G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Pt. 7

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #31 (1985)

Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky

•Say, did you know that David Mazzucchelli inked this cover...? He did!

•This issue sees the introduction of Spirit, who is referred to repeatedly as "Spirit Iron-Knife" ("Spirit" is his codename, while "Charlie Iron-Knife" is his real name). Spirit is technically the team's second Native American member, following Airborne, but his character design makes his origins more obvious. He wears his long hair in braids, he has a headband and he even wears a loincloth over his pants. My main memory of him from the cartoon was that he had a pet bald eagle named Freedom and sometimes fought Storm Shadow, so I guess he was there supposed to be pretty well versed in martial arts. I do wonder if I revisited the cartoon show today, if his portrayal would be particularly cringey or not.

In this issue, Hawk, Ace and Wild Bill are abusing government resources to drop Snake-Eyes off at his mountain cabin so he can take his leave there ("This is a training flight, Ace," Hawk says when questioned, "If Snake-Eyes wants to parachute out while we happen to be over his cabin in the high Sierras, that's not my business...").

After Snake-Eyes jumps, we meet Spirit, who, with Airborne, has been hiding in a cargo container throughout the flight. Hawk has apparently assigned the pair to watch over Snake-Eyes in secret.

•At his cabin, Snake-Eyes has taken off his bodysuit and facemask, and is wearing civilian clothes...including a wide-brimmed camouflage hat that keeps his eyes and the upper half of his face in perpetual shadow. Remarkably, the rest of his face looks completely normal, which is...odd, given how many times we've been told how horribly disfigured he's supposed to be and seen people reacting to the sight of his face (Writer Larry Hama will eventually explain why Snake-Eyes looks normal without his mask now, but not for a few more issues, so I was pretty puzzled by this.)

•What does a ninja commando do on leave while at his mountain cabin...? Well, Snake-Eyes plays fetch with a wolf.

•Cobra Commander has sent Destro, Firefly and Crimson Guardsman "Fred Broca" into the mountains, following a tracer that Zartan had put on the plane that dropped Snake-Eyes off. While Fred drives, Destro and Firefly sit in the backseat, wearing the comic book standard disguises: Wide-brimmed hats and trenchcoats. 

•Conveniently, Snake-Eyes has changed back into his uniform, complete with all the pouches strapped on, when Fred pulls up to the cabin. Seeing Snake-Eyes in the door, Destro immediately opens fire. Snake-Eyes dodges the first hail of bullets, grabs his Uzi and starts blasting back. A huge firefight has broken out, complete with explosions, as Destro fires a wrist-rocket and Snake-Eyes targets their car's gas tank. 

•Hearing the first shots, Spirit and Airborne rush to the cabin. They were positioned, we are told, ten miles away. I am sure the Joes are all in peak physical condition, but I think Hama over-estimates just how fast human beings can run. In what couldn't possibly be more than a few minutes, they cover five miles, with Spirit cajoling Airborne "It's only another five miles!"

•Destro takes a few bullets to the face. I like when bullets bounce of his metal head. Here, they go "TZING!" and "CLANG!" and he responds simply with "Unnhh! He nicked me!" If only he could have worked something about polished beryllium steel into the panel...

•Seventeen action-packed panels later, Airborne and Spirit arrive! Dudes shouldn't be on the Joe team; they should be in the Olympics. 

•Airborne announces their presence in a way that offends Spirit. I thought that interesting because, when we first met him, Airborne corrected Snow Job when he called him "Indian" rather than "Native American"; of course, he can call himself "Indian" if he wants...

•Things look grim for Snake-Eyes. Firefly had tossed a grenade into his cabin, and though Snake-Eyes threw a big, heavy table atop it, the force of the explosion was enough to bounce him off a wall. Destro enters and seems to have the drop on the prone Joe, pointing his gun at him and telling him, "I think you will die like a dog..."

