action-movie finale dropped into a paranoid science-fiction thriller. The important part is that the spectacle grows out of character decisions. Duke and his allies aren’t firing and punching because the story needs another explosion; they’re making bad choices under pressure and living with the consequences. More than once, I caught myself thinking, “Oh, come on,” in the best possible way.

The major sequences are staged with a director’s eye: the first encounter with the transforming robot, the attempts to erase Duke’s account, the clashes with M.A.R.S., and finally the assault on the Pit. Reilly gives the hardware room to register across splash pages and wide panels, so the geography never disappears beneath the noise. Bellaire shifts from institutional greens and grays to hot oranges and blues as the story moves from secrecy to catastrophe. During the Pit attack, layout, color, lettering, and character beats lock together in a sequence that genuinely belongs in the conversation with the franchise’s best screen action.

What sells the combat most is its tactical feel. These characters aren’t simply pointing weapons and spraying fire; they’re working with incomplete information against an enemy they barely understand. Duke, Clutch, Rock ’n Roll, and Stalker have different specialties, and the plan changes depending on how much they trust one another. M.A.R.S. operates with frightening efficiency. Watching both sides adjust as the pressure rises gives the action a human scale beneath all the machinery.

World-Building That Earns Every Brick It Lays

Skybound’s Energon Universe is ambitious, linking this book to the Transformers relaunch, but Duke rarely feels like required reading for a larger plan. A classified site, a buried report, a weapons test, or a glimpse of alien technology matters first because it affects Duke’s immediate problem. The wider universe grows in the background, almost naturally. His refusal to stop talking about the robot he saw becomes the spark that travels outward, and the story never needs a crossover caption to announce that something bigger is coming.

Williamson plants threads in issue #1 and lets them keep developing through issue #5. Strange technology, hidden sponsors, and buried missions gradually become part of a much larger pattern. M.A.R.S. is not merely a weapons company here; it is a system with a philosophy and global reach. By the time the Pit is attacked, the conflict feels larger than one operation. This is the opening salvo of something that could reshape the Energon Universe.

Where Duke Fits in the Energon Universe

For readers following Skybound’s Transformers, the connection is clear without overwhelming the book. Duke #1 arrived in December 2023, with the remaining issues released through 2024, and the miniseries runs alongside those larger events rather than disappearing into a crossover. Duke remains focused on one human soldier trying to understand transforming alien robots and the people determined to control that knowledge. Shared disasters, off-world technology, and the sense that the Autobots and Decepticons are only the beginning provide the connective tissue. As a JOE fan who also loves Transformers, watching those worlds quietly braid together is one of the book’s most exciting pleasures.

The Verdict: Essential. Unmissable. YO JOE.

I’ve been waiting for a G.I. JOE comic that works this well across the board. Skybound’s Duke delivers. Joshua Williamson writes Duke as a loyal soldier becoming an unwilling whistleblower and, perhaps, a leader in the making. Tom Reilly and Jordie Bellaire turn nearly every page into an event, while Rus Wooton gives the action its pulse. As a launch point for the Energon Universe, the miniseries does more than tease the future. It makes the future feel worth following.

Whether you’ve followed the JOEs since the ’80s, drifted away years ago, or simply want a sharp action comic, this is an excellent way back in. Duke #1–5 are out now; the first issue arrived in December 2023 and the miniseries concluded in 2024. Read all five together if you can. Then come back and tell me I’m wrong. I’ll wait.

★★★★★, 5 out of 5, Highest Possible Recommendation

Duke is a five-issue miniseries set in the Energon Universe and published by Skybound / Image Comics. Issues #1–5 are available now at your local comic shop. Next up, I’ll be looking at the Cobra Commander, Destro, and Scarlett miniseries before finally storming into the sprawling, long-running G.I. JOE Energon Universe series.