G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Pt. 3

Ready for more of Marvel's 1982-1994 G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero? I hope so, as that's what today's post is about. When we left off last time, things weren't looking good for Snake-Eyes. He was in the midst of beating up Cobra's Doctor Venom in front of a small bunker on a rive island in the small, fictional South American country of Sierra Gordo when the Baroness dropped a bomb on the island. Was the mercenary Kwinn able to rush the pair into the door of the bunker in time? Who cares, says Stalker, floating nearby with Breaker and Gung-Ho in the panel above; the whole island seems to have been vaporized! And that's where we pick up today. 

Remember, I'm currently reading the series via Image Comics' gigantic 1,200+ page, three-inch-thick G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Compendium One, though I'm pulling the covers from the Grand Comics Database, which is why they all still say "Marvel Comics Group" across the top and Spidey's head appears in a little box in the lower left corner so often. Oh, and as always, all each of the issues below are written by the great Larry Hama, unless otherwise noted. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #13 (1983)
Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino 

•When The Baroness and the Cobra courier with the scar on his face fly over the wreckage of the river boat, Stalker and company dive under the water so that she won't be able to see them. That seems like quite enough excitement for a while, and now the Joes can--

Oh shit! 

•Stalker continues to fight the crocodile with his knife while announcing its phylum, sub-phylum, class, order and family. When it pulls him underwater, we and the other Joes can't see what happens for a few panels, but eventually Stalker surfaces and the croc does not.

•While Stalker recovers from his fight with the crocodile and Breaker watches over him, Gung-Ho heads into town and, is it me, or does Vosburg have him meeting with the Sierra Gordo equivalents of Laurel and Hardy...? 

•Back at Cobra's headquarters, Cobra Commander refers to the scar-faced courier as "Scar-Face", and at that point it seems to become his name, as he is henceforth referred to as Scar-Face.

•I like this bit. Cobra Commander and The Baroness are talking about Scar-Face, like, right next to him, and he can clearly hear them, as he's looking right at them. Also, note the panel right below it; at this point, Destro's name and face have yet to be revealed, and he's still only appearing in this manner, so that readers only know that there's a mysterious Cobra agent wearing metal gauntlets. 

•A new Joe gets introduced this issue: Torpedo, a SEAL whose action figure came dressed in scuba gear, with detachable swim fins and a harpoon gun. While the Joe team mounts a dangerous and complicated rescue mission to extract Stalker and the others, Torpedo and Doc investigate the river where the island Snake-Eyes and company were on when it was bombed. At the bottom of the river, he finds that the bunker itself is still intact. Reasoning someone may have survived, he taps on the door but is called back to the surface almost immediately...and thus isn't there when someone on the other side of the door taps back. Could Snake-Eyes have survived? (I mean, yes, obviously Snake-Eyes survived).

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #14 (1983)
Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino 

•Oh. So, after three issues of playing coy with what Destro's face looks like (his head is encased in a steel mask, as you all know, as this "mystery" is 43 years old), Marvel went ahead and just revealed it on the cover of an issue. The cover, drawn by Herb Trimpe and Steve Mitchell, isn't even a particularly good image of the character, and his collar and mask look fairly off model here. 

Anyway, this issue will reveal Destro's face within, as well as his name, although even that reveal is somewhat spoiled, as the title of this story is "Destro Attacks."

•The action in this issue is split between Snake-Eyes and company in Sierra Gordo and the G.I. Joe vs. Cobra conflict back in the states. Here we learn that Snake-Eyes, Kwinn and Doctor Venom all made it into the bunker and sealed the door before the bomb destroyed the island out from under it, sinking it to the river floor. As the water rises to their necks, they all agree that they all have a score to settle with Cobra now and make an uneasy truce to help get out of the river alive.

Kwinn, the strongest, prays to the spirit of the otter to help him swim and the spirit of the bear to help him, as he plunges underwater and manually opens the door, despite the massive water pressure making doing so quite difficult. As soon is the door is open, Venom clobbers him with a wrench to the back of the head. 

For a very average-looking middle-aged dude, Venom seems pretty confident in his fighting prowess, immediately challenging Snake-Eyes (see above). Ultimately, they are both captured by Cobra soldiers disguised as local mercenaries.

Here Venom reveals to readers his own treachery; he gave Baroness the asked-for bioweapon, but not the secret catalyst.

•Oh, and Vosburg must have tired of drawing a mask-less Snake-Eyes in such ways so as to conceal his face, as this issue opens with him back in his mask. He must carry spares

•Back in the states, there's an intriguing bit where the fact that The Baroness and Destro knew one another in the past is expanded upon slightly, and we finally see Destro's face, first as a reflection in The Baroness' glasses. I have to admit the "say my name" stuff was quite dramatic. I am 100% sure if this comic were published today, the panel in which she says "Destro" would have been a full-page splash:

•There's lots of treachery in this issue. Though not strictly a superhero comic, Hama certainly engages in something that seems common to super-team comics I've read. Specifically, that the heroes often triumph because of teamwork, and the fact that they like, respect and trust one another. Meanwhile, the villains often fail because their egos and duplicity mean they are inevitably betraying one another, oftentimes before they've even achieved their goals.

This is a little complicated, but Cobra Commander asked The Baroness to plant a microdot for the Joes to find in Sierra Gordo, which would have indicated that Cobra HQ is actually under the Chaplin's Assistant School at Fort Wadsworth (Which we know is actually the Joes' HQ, though Cobra doesn't; that's some coincidence!). But Destro had Scar-Face secretly switch the microdots, giving the Joe's the location of an actual base in Springfield, Vermont, all part of his plan to get Cobra Commander caught or captured, so that he can take over the Cobra organization as its new commander. (As for the Commander, he and The Baroness have gone there to inject a Cobra volunteer with Venom's toxin, which is supposed to be harmless to him, but make him a walking biological weapon to use against the Joes...but he dies instantly, at which point they realize Venom had betrayed them).

Meanwhile, Destro's plot goes awry when he realizes that the Commander has taken The Baroness with him, and thus he has to hustle to get there in time to fight off the Joes and save The Baroness...and The Commander.

•By the way, the Commander's supersonic rocket transport lands at the Arbco Furniture Company in Vermont. "Arbco" is, of course, an anagram of "Cobra"; that's some Joker-going-by-"Joe Kerr" level of subterfuge.

•The issue ends with a big fight, albeit one in which no one seems to get killed, or even hurt. The Joes roll into town in their new APC (or Amphibious Personnel Carrier), a 1983 toy, and are immediately ambushed by Destro's forces. Hawk calls in a strike from another new toy, the Skystriker, which came packaged with its pilot Ace, who makes his first appearance here.

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #15 (1983)
Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino

•Back in Sierra Gordo, Kwinn makes a very dramatic appearance, using his giant machine-gun to gun down all the Cobra agents-posing-as-mercenaries to rescue his kinda sorta allies Snake-Eyes and Doctor Venom, the latter of whom they will need to fly them out of the country. 

•Snake-Eyes immediately starts choking Venom and trying to drown him in the river, but Kwinn makes him stop.