And hey, speaking of dogs, Destro is about to pull the trigger when he thinks he hears a dog, but it turns out to be "A wolf!!!" Snake-Eyes' semi-tame wolf friend pounces just in time, engaging Destro and keeping him too busy to pull the trigger.

•Eventually, Destro is able to beat back the wolf with his metal gauntlets, dismissing it with pretty much exactly what you might think Destro would say: "Get off me, you filthy cur!" 

(I guess I would have also accepted "mangy cur").

•The issue ends in highly dramatic fashion. By this point, Airborne and Firefly have shot each other, Spirit shot Fred, Spirit and Destro ran at one another shooting and then the cabin explodes. The children of 1985 would have to wait an entire month to find out who lived and who died. Luckily, in 2026, we have only to turn the page of Image Comics' G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero Compendium One...

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #32 (1985)

Art by Frank Springer and Andy Mushynsky

•What's this? A cover featuring Zartan and his Dreadnoks? That seems an odd choice, given where we left off last issue. 

•Everyone from last issue's battle on the mountain looks to be in pretty rough shape on this issue's opening splash page. Destro, at least, still seems conscious, and as for Snake-Eyes...? Well, the smoking ruin the background is his cabin, where we last saw him.

Into this tableau strides a person whose identity is disguised by their winter gear. The newcomer shoos away the "carrion birds," telling them, "These men have too much meanness in them for your delicate stomachs!" Noting that this figure speaks to vultures, the wounded Spirit asks him if he has "medicine powers."

Destro says nothing but aims a pair of wrist-rockets at the man's back and fires them from what is probably not more than 20 feet away. Without so much as looking over his shoulder, the stranger whirls his climbing axe in a horizontal vertical eight shape, deftly deflecting both rockets with a "SPAK!" and "KA-THAKK!" and they fly harmlessly off-panel. 

I'm not sure why they didn't explode either on contact with his axe or when they landed somewhere nearby, but I guess the stranger must have hit them just so.

The stranger pulls off his hood and goggles and introduces himself as The Soft Master. He said he already knows who the Cobra agents are, and tells Destro that Firefly's wounds are superficial, so that he can "help you carry this other villain off this mountain and leave me to my work."

He tosses an armful of guns after them, adding "And take these weapons with you. They are useless to me."

•Hama leaves the action on the mountain just long enough to check in on The Pit, where preparations are underway for a party, to introduce two new Joes to the comic, both of whom were 1984 releases in the toy line: Recondo, a jungle trooper with a jaunty hat and big handlebar mustache, and Blowtorch, a yellow and red clad flame thrower. Their introduction isn't terribly dramatic; they are riding in a Jeep driven by Clutch, dropping off ice cream and soda for the party. 

•Fred, the most badly wounded of the Cobra agents, is mad at Firefly and Destro for leaving rather than staying to fight, and Destro tells him, "I am not fool enough to fight a man who can move faster than I can see." It's not entirely clear, but it looks like the tail on a dialogue balloon or two attributes dialogue meant to be Fred's to Firefly on the page featuring the retreating Cobra.

•Back by the cabin, The Soft Master heals Spirit and begins extracting the two bullets in Airborne...apparently with his bare hands. The portly ninja gives a little speech that sounds a bit like "guns don't kill people, people kill people": 

Guns do not covet wealth, seek revenge or justify their actions with righteousness. Fear not the weapon, but the man who wields it.

Though middle-aged Caleb is a staunch proponent of gun control, an issue that never even occurred to eight-year-old Caleb in 1985, I guess I can buy what the Soft Master is selling here.

•I'm much less convinced by The Soft Masters reasoning for why he gave the Cobra guys their guns back:

These are desperate, crafty men. Who knows what kind of diabolical instrument of destruction they could improvise if they were driven to such extremes?  

... 

We would be battling the unknown. Give a man a weapon and he will use it. 

We know their weapons and therefore we know their limitations. 

Maybe...? Although I guess it's easier to dismiss the danger gun-wielding enemies might pose if you're fast enough to knock missiles out of the air. 

•In Springfield, Major Bludd and The Baroness are training Billy, who they had previously caught snooping in a Cobra office disguised as a circus bus, on how to assassinate Cobra Commander for them. They are using the old bad cop/sexy cop routine, apparently. 

I like that Billy's "Cobra Youth" costume looks pretty much exactly like what I would have been wearing in Cub Scouts at the time (save for Cobra sigils on it rather than images of a bear's head).

I also find myself wondering, would I have shot a fascistic terrorist in the face if a hot lady in glasses and black leather had asked me too and hugged me...?

•As for the cover boys, they only appear on three pages of this issue. They are speeding down the highway on their motorcycles, recapping their earlier adventure at McGuire Air Force Base, when the back of a semi trailer labeled "Arbco Moving" opens up in front of them. Inside, they find Cobra Commander in a sort of mobile office. He tells them he wants them to be his personal bodyguards, and when Zartan asks what happened to previous personal bodyguard Storm Shadow, the Commander says the ninja is locked up in inescapable Alcatraz and, besides, "he was getting too nosey...He might have found out something dangerous about his uncle!"

As the Commander says this, we see an exterior of the trailer, and Storm Shadow is clinging to its top, his ear to the roof so that he can hear what is being said within. Once the truck arrives in Springfield, Storm Shadow will reveal himself to the Commander, and explain how he made his escape from Alcatraz.

Later, the Commander tells Storm Shadow that he knows Bludd and The Baroness are plotting against him, and promises to reveal to him the name of the assassin who killed his uncle The Hard Master if the ninja is able to keep him safe through the big upcoming Cobra rally.

•Back on the mountain, The Soft Master finds that Snake-Eyes and his wolf had managed to jump into a secret trap door before the cabin exploded, and that they are both alive, but unconscious. Spirit goes off to find firewood, and has a brief conversation with a bald eagle, which alerts him to a blood trail...this belonging to Fred, who snuck away from Destro and Firefly while they were asleep. He's heading back to the cabin to finish off the wounded Joes, Soft Master or no Soft Master.

As noted previously, on the cartoon, Spirit had a pet bald eagle named Freedom. I wonder, is this meant to be Freedom? Will Spirit and this eagle meet up again and become friends? Or is this just Hama kinda sorta working Freedom into the comic without actually committing to Spirit having an eagle partner with him all the time?

•Destro and Firefly, who have come back up the mountain to retrieve Fred, think they've gotten the drop on Spirit, who seems completely nonplussed by their presence, and is in the process of walking slowly backwards towards them. Why? Because there is a giant fucking bear in front of him. The bad guys didn't see the giatn fucking bear though, and they have woken it up.

Take a moment to look at that bear. Note that it not only dwarfs the humans in the panel, but that they are in the foreground and it in the background. That is one huge bear. 

•The bear trees the trio, and Firefly is about to drop a purse full of plastic explosives on it when Spirit intervenes, noting that the explosion would also knock down the tree they are in ("For someone called the 'Firefly' you're not very bright," Spirit scolds him; sick burn, Spirit!)

He grabs the purse, drops it around the bear's neck, and then jumps to the ground himself, taking off at a run. His plan is to have the bear give chase to him, and get blown up as it does so, safely away from the base of the tree.

The bear doesn't cooperate, though, and starts to climb the tree. The result? The bear is apparently vaporized in the explosion, while the tree snaps at the trunk, topples off a cliff then plunges into a river below, with Destro and Firefly still clinging to it.

•That "AAAIIIIEEEEEEE" doesn't seem all that dignified for such hard, dangerous men as Firefly and Destro, but who am I to judge...? It's not like I've ever clung to a tree that has been blown off a cliff by explosives before...

•On the penultimate page of the issue comes the moment I have been waiting for since I started reading the series a few months ago: The introduction of my favorite G.I. Joe member, and an early crush of mine, Lady Jaye (Although her fellow new Joe, Ripcord, calls her "Lady J" here).

I can't really explain exactly why eight-year-old Caleb developed a crush on this particular cartoon character rather than the equally shapely Scarlett, Cover Girl or The Baroness. (I did find Zarana, who hasn't yet been introduced into the comics, attractive as a kid too, though.)

It might have been he short hair, which I've always liked...although maybe the cartoon is the reason I like women with short hair...? 

It might be that while she didn't wear the tight-fitting costumes that Scarlett and The Baroness did, her shirt somehow seemed sexier to me than, say, The Baroness fetish gear-esque black leather and corset get-up. On the cartoon, she didn't wear a shirt under it, and she didn't have it buttoned or zipped all the way up all the time, so there was always a little triangle of bare flesh between the base of her neck and her chest. I don't think they ever showed much in the way of cleavage on the cartoon, but that particular costuming choice at least alluded to the possibility of cleavage, I guess. (The image of her on her "file card", the illustrated part of the packaging the figures came in, had her in a shirt with a zipper and there it was pulled down enough to reveal some rather significant cleavage for a children's toy.)

It might have simply been the fact that her voice was somehow more appealing than that of the other female characters on the show too, I guess.

By the way, as an adult I stumbled across Matt Baker's character, Canteen Kate. Is it just me, or does Lady Jaye seem inspired by the character...?

Not so much the Lady Jaye action figure, but certainly the cartoon character...and, to a lesser extent, the comic book character. 

•Anyway, Lady Jaye and Ripcord don't get as dramatic an entrance into the comic as some of the other Joes have in the past—a symptom, I imagine, of Hama having to introduce more and more new characters at a quicker clip as the comic tried to keep up with the toy line and cartoon—and they basically just walk into The Pit.

There, they are confronted by Grunt and Scarlet, the latter of whom seems particularly confrontational, so much so that Lady Jaye immediately sasses her and Scarlett responds with, "Why, you little--" And then Lady Jaye calls Scarlett "this tawdry redhead". And then, when Ripcord does finally show Grunt and Scarlett their orders, Lady Jaye seems to take some satisfaction in announcing that they they are the old-timers' replacements.

I thought it noteworthy that Scarlett and Lady Jaye have so much enmity toward one another right of the bat. 

If you recall, when Scarlett first met Cover Girl back in #16, the two women didn't exactly hit it off either. When Rock 'n Roll complimented Cover Girl's shooting, Scarlett immediately dismissed it, saying it's easier to hit targets that don't shoot back than it is to take out actual opponents. 

"Let's reserve our judgement 'til we see how she holds up in a real battle," Scarlett said. 

Cover Girl responded: "Better than your face has, Dearie..."

The women of the Joe team aren't exactly a sisterhood, I guess. 

Now I'm curious to see how Jinx, who will be the final female G.I. Joe to join the team (at least as far as I know), is received when she's finally introduced...

•Finally, Fred ends up dying on the mountaintop from a loss of blood and, as The Soft Master puts it, the loss of a will to live after he realizes how meaningless his vengeance would be. The final page of this issue shows a new Fred, who looks exactly like the old one, arriving at the home of the old Fred to replace him, to the surprise of old Fred's children. 

"You're not our daddy!" the little girl says when she gets close enough to the new Fred to realize something's not quite the same about him. He creepily responds, "I am now."

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #33 (1985)

Art by Frank Springe and Andy Mushynsky

•This issue focuses on two parallel celebrations of sort (And, indeed, the title of the story is "Celebration!"). The Joes are celebrating the grand opening of the new Pit (as well as a surprise they don't yet know about), with General "Iron Butt" Austin in attendance and, in Springfield, Cobra is having a huge rally.

•Snake-Eyes is a real weirdo. 

•Although Airborne mentions that Spirit is asleep, when he shakes the blankets where he things the big guy is, he finds out that Spirit has actually snuck out, leaving his bedroll to make it seem like he was sleeping there. He's actually at a nearby mall on crutches, with Blowtorch and Ripcord. What's he doing there? He wants to visit the florist to look for some plants he can use as medicine to help him heal ("It's not that Spirit mistrusts modern medicine, he just feels that there are some things that the old ways do better," Ripcord tells Blowtorch.)

•At the mall, Spirit notices a man who looks awfully familiar to him and confronts him. This is the "new" Fred Broca who has replaced the old one who died on the mountain. Spirit obviously recognizes him, as he looks exactly like his predecessor, but this Fred doesn't know Spirit. Luckily for him, New Fred's wife and kids know what to do when they see a G.I. Joe agent, and Spirit gets taken down in the space of a panel. 

•How's this for drama? Destro catches The Baroness on her way back from a final coaching-Billy-on-how-to-assassinate-Cobra Commander session and scolds her for her betrayal. Then when she asks what he's ever done to demonstrate his trust in her, he dramatically unmasks in a series of silent panels.

So, what does Destro's true face look like...? Well, apparently, it's something, as the mere sight of it is enough to make The Baroness faint.  Is his face horribly damaged like Snake-Eyes' is...? Is he just so handsome that she immediately swooned into unconsciousness...? Or was she so overcome with emotion at the fact that he showed her his face at all that she passed out...? There's no one way of knowing. 

•Speaking of dramatic, while Destro seems like he's going to let The Baroness and Major Bludd's assassination plot unfold so as not to endanger The Baroness, he notices that Billy seems to be the assassin, and he apparently recognizes Billy and knows something about him that we readers are not yet privy to. 

Destro rushes the stage and manages to stop Billy from shooting Cobra Commander and stop Storm-Shadow from cutting Billy down. Why? Well, he drops a bombshell: Cobra Commander is apparently Billy's father!

•At The Pit, General Austin makes an announcement. All of the original Joes are being promoted...and given desk jobs as the administration arm of the team. All of them except Snake-Eyes, who Austin says will "remain operational"...presumably because he is the coolest and most popular of the Joe team, and would be missed in a way that, say, Grunt or Steeler would not be. 

I imagine if this scene was a way to write off some of the original Joes, who we've been seeing less and less of as new characters keep being introduced. Interestingly, despite what Austin says, we'll still see Scarlet and Stalker going out on missions in the future.

•Finally, regarding the mall plotline, when Fred and family retreat to the parking lot, they notice an army Jeep and Mrs. Broca blows it up with a grenade. In order to give chase, the Joes commandeer a van from Bongo. There's an action movie-esque chase scene, complete with one character jumping from speeding vehicle to speeding vehicle, but ultimately the Broca family gets away. Later, Ripcord returns the van to Bongo and makes an unexpected discovery: Bongo is a girl!

Perhaps surprisingly, Bongo will play a sizable role in a future storyline, but that's for a future post.

Bookshelf #40

This week's bookshelf is a real hodgepodge, with, as far as I can now discern, no real orgainizing principle. These books seem to be almost all small press and/or self-published (with a few prominent exceptions), and to be of such a size that they fit better on this shelf than they might have on other shelves. A few seem to be pretty out-of-place though, like the couple of manga volumes. 

The publisher's represented include AdHouse, Drawn & Quarterly, NBM, Pantheon, Sparkplug, Tokyopop, Viper Comics, Viz. 

Creators include Lamar Abrams, Chynna Clugston, Josh Howard, K. Thor Jensen, Hope Larson, Junko Mizuno, Scott Morse, Paul Pope and Joey Weiser. 

The most recognizable books here though are a trio from the late Marjane Satrapi (the two volumes of Persepolis, although now I think you're more likely to find them as a single volume, and Chicken with Plums) and the two volumes of Art Spiegelman's Maus (Which I would guess is also more commonly published as a single volume at this point).  Note the sun damage to the two volumes of the latter, how the red of the spines is faded at the top. 

There's a lot of interesting books in here—the collected edition of Bone colorist Steve Hamaker's fun Fish N Chips buddy cop comic, L.Neil Smith and company's alternate history/libertarian fantasy Roswell, Texas, manga guide to sex The Manga Sutra, those must-read AdHouse Project... anthologies