•There's a lot of action, as the trio have to steal a plane from hostile forces, take off while under attack and then get involved in an aerial battle. At one point, Venom manages to signal Cobra via morse code from the plane's controls, telling them he will forgive the attempt on his life in exchange for a lawyer waiting for him in Miami, and again attempts to kill Snake-Eyes and Kwinn by dumping them out of the plane...and again taking a wrench to Kwinn's head. Kwinn is about to throw him out of the plane, but this time Snake-Eyes stops him from killing Venom.

So, when they crash-land on a beach in Miami, Venom is allowed to go free, while Snake-Eyes and Kwinn are put in a jail cell. It seems odd that Snake-Eyes wouldn't be able to prove he was a member of the military via some kind of I.D. or "talk" his way out using sign language...maybe the local law enforcement doesn't know anyone who speaks sign language? Maybe Snake-Eyes doesn't speak sign-language? And I guess if they did give him one phone call, he wouldn't be able to talk over the phone anyway, huh...? Anyway, kinda weird.

•Vosburg seems to have forgotten to draw Kwinn's weasel skull necklace in this issue. 

•I like this scene featuring Destro and The Baroness. That's so many dots! I don't know if I would trust an answer preceded by that long of a pause, Destro!

•This issue also introduces a new member of Cobra, the colorfully named mercenary (and poet!) Major Bludd. It seems Cobra Commander has hired him to help deal with Destro's treachery, which he apparently suspects. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #16 (1983)

Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino 

•The first four pages of this issue feature a training exercise in which Hawk puts some Joes and their vehicles through their paces, but the older guys are all shown up by two newcomers: Cover Girl, the team's second female member and the driver of the armored missile vehicle The Wolverine (her action figure came packaged with it), and Trip Wire, a mine sweeper and explosives expert whose one defining characteristic seems to be that he's very clumsy.

•Scarlett is not exactly welcoming to the new girl, as you can see in the dialogue above.

•Oh, and while it doesn't come up in this issue, according to Tripwire's file card, his real name is Tormod S. Skoog. I am 49-years-old, and I have never met nor heard of anyone named "Tormod." You know, I bet you could write a pretty decent baby name book based on the civilian names of Hama's G.I. Joe characters...

•Cobra Commander hosts a dinner party for his inner circle, and he's drawn holding a glass of wine. How does he drink wine with his face mask on? Scar-Face is also wearing a mask, but I guess he could slip it down to drink. Can Destro eat or drink with his mask on? 

I like the bottom tier of panels on this page, which shows just how divided Cobra is, as each character has their own agendas and suspicions. Hama ends the sequence with the Commander lifting his glass: "Cobra comrades! I propose a toast! To victory through...unity!"

•This party is actually occurring in the back of a semi-truck, one of several headed towards Washington, D.C. All are marked "Arbco". You would think Cobra would abandon that cutesy name after G.I. already encountered Cobra based labeled "Arbco Furniture Company", but maybe they just didn't have time to repaint all their trucks...?

•Hawk and General Flagg both got wind of different Cobra plots targeting D.C. Hawk believes they are going to attack the Bureau of Printing and Engraving, and their plan is to poison the ink that U.S. currency is printed with, killing untold Americans. (This was probably a more effective plan in 1983 than it would be in 2026, as we move closer and closer to being a cashless society). Flagg has learned that Cobra plans to attack the Capitol building, and "the brass" is devoting all military resources to defending it. It will be up to the Joes to deal with the weird-ass poison money plot.

•The Capitol attack was a feint, it turns out, but luckily the Joes were on hand to ambush Dr. Venom and his agents at the bureau. Torpedo is among the Joes lying in wait there, and for some reason he's wearing his scuba suit, armed with a speargun rather than something that might shoot bullets, and even wearing his flippers, which must be a mobility hazard, right? 

There's a panel later where Vosburg draws him as if he's meant to be tip-toeing, and it looks awfully silly given the flippers.  

•Cobra Commander initiates Phase Two: Everyone fight!

HISS tanks roll out of the back of the trucks. Cover Girl's Wolverine emerges from the false shell of a garbage truck it was being hidden in. Joes on the rooftops open fire. Wild Bill and Airborne arrive in a Dragonfly helicopter ("How's this for the calvary to the rescue?" Wild Bill asks, while the Native American Airborne replies, "That don't play on my reservation.")

•The betrayals among Cobra's forces are actually almost hard to keep track of here. 

Dr. Venom hits Scar-Face in the back of the head with pistol, leaving him to die when a bomb he set goes off in the treasury building (Remember, Scar-Face was with The Baroness when she dropped a bomb on Venom in Sierra Gordo, and Venom is holding a grudge).

Major Bludd, riding in the gun turret of one HISS tank, swivels his guns to take aim at Destro at one point. Seeing this, The Baroness, piloting the tank Bludd is in, swerves it, crashing it into a nearby truck and knocking their tank on its side. She calls to the fleeing Bludd for help, telling him that she is trapped there, her leg is broken and that the leaking fuel is in danger of exploding. He flees, leaving her to seemingly die when the tank explodes. 

Seeing this, Destro is plunged into despair, and seems to be in a world of his own grief, ignoring everything around him, like Dr. Venom boarding the HISS tank Destro is manning and Cobra Commander is driving. Or even Hawk boarding it and punching Cobra Commander around a bit. 

•Dr. Venom is not a very romantic man. "All this over the Baroness?" he says to Cobra Commander. "Doesn't he realize that love is simply overestimating the difference between any one given woman and another?"

•He eventually snaps out of it long enough to engage Hawk in fisticuffs. I think this is the first time that Destro refers to his head as "polished berylium steel". It won't be the last time. (My spellcheck says the word "berylium" should have two L's in it, but Destro's dialogue only has one). In the end, Cobra Commander, clearly still suffering from having Hawk rattle his skull around inside his battle helmet, pumps three bullets into Hawk's back, knocking him off of their tank.

• Oh, and I didn't notice this until revisiting this issue to write about it but check out Baroness' glasses going flying out of her exploding tank in the bottom panel. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #17 (1983)
Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino

•Are you guys worried about Hawk? Well, good news. He was wearing an armored vest, and while Doc tells us that most such vests wouldn't stop "a 9mm hardball round", his particular vest was the "SWAT model with extra ballistic layers." Guys, I don't know anything about guns, but Hama seems to.

•Meanwhile, Dr. Venom is driving the HISS tank with Cobra Commander and Destro away from D.C. on the highway. For some reason, it's not being followed by an entire parade of law enforcement vehicles the way I would assume a rogue tank on the highway might be. 

Destro is still in his own world (the Commander calls it some kind of trance), but he helps snap Destro out of it by giving him something to focus his grief on. He throws Major Bludd under the bus, telling Destro that Bludd had killed The Baroness because he was in love with her too. 

Two things to note on this page. Check out the broken pair of glasses, a symbol of the dead (?) Baroness. And look closely at that cobra. What's with the little human eyes peering out of the black shadow of its open mouth? Weird.

Their tank is eventually picked up by a Cobra helicopter, and while Ace engages them in his Skystriker, his plane is damaged and he has to retreat. As for the other Cobra players, Major Bludd attempts to hijack a bus, but is captured by the Joes (see the cove), and Scar-Face ditches his Cobra helmet and mask and retreats to his secret retreat at Coney Island.

•Back in Florida, Snake-Eyes and Kwinn escape prison, and then win a pink Cadillac (and a cowboy hat) from some gamblers in a dice game. Kwinn knows that Scar-Face knows where Cobra's base is and where they might find Doctor Venom, and he knows where Scar-Face's "hidey-hole" is, and that's where they are headed, too. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #18 (1983)
Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino

•Snake-Eyes finally makes contact with the Joe team, via a postcard he sent Hawk, with a secret "P.S." to Scarlett to prove that the message is really from him. Again, note how nice Snake-Eyes' handwriting is! Thanks to his tip, the Joes head for Coney Island, arriving around the same time as Destro and Snake-Eyes and Kwinn do. Apparently, Scar-Face's hideout is the security shed of a roller coaster there.

•The Joes arrive via pair of vehicles. Most of them are in the APC, while Rock 'N Roll arrive in via The MANTA (Marine Assault Nautical Transport (Air driven)), a sailboard like vehicle that was available via mail order rather than wherever toys were sold. 

•Destro steals an ice cream truck to make his getaway. He eventually gets his hands on Scar-Face, and together they hijack a plane to Libya, where they meet up with other Cobra forces...including Dr. Venom, who injects Scar-Face with the real bioweapon that Cobra Commander had previously injected a soldier in Vermont with. The plan? The injection turns Scar-Face into "a biological time bomb." If they allow the Joes to capture him and take him back to their base, then the plague he's carrying will "eradicate every living soul in G.I. Joe headquarters."

Unfortunately for the Joes, they unknowingly play along and end up infiltrating a Cobra motorcade in Libya and scooping up Scar-Face.

•As for Snake-Eyes and Kwinn (whose got his weasel skull necklace back on here), well Kwinn gave him the choice to either rejoin his comrades back at Coney Island, or to stay with him to pursue vengeance against Venom. Snake-Eyes stayed with Kwinn.

•Next? Hama, Vosburg and D'Agostino empty the whole damn toybox, for a climax to what I guess we'd now call this story arc, involving all the characters, all the vehicles and even the G.I. Joe Headquarters Command Center playset. It's pretty much the entire G.I. Joe toy line circa 1983, all in one issue! That, and we'll finally get to #21, probably the most famous issue of the whole series. 

On the rather confusing (to me) Last Days of the Justice Society of America

My interest in the Spear of Destiny in the DC Universe recently brought me to 1986's Last Days of the Justice Society of America Special #1, a 64-page story by writer Roy Thomas, co-plotter Dann Thomas, pencil artist David Ross and inker Mike Gustovich. 

I think it's one of the more confusing DC comics I've ever read.

That's not because it's poorly written or poorly drawn...God knows I've read much worse comics from the publisher, comics that due either to the script, or the nature of the art, or some disconnect between the writing and the art were difficult or impossible to parse with any real confidence.

Rather, my confusion stems from the fact that Thomas' story contradicts what I thought I knew about Crisis on Infinite Earths, and how it affected the DC Universe shared setting. (Mostly; there's also a plot point that amounts to little more than "Because magic...!", but we'll get to that in a bit). 

Now, if Roy Thomas and I seem to have a difference of opinion on how COIE impacted the DC Universe/history/continuity, I have to assume that's a me problem, and not a Thomas one. 

I mean, he was the guy who was writing for DC Comics at the time, and this script he wrote for them presumably made it through a series of editors who knew what was what. 

Meanwhile, I read COIE once, over 25 years ago, from a trade I borrowed from the library, and never felt compelled to revisit it (Certainly DC has given me plenty of chances to do so, as they seem to be constantly reprinting it in various formats. Honestly, I found it a bit of a slog, and read it with the interest and enthusiasm of a student reading a homework assignment; I suppose I should reread it now, though, given that in the last quarter century, I've read so many more comics that I'll now know many of the players and elements far better, and recognize all the cameos).

Okay, so here's my understanding of the climax of COIE, in which multiple Earths are all collapsed into a new, single Earth. This combination essentially synthesized the various Earths, their populations (well, at least their superhero populations) and their histories into a new one, the specifics of which would be laid out in 1986's History of the DC Universe and DC books going forward (like John Byrne's Superman work, George Perez's Wonder Woman and so on). Only a handful of characters from alternate Earths who were spared (Earth-2 Superman, Superboy-Prime, etc) would remember the old Multiverse, along with Psycho-Pirate, who seems to have been driven mad in the process.

(Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

That's...not what is reflected here. All of the characters featured in this comic seem to be aware of their time on Earth-2, that there are characters who existed on both Earth-2 and Earth-1 (like Superman and Robin, for example), and the specifics of the events of the crisis, which they refer to as the crisis throughout. At various points, Hawkman and Starman even refer to it as "The Crisis on Infinite Earths". (Also, post-Crisis, should Power Girl be in this story at all?)

So that caused some friction for my brain when I was reading, but so too did making sense of the time travel elements of the plot...although that too seems to stem from my not remembering the events of COIE very clearly. 

After a prologue featuring Albert Speer visiting Adolf Hitler in his bunker near the end of the war in 1945, and a very wordy page in which the panels read rather cinematically, the readers' point-of-view moving through a cemetery on the grounds of Hall manor as if a movie camera were doing so, we find the JSoA of the time standing before a large coffin.

The roll call: Hawkman, Starman, Green Lantern, Dr. Mid-Nite, The Flash, Wildcat, Hourman, Doctor Fate, The Sandman, The Atom, Johnny Thunder, The Star-Spangled Kid and Power Girl, along with apparently unofficial members, Hawkgirl and Sandy the Golden boy. 

Chairman Hawkman is holding forth, talking about the "two fallen comrades" in the coffin before them. As he does so, he recounts other Society members who have previously died (Earth-Two Batman, Mister Terrific) or been lost in other ways (Earth-Two's Superman and Wonder Woman). Who's in the coffin? Earth-Two's Robin Dick Grayson and Huntress Helena Wayne, both of whom died during the events of the crisis. Hawkman says they will be burying them next to Helena's parents, Earth-Two's Batman and Catwoman.

So, you can see where I might be confused here, right? 

Not only was I surprised that the Justice Society all seemed to remember the events of Earth-Two (like Batman's death), but they also remembered characters plucked out of continuity when time and space were rewritten (like their Superman, Kal-L), but somehow Robin and Huntress still have bodies? And Batman and Catwoman's remains survive, still buried in their graves with their headstones, on the then-new, combined Earth? Didn't all of these characters—Earth-Two's Batman, Catwoman, Robin and Huntress—get erased from existence, so that they never were, except, perhaps, as memories held by a handful of characters...?

The team isn't just mourning the deaths of Robin and Huntress, though, but that of the Society as a whole. Hawkman says that they've decided to disband and go into retirement, as "when Earth-One, Earth-Two, and so many other Earths became one, we in turn became, in a very real sense...redundant."

In a splash page that depicts the heroes of the new DC Universe, he goes on to explain that there are other, younger heroes, "many of whom bear the same powers, even the same names we do."

I'm reading Last Days in the 2017 Last Days of The Justice Society of America trade collection, which collects it with a dozen stories that Thomas wrote for the pages of the 1986-1990 Secret Origins (one of which I've recently written about). It also includes a text piece of Thomas' from the back of the original Last Days special, headlined "An Epilegomena to 'The Last Days of the Justice Society'" (My spellcheck doesn't recognize that word, by the way). In this Thomas explains a bit why DC published the story, and it seems the publisher agreed with what Hawkman said about the redundancy of the JSoA at the time. 

It's weird to think that DC might have thought that, say, two Hawkman, Flash, Green Lanterns or Atoms would be just too many. I mean, today we have, what, three or more Flashes? Eight Earth-born Green Lanterns? Hell, just looking at the Batman franchise, don't we still have two Batmen, two Robins, three Batgirls and more sidekicks and Bat-lieutenants than I can keep track of...?

Anyway!

Hawkman, the Society's chairman, is just about to announce that the team is now officially disbanded when The Spectre arrives in a shredded cape and gloves and then collapses in their midst. 

The Spectre reaches up and touches Fate's mask, causing the mystic to reel back while screaming in pain, and then The Spectre seems to explode in a very cool image, Thomas' narration telling us that "the ectoplasmic shell men have called The Spectre can return to whence it came."

The next 15 pages or so will consist of Fate explaining to the others what The Spectre implanted in his mind, an alternate version of the events of April 1945 than those which any of them remember. 

They are attending President Franklin D. Roosevelt's funeral, when the Earth begins to shake and the sky itself rends open, Wildcat observing that "another world's tryin' to rush in!" New president Harry S. Truman arrives and tells them it's a world wide phenomenon, at which point The Spectre speaks up: The source is Berlin, and "the destiny of all the Earth hangs uneven in the balance-- --and the weight of so much as a feather may tip the scales toward survival-- or the end of all the universe!"

Hey, Hawkman has a feather! He's got a whole lot of feathers! Maybe he can help?

And so Hawkman, and the rest of the Society (here including Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, which would seem to indicate that this is 1945 on Earth-Two, and not in the new timeline in which there is and was no Earth-Two) streak to Berlin, although the most powerful of them can only go so far. 

"If we go traipsing inside Nazi-held territory, we'll fall victim to the spell cast by Hitler's Spear of Destiny, won't we?" Johnny says, to which Green Lantern responds, "Just those of use who are especially susceptible to magic."

That's how the spear was working on the JSA circa 1986 then, at least according to Thomas: Any hero "especially susceptible to magic" who entered "Nazi-held territory" would fall under Hitler's spell and end up fighting for him. 

(Thomas' text piece at the back addresses this a bit, saying he came up with it as an explanation for why the superheroes didn't change the results of the war too much, a regular problem with superhero comics that was only magnified when it pertained to "stories set in the well-mapped past." He also says he was planning to work out an explanation for why the spear's magic only affected those most vulnerable to magic—that is, conveniently, the most powerful heroes—but didn't get around to it before Crisis made the point somewhat moot).

And so Superman, Wonder Woman, Doctor Fate, The Spectre, Green Lantern and Johnny Thunder stay behind while the ten remaining heroes moved deeper into enemy territory, many of them dying as they fought their way to Hitler's bunker (Starman, The Flash, Mister Terrific, Hourman and Doctor Mid-Nite all catch bullets in this sequence; Sandman takes a shot to the head, and then stations himself at a machine gun to provide cover fire for his allies before he himself bleeds out.)

In the bunker, they find a cackling Hilter with the spear held aloft. Fireballs pour from the sky, and then a wave of destruction pours forth, enveloping the world in fire. Hitler managed to take the whole world down with him in 1945.

So, um, why didn't the JSoA remember it happening that way? How were they still standing around on a very much not destroyed world in the 1980s? Well, here's the part I didn't really get. Apparently, during the Crisis—Thomas' text point lays out exactly which point—The Spectre's energies were flung throughout all of time and space, and the spear "drank" them up, super-charging it, and allowing Hitler to summon Ragnarok, the apocalypse of Norse mythology, ending the world. 

Still, if Hitler destroys the world in 1945, why is it still around in 1986? Well, it seems that though The Spectre's energy traveled through time, which I guess is a circle and not a line, the rip in the sky through which Ragnarok pours through happens at all times simultaneously, as no sooner has Doctor Fate explained all of this then a rip opens in the sky above them.

Now, I assumed where Thomas was going with this is that the JSoA of 1986 would end up travelling back to 1945, just before the events we just witnessed in Doctor Fate's story, enter the rip in space time and enter the Ragnarok cycle, where they would engage in an eternal battle, forever staving off the end of the world. When I started reading comics in the '90s, that's what the JSoA's status quo was, after all, and I read 1992's John Ostrander-written Armageddon: Inferno, in which the Justice Society returned from Ragnarok to the present-day DCU. 

That would make some sense of the time paradox, right? The Justice Society wouldn't remember the alternate history that Fate told them because they had prevented it from happening, just as the Earth wouldn't have actually ended in 1945, as a result of the present heroes' actions in the past. 

Well, that's not what Thomas does.

Instead, I guess we just leave it at The Spectre's powers behave how Thomas wants them to in order to tell a "last" Justice Society story that involves them fighting Hitler and the power of the spear, one that has them all ascend bodily to a sort of warrior's heaven of eternal battle, which is really not a bad "ending" for a team of superheroes, right?

Anyway, Doctor Fate takes the Society back in time to 1945, although he says they can't aid their past selves physically there, as, "No one living can see us...and we, in turn, cannot truly touch anyone or anything in this era."

Rather, once Hitler opens the rift in the sky, Fate takes them all within it, where they see the various characters of Norse mythology assembling for a final battle, one destined to end the world. The Society members are all quite conversant in Norse mythology, it seems here, and Ross' designs all lean toward the realistic, most of the gods wearing period armor, or looking like characters from opera stages, rather than something more colorful, like Jack Kirby's version of Norse mythology from Marvel's comics, or the Valkyries that Joe Staton drew in 1977's DC Special #29. 

Fate combines his magic with Green Lantern's willpower, and has the various members of the Society merge with various Asgardian gods, empowering the heroes to interact with the bad guys like Loki, Fenrir, Surtur and so on.

Over the course of some 20 pages, the heroes fight the mythological forces, dying one-by-one throughout. (That's two action sequences in which the heroes get killed in one book; I can only imagine what Geoff Johns would have done if given the opportunity to write the death scenes of so many heroes!)

Before long, of course, the heroes who died in the battle are resurrected, as are the opponents they vanquished, and the battle starts over. It can't actually be decisively won but must be fought over and over for all eternity...or for about half-dozen years, I guess, before the Justice Society is spelled by the bad guys from Armageddon: Inferno and are able to join the post-Crisis DCU. 

Not all of the Society members get stuck fighting Ragnarok forever/six years, though. Doctor Fate returns Power Girl and the Star-Spangled Kid to the present, saying that they are still so young and have too much life to live. Or maybe it's because they don't have Earth-One doppelgangers in the way that most of the others do?  (Of course, Power Girl was kinda sorta Earth-Two's answer to Earth-One's Supergirl, right? And after this appearance she would begin a long, troubled cycle of new and contradictory origins, one that I'm not entirely sure has ever been resolved definitively, but then, I don't think I've read a Power Girl story since shortly after the New 52).

Then The Spectre shows up to throw Doctor Fate out of Ragnarok too, returning him to the Earth of 1986. Like Power Girl and the Kid, there's not Doctor Fate double, either. 

So, I guess that's what became of the Justice Society after Crisis, right? 

At least until the Justice Society in Ragnarok story gets retconned, but that's a subject for another post...

Bookshelf #25

This week's bookshelf is the second one I have shown you devoted to the works of the publisher Drawn & Quarterly. This one differs from the first mainly in that these are all books published earlier than those on the previous D+Q shelf, although these also tend to be larger books, which is why they are atop a shelving unit. (I mean, see Seth's George Sprott on the far right? That's a little over 12-inches by 14-inches.)

Like Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly doesn't really publish any bad books. Even when I come across one that I might not love, it's always apparent that it's just not to my taste, rather than the work itself is deficient in some way.

If you scan the spines, you will see a lot of familiar names here, including Daniel Clowes, Guy Delisle, Tove Jansson, Shigeru Mizuki, John Porcellino, Adrian Tomine and the aforementioned Seth. This shelf contains a lot of great work, although if forced to reread something right now, I would probably choose a volume of the John Stanley Library, each book beautifully designed by Seth. I have three volumes of it here: Melvin Monster, Nancy Vol. 1 and Thirteen Going on Eighteen; I wish I had bought the other Nancy volumes, of which there were three more. (I actually did revisit this Nancy volume a few years back, following Nancy Fest).

I also now regret not keeping up with Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie's Aya series; I have the first two volumes here, but I just checked, and it went on for five volumes. (Although I guess it's never too late to catch up, huh?)

As per usual, there are several exceptions to the organizing principle of the shelf. Most obviously is, to the far left, Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's fairytale-based erotica Lost Girls, an Alan Moore comic that Hollywood has yet to attempt to adapt, which is there due both to its size and because its slipcase serves as a bookend capable of holding up all the others. 

Nestled between Clowes' Wilson and Seth's George Sprott is Tim Hensley's Wally Gropius, which is from Fantagraphics, and I think is only there by mistake (the shelf right below this one, which will be featured next week, is a Fantagraphics shelf). 

And laying across the top, between Moomin and Hitler, is Mummies, an IDW/Yoe Books collection of old pre-code horror comics featuring the bandage wrapped undead wreaking havoc in the modern world. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Pt. 2

Welcome back! Today I'll continue working my way through the first 50-issue chunk of Marvel's 1982-1994 G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero series via Image Comics' G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Compendium One. As with the half-dozen issues covered in the previous post in what is no doubt going to end up being a very long series, all issues here are written by Larry Hama unless otherwise noted.

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #7 (1983)
Plot by Herb Trimpe

Art by Herb Trimpe and Chic Stone

•Well, it sure looks like this is the end of G.I. Joe ...and their Soviet equivalent, The October Guard. The dozen or so soldiers have thrown down their weapons, they are surrounded by a large contingent of Cobra forces—including a couple of helicopters—and Cobra Commander has just ordered them killed. I mean, the only way out of this particular situation would be if Cobra Commander did something really, really dumb. Like, comic book supervillain dumb.

•Guess what? Rather than having the Joes and Guard gunned down instantly in front of him, the Commander says that he will leave two specialists "to tie up loose ends", since they have "both the skill and imagination to prolong the amusement." 

And so rather than watching his enemies to make sure they are killed, the Commander and all but two of the Cobra soldiers leave with the captured Rought Terrain Vehicle containing the downed experimental aircraft the three teams were chasing. 

Also, I'm no charismatic leader of a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world, but if it were me, I would have left more than two guys to slowly kill a dozen guys; I mean, if the Joes and Guard all rushed the Cobras at once, they might be able to overwhelm them, right...?

Anyway, the two gunmen conveniently wait until the rest of their forces are far away before they begin taking shots at our heroes. "I want to watch them sweat for a little while," one them says, by way of excuse for this.

•Oh, Cobra Commander names the two soldiers he leaves behind, too. They are Rattler and Copperhead. Both are proper nouns that will be familiar to G.I. Joe fans, of course. The Rattler is the name of the Cobra airplane, the toy for which wouldn't be released until 1984. Copperhead is the name of the guy who piloted the Cobra Water Moccasin vehicle. That too was released in 1984, and the Copperhead figure came packaged with the Water Moccasin. 

These guys look like your standard Cobra soldiers, though. Trimpe and/or Hama seem to have just chosen two random snake-related names to give the usually nameless Cobra soldiers here for some reason.

•Clutch saves the day. It turns out he has a hand-held remote control for the guns on the VAMP (Vehicle Attack/Multi-Purpose) hidden on him ("Didn't you guys ever wonder how I fired those things without ever touching 'em?") which he turns on the two Cobra soldiers and kills them in a hail of gunfire.

There's two pages of discussion of what to do next, with options including continuing the Joes vs. Guard fight where they left off before Cobra interrupted, or following orders and contacting Hawk for an evacuation since they have failed in their mission. Stalker and Guard commander Colonel Brekhov come up with a third option: Join forces to take on Cobra and then, when it comes to determining which team gets to keep the prize, well, team leader Stalker suggests "let's cross that bridge when we come to it and hopefully we won't have to burn it down behind us..."

•Scarlett is not completely on board. She calls the Guard "lousy Reds" and announces "I don't wallow with pigs." The ever-sensitive Clutch announces that Scarlett is "just a tad high strung."

•As the two teams clamber aboard the VAMP and the Guard's vehicle, they drive for hours, following a homing device Breaker put in the RTV containing the plane. At one point, they cross the Iranian border and find an Iranian border patrol blocking their path.

"What are you going to do?" one of the Joes asks Stalker. "Promise to give the Shah back?"

"How about asking for room and board at the embassy?" another chimes in. 

There's a brief firefight, during which one of the Joes asks, "Who the heck fired the first shot?", a line I imagine was included to absolve our heroes from initiating an attack on a sovereign country's military (Or at least providing a degree of ambiguity on the matter). Ultimately, the VAMP plows through them, with the Guard vehicle behind them ("Keep going, Amerikanskis! The Oktober Guard will mop up this rabble!"), and we see about a dozen bodies on the ground where the Iranian border patrol stood, several others kneeling and another standing among them.

"Well, so much for the Iranian-American relations..." one of the Joes quips, while one of the Guard responds, "Another example of American imperialist aggression!"

•Yes, it's surreal reading a jocular action scene in which American soldiers gun down Iranian soldiers while we're currently at war with Iran.  

•As the Joes and Guard prepare to assault the Cobra stronghold, Clutch takes a moment to harass Scarlett: "If you want to touch up your eye-shadow, I'll let you use my rear-view mirror--"

She snipes back: What for, exhaust-breath? There's nobody out here worth impressing..."

•The stronghold is full of traps that the Joes must navigate, and the entire sequence reminded me quite a bit of the cartoon.

•There's a four-panel epilogue which puts the entire adventure in a new context. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #8 (1983) 

Written by Herb Trimpe

Art by Herb Trimpe

•Herb Trimpe, pulling triple duty as writer, pencil artist and inker on this issue, has a pretty complicated set-up for what ends up being another done-in-one story. Cobra is operating from a giant, mobile, undersea base, and plan to create a network of such bases all over the world. From these bases, they will launch orbital missiles by the hundreds, each armed with a warhead "poised to strike any place on the planet." Untouchable in their underwater bases and able to attack anywhere they want, Cobra will rule the world...maybe more! For, as Cobra Commander explains, "We will dominate the earth and the sky! It will be our first step in pulling the cosmos itself!"

The United States may yet stop them, though, as they plan to launch a special satellite capable of locating and destroying the underwater bases from space. Therefore Cobra plans to attack and destroy the Kennedy Space Center, space shuttle and satellite included.

•As an adult, I've been curious about Cobra's ideology, as they seem to be founded on and held together by a kind of generic desire to rule the world, rather than any sort of religious faith or deeply-held political beliefs of the sort that animate real world terrorist groups. 

So, a line of dialogue from The Baroness caused me to perk up a bit here. 

During Cobra Commander's presentation to the Cobra leaders, here still just a bunch of guys in cobra uniforms with red face masks and blue helmets, she says, "But, due to fifth columnists and capitalist lackeys within our own ranks, the Americans know that we are here!"

"Capitalist lackeys"...? Is Cobra anti-capitalist? Are they a socialist organization, or...? 

•At the end of the passage, the assembled Cobra members salute the Commander, and rather than the straight arm salute we've seen in earlier issues, here they make a fist and hold it near their hearts. The Baroness, facing them, gives the more familiar straight arm salute back to them.

•At this early point in the toy line's existence, no Cobra vehicles have yet been introduced (The first of them will be released later in 1983, though). So the various vehicles that appear in these comics are still straight from the imagination of the creators. 

Here Trimpe introduces a rather neat-looking vehicle: The Cobra SEA Legs ("SEA" standing for Surprise, Engage and Attack). Seemingly inspired by the Martian vehicles from War of the Worlds or, maybe more likely, the Imperial Walkers from The Empire Strikes Back, these looks like attack subs perched atop tall, thin, mechanical legs that cause them to tower above the Joe vehicles, which they shoot down at.

•This is a particularly action-packed issue. In addition to the fight with the SEA Legs, there's a scene where Hawk stands on the scaffolding holding the shuttle and must shoot down an oncoming missile during the countdown, another in space where the Joes on the shuttle have to deal with Cobra's orbital missile and then the Joes land atop the sea base which is floating at the surface for another fight with Cobra forces.

•The Joes defeat the Cobra soldiers atop the base, and the latter surrender. Meanwhile, Cobra Commander has announced that the base will self-destruct. As the Joes plan to flee in rafts, their prisoners refuse to join them.

"You can shoot us--but we will not leave!" One of them announces, doing the stiff-armed salute and the fist over the chest salute simultaneously. "We serve Cobra Commander to the end! We have failed and will stay to meet our fate!"

See, that's the sort of fanaticism that would seem to need a strongly held ideology to support it, right? 

It also doesn't make any sense in this particular context. Like, if they were prepared to die in service to Cobra, why would they surrender during the fight with the Joes, rather than fighting them to the death?

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #9 (1983)

Written by Steven Grant

Art by Mike Vosburg and Chic Stone

•This issue's story, entitled "The Diplomat", is the first in the series written by someone other than Hama or Trimpe. It's a particularly strong done-in-one, heavy on action movie-style action, while providing perhaps the most compelling portrait of the character of Cobra Commander to date and providing a hint of insight into the various byzantine plots he's always hatching.

•This issue's mission involves a Cobra assassination attempt against Brian Hassell, a state department diplomat involved in talks with the fictional "Persian Gulf nation of Al-Alawi" that, if successful, "could swing Al-Alawi into the U.S. sphere of influence." Stalker and Snake-Eyes are tasked with finding someone who can confirm the plan, while Clutch and Scarlett are assigned to guard Hassell as he makes his way to the talks.

After the briefing, Scarlett approaches Hawk. "Do I have to team up with Clutch?" she asks him. "Isn't there anyone else?"

An angry-looking Hawk, perhaps unaware that Clutch had hit on her during a previous mission and has continued to "rib" her since, responds simply: "You have your orders, soldier."

Sounds like this daring, highly trained special mission force could use an HR department. 

•At one point, Scarlett is wearing a robe over a bikini, as her and Clutch were guarding Hassell at a beach, and is in the passenger seat of a speeding convertible driven by Clutch. They've just rescued the diplomat from a bomb in his hotel room, and are fleeing. 

"Excuse me while I change into my fighting clothes," she says, reaching for a bag, while pointing at a smiling Clutch, "And you keep your eyes on the road!"

She changes off-panel, of course, so two or three panels of Vosburg drawing Scarlett in a bikini are about it for cheesecake in the issue, although even those images aren't that cheesecake-y.

•Stalker and Snake-Eyes follow a lead to what appears to be a brothel in Amsterdam, although if a kid hasn't seen very many movies featuring brothels, I guess they wouldn't recognize it as such.

•There's a bit of a twist to this, as in the two-parter from issues #6 and #7 and, combined with another surprise and Cobra Commanders, it makes for a quite effectively satisfying read. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #10 (1983)

Art by Mike Vosburg and Chic Stone

•I think this issue marks something of a turning point in the series. It introduces the city of Springfield, which will prove important to the G.I. Joe comics for quite a while going forward, as well as the character Billy (although he's not actually named in this particular story). It also provides the first real background on what exactly Cobra is, beyond "the guys that G.I. Joe fight", and their basic modus operandi of infiltrating everyday American society.

This is also one of the last done-in-one stories...although much of what is here will be returned to and followed-up on later. Within a few more issues, the book will start telling extended, serial narratives, what we might now think of as story arcs.

Oh, and this is the last issue to feature the original cast from the first issues. Starting with the next issue, new Joes and new Cobra agents will start getting introduced at a fairly steady clip, as the toy line began expanding rather significantly in 1983, and the first cartoon mini-series dropped that same year (The second one, The Return of Cobra, followed in 1984, with the full series starting in 1985).

•The Baroness takes a trio of Joes captive during a mission in New York City. Scarlett and Zap awake behind bars in a Cobra dungeon with a little boy, who future issues will reveal is named Billy. Scarlett immediately starts tripping balls: "Why is Zap melting like a candle?...My hands...turning into claws! And...bats! Bats! Bats-- --No...gargoyles!"

"Sure has been a lot easier to maintain security around here since Dr. Venom started drugging the prisoners with hallucinogens!" a nearby Cobra guard says to his partner, thus explaining to readers what's going on.

•The third Joe who was captured is Snake-Eyes, and we find him in a lab, strapped into a weird, rather Kirby-esque device which, based on his twisted posture and gritted teeth, must inflict a high degree of pain. The lab belongs to new guy Dr. Venom, a character original to Hama's comics (Cobra mad scientist Doctor Mindbender wouldn't be introduced until 1986). Despite the colorful name, he looks like a more-or-less generic scientist, a middle-aged white guy with a receding hairline, dressed in a shirt and tie under his long white lab coat.

Venom explains the contraption to Cobra Commander and The Baroness at length. Essentially, after it has "amassed a personalized vocabulary of the subjects thinking patterns" and then reversed the pattern, it will allow Venom to "read" Snake-Eyes' mind, projecting his thoughts visually onto a monitor. His plan is to do so in order to find the exact location of G.I. Joe's secret headquarters. 

•Snake-Eyes' time in the machine give readers our first hints of his mysterious origins, including mundane things like his first job and that he attended his school prom as well as traumatic events from his past. Apparently, he uses the latter in an attempt to "block" his own thinking of The Pit under Venom's questioning.

So here we learn of a helicopter explosion that results in his disfigurement, his family having been killed in a car accident and the first intimation that he has trained as a ninja. 

By the way, Snake-Eyes is maskless throughout this whole process, but his face is only shown in silhouette; the white of his gritted teeth the only feature we see. 

•The little boy is able to help Scarlett and Zap escape, showing them how to burn the chemicals out of the water they are given via the heat of the cell's light bulb. He gives them a little tour of Springfield, an entire town that is secretly a front for Cobra.

"It looks so--ordinary!" Scarlett says when they get to the surface and drive around in a hot-wired car. 

"That's the way it used to be around here...real ordinary," Billy responds. "Until the soap people came to town."

I'm going to quote his explanation at length, as this is the first real discussion of where Cobra might have come from:

Yeah, it was one of those pyramid schemes...They got you to sell household cleaning products for extra money, and encouraged you to get others involved.

Weekly "sales meetings" soon escalated into "leadership indoctrination", and pretty soon the ball was rolling beyond control.

They were very convincing. They made it seem "un-American" not to want to get involved.

Anybody who resisted was boycotted by the rest. And by that time the 'rest' was the majority...

Persistent resisters simply disappeared and kids started turning in their parents!

They started building secret back-rooms into all the buildings and lots of underground complexes...

So, Cobra is a money-making pyramid scheme using faux patriotism to recruit members and cult tactics to enforce their compliance, and they managed to take over an entire small American town as their base of operations. It's a pretty paranoid fantasy, one that sounds a little like mid-twentieth century fears regarding Communists infiltrating and taking over America.

Even ten years ago, I would say a whole American city gradually embracing a fascist organization led by a charismatic leader, a movement that uncomfortably echoes the trappings of Nazi Germany was completely unrealistic. 

Today, I know that a good one-third of Americans, and a shocking number of business and political leaders, are either willing to embrace such a movement, or at least tolerate it, if it rewards them with power and/or profits, so I don't know. 

Maybe Larry Hama's G.I. Joe #10 belongs on the shelf with George Orwell's 1984 and Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here as speculative fiction that's become less and less speculative in the era of Trump.

•While Scarlett and Zap attempt to rescue Snake-Eyes from Venom's lab and end up fighting an arcade full of Springfeilders, Snake-Eyes seemingly dies (Just before he does so, though, we see on the mind-reading screen a masked man saying he will explain the secret ninja technique "whereby you may still your breath and heartbeat to the semblance of death itself!")

No sooner is the "dead" Snake-Eyes unstrapped by Dr. Venom than he punches out a Cobra soldier ("THWACK!") and hits Dr. Venom with the butt of a gun ("THOOM!"). Luckily, he seems to have a spare mask on his person, as he then masks back up. Eventually, the three Joes hijack the same weird flying Cobra vehicle that flew them to Springfield to fly them to safety, with Billy electing to stay behind, as he and his family are part the underground resistance there working to thwart Cobra.

•An unlikely series of events, including a storm blocking visibility, the death of their Cobra pilot and Snake-Eyes accidentally shooting out all the navigation equipment, means that the Joes don't actually know where exactly Springfield is. Too bad they didn't ask Billy what state they were in!

•When they come out of the storm clouds and parachute out of the ship, which they aim to crash-land in a nearby body of water, Scarlett lands on top of The Hulk. Well, a guy in a Hulk costume, hired by Marvel for the grand opening of the Bayonne Mall. I believe this is the first time we've seen anything in the series that could only be there if it were a Marvel book. That is, Image, Devil's Due or IDW obviously wouldn't have included those panels.

In the last panel of the issue, we learn that "a Marvel booking agent was nice enough" to loan the Joes bus fare home. 

But when the driver sees Snake-Eyes, he shouts, "Hey! No weirdos on my bus!" 

The fact that Snake-Eyes is drawn with a long gun slung over his shoulder goes unmentioned. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #11 (1983) 

Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino

•The 1983 expansion of the toy line is reflected in this issue, wherein the first new Joes are introduced, Destro makes his first appearance (although Hama and Vosburg play coy, keeping his name unspoken and his face off-panel) and a bunch of vehicles from the toy line are employed: The Joe's Polar Battle Bear skimobile and Falcon hang glider and Cobra's HISS tanks ("HISS" stands for "HIgh Speed Sentry) and Viper hang glider.  

•Cobra's plot here is so complicated, I don't think I ever quite understood it, but it involves an Alaskan oil pipeline, a deadly plague weapon and nuclear material stolen from a nuclear power plant. God bless Hama for being able to think up on capable of supporting all these elements from the toys though, particularly the specialties of the various Joes included in the issue.

•The "old" Joes are pinned down and in the middle of a firefight when they get their reinforcements, delivered in a helicopter by pilot Wild Bill, who is here drawn sans his opaque sunglasses, and thus looks a bit off. These are Snowjob and Gung-Ho. Also arriving is Doc, the team's first medic, who busies himself tending to everyone's wounds (and gets a gun pointed in his face when he reaches for Snake-Eyes' mask to check his face for signs of frostbite). 

•Rock 'N Roll is immediately skeptical of Gung-Ho, who arrives in the snow wearing the same outfit his toy and cartoon equivalent wears: Hat, vest, pants and boots, with no shirt. 

"Hawk, it's five below zero and that maniac gyrene is runnin' bare-chested just so we won't miss his 'corps tattoo," he says. 

Later, when paired with Snow Job, Rock 'N Roll asks, "Whataya know 'bout this Gung-Ho character? Is he from Flake-City or what?"

This sets up a running gag that won't see it's payoff until the last panels, when Rock 'N Roll gets a bit of comeuppance, and Snow Job's codename is explained. That is, they don't call him that just because he's the Joes' arctic trooper.

•I had to look up "gyrene". It's a portmanteau of "G.I." and "marine" and the term apparently originated in World War II. Comics are educational!

•I knew Gung-Ho was supposed to be Cajun, but I was still quite surprised to hear his dialogue, which Hama writes in such a way that Gung-Ho sounds like Gambit throughout. I guess I was so used to his voice from the cartoon, where he has a bit of a Southern accent, that I wasn't expecting lines like, "Mais oui...But making it back, she is another story, no?"

•He gets a cool scene where he rushes out of a building where the Joes are pinned down, raising his gun like a club and swatting a trio of Cobra soldiers setting up a surface-to-air missile with a single blow.

"This here crazy Cajun gyrene fella ain't tryin' ta prove nothin'!" he shouts over his shoulder. "--They say the proof's in the puddin', no? And I be makin' puddin' outta these Cobras' faces!"

•One more new Joe makes his first appearance here. That's Airborne, who flies in on a hang glider to engage a couple of Cobras on their hang gliders.

When Snow Job picks him up on the Battle Bear, he introduces himself: "Howdy. Call me Airborne. Real name's Talltree, Franklin E."

"Talltree," Snow Job responds. "That an Indian name?"

"No. It's Native American. What kind of name is 'Snake-Eyes'?"

"Don't ask."

•Much is made of Destro's introduction, which will actually play out over the course of the next several issues. Walking down a hall with The Baroness, Cobra Commander refers to a new specialist, "A man with infinite finesse and a clear tactical mind...If I am the counterpart of G.I. Joe's General Flagg, then this man is the counterpart of Hawk."

In the first panel, we just see his butt, a gun strapped to his thigh and metal gauntlets at his side. 

"Baroness, may I introduce--" the Commander starts, but she cuts him off.

"We've already met, Cobra Commander." 

While they whisper, the unnamed figure, now seen from the torso down, a plane obscuring his face, starts talking business. 

Throughout the rest of the issue, his dialogue balloons will mostly come from off-panel, only his gauntlets or part of his body ever being depicted. 

•On the last page, Rock 'N Roll confronts Snow Job about a story he fed him earlier, and the two bearded Joes share a panel in which they are face to face. It reminded me of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's weird meeting with all of the generals in which he railed against lax grooming standards and declared "No more beardos." 

Where would G.I. Joe be without its beardos?

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #12 (1983)

Art by Mike Vosberg and Jon D'Agostino

•This issue kicks off an "arc" that lasts nine or ten issues, depending on where exactly one wants to draw the line. 

•The story opens in San Francisco with a car chase, the Joe's VAMP pursuing a van labeled "Naja Hanna Video Corp" driven by Cobra troopers through the street, and both vehicles firing at one another, seemingly heedless of bystanders. That gives way to a foot chase, and after five pages of comedic, action movie-like shenanigans, a uniformed Cobra agent with a scar in his face gets away with briefcase.

Examining the wreckage of the Cobra van, our heroes find "missile guidance chips" buried among a bunch of video game circuits, and a crate addressed to "South American banana republic" Siera Gordo, which is obviously a fictitious country. (It also says "Att. Senor K. Winn", a name that might sound pretty familiar to anyone who read G.I. Joe #2).

•In the Pentagon, Flagg tells Hawk about the military importance of "computer 'chip' technology," and suggests the Joes investigate what Cobra is doing in Sierra Gordo, which is currently having a revolution.

Hawk decides to send in Breaker, "the only one who got a good look at that scar-faced Cobra courier" and Stalker go in undercover, with Gung-Ho and Snake-Eyes backing them up. 

•Breaker and Stalker prove to be pretty bad at undercover work. They pose as an investors who want to buy video games from the address on the packing crate. Dr. Venom, whom neither of them have ever met, opens the door, but tells them he has no games to sell them.

Stalker argues, "I happen to know that you received a shipment of over one hundred games less than a month ago."

Venom responds, "Well now, isn't that interesting? The only way you could possibly be privy to taht bit of information is if you were working for either Cobra or G.I. Joe..."

To this, Stalker replies, "Ummm..."

And Breaker adds, "Uhhh..."

•A Cobra vs. G.I. Joe gunfight soon breaks out, and more players enter the drama immediately. Snake-Eyes, observing from the tree line through binoculars, recognizes Venom and rushes in. 

Following him, Gung-Ho runs into a guy in a poncho and sombrero with a distinctive scar—the Cobra courier from San Francisco. 

And then the "Senor K. Winn" from the packing label makes his dramatic entrance. This is, of course, Kwinn, the indomitable Inuit mercenary that Snake-Eyes and some of the other Joes met in G.I. Joe #2. He is now dressed in a matching khaki shirt and shorts with an apparently new weasel skull necklace. And he is currently employed by Cobra.

With the Joes captured, Venom pulls the bound Snake-Eyes aside to berate and pistol whip. 

"You made a fool of me in Spingfield," he tells Snake-Eyes:

Cobra Commander was beside himself with displeasure. But the true apex of your folly, the ultimate indignation, was when you raised your hand against me--

--and struck me with your filthy fist!!

Dr. Venom seems to be misremembering. Snake-Eyes struck him with the butt of a rifle. I posted the panel in which he does so above, so you could consult it and see so for yourself.

Granted, maybe he struck Venom so hard that he doesn't remember what, exactly, hit him. And being mute, Snake-Eyes is unable to correct the record. 

•Kwinn interrupts the beating, but it is too late. A Cobra trooper informs Venom that Snake-Eyes has no respiration or pulse. "This man's dead," the trooper says. "We'll leave him in the warehouse..."

Venom and Kwinn argue, with Venom reminding Kwinn of his contract with Cobra and Kwinn telling Venom, "You know Kwinn never reneges on a deal...but it is you who will face me when my contract expires!"

Meanwhile, Snake-Eyes' "dead" body is dragged into the warehouse, which is then put to the torch. 

Venom watches the smoke rise and the flames break out from a riverboat as it drifts away, and it only slowly, very slowly dawns on him that Snake-Eyes had studied at a ninja temple, where he had learned to control his heartbeat and breathing. And, in fact, he had done this particular trick the very last time he had encountered him.

For a genius, Venom is a little slow on the uptake.

•Snake-Eyes revives in the burning building, kicks the door out and runs still bound and engulfed in flames, plunging into the river.

The scene is evocative of the origins of both Swamp-Thing and Man-Thing, but, of course, Snake-Eyes doesn't rise as any kind of swamp monster, as there was no secret plant formula involved here. 

•When he finally does come out of the water, he scares the bejeezus out of a local, who screams "AIIIIIEEE!!! A river demon!!" and jumps overboard his own boat upon seeing Snake-Eyes' face.

We only see the back of his head here. His hair is colored black. In later a later panel in this issue, he will appear to have no hair, but his scalp looking as burnt as his face must be, and in one after that, he will appear to have blonde or red hair, complete with matching eyebrows. 

While his face is kept in shadow or pointed away from the reader, he can't be that disfigured; I mean, from what we've seen so far, he still seems to have a working mouth and two normal eyeballs. He would seem to be a burn victim then, with scarred skin, but the way people react to him, you would think he was an unspeakable horror.

•By the last pages, Venom has met The Baroness and the scar-faced courier at a little Cobra bunker on a little island upriver and handed them a test tube containing virus he has concocted, and the pair take off in an airplane, leaving Venom behind (As for what Cobras' up to, with the computer chips and the bio-weapon here, I admit that their plot, like the oil pipeline one in the previous issue, is so complicated that I lost track of the specifics. At any rate, it will be several issues before the bio-weapon Venom has created comes into play and, again, I got a little lost regarding what Cobra's true plan for it is). 

•Stalker, Breaker and Gung-Ho manage to escape their bonds and commandeer the river boat, but the Baroness' plane swoops towards them to fire a missile, and the Joes fire their guns futilely up at her. 

"The only guy who can knock an airplane with a sub-machine gun is Sgt. Granite of Difficult Company!" Breaker says while shooting anyway. 

He's apparently referring to the Distinguished Competition's Sgt. Rock of Easy Company, using a recognizable but legally distinct name for the comic book character.

I wonder why he didn't go with Sgt. Fury? Has Nick never shot down a plane with a sub-machine gun in any of his comics...? 

•Left behind on the island, Venom was in the process of sneaking up behind Kwinn with a gun, when he is attacked by an angry Snake-Eyes. 

He is in the midst of beating Venom (now with his fists), when The Baroness turns her plane around and fires a missile at the island to tie-up the loose ends of Snake-Eyes, Kwinn and the now "expendable" Doctor Venom. 

Whether or not the trio actually dies in the resulting explosion is left as a cliffhanger, but given that Snake-Eyes is among them, I think it's safe to assume they make it out, the big red "KA-BOOOOOM!!!" that fills a whole panel aside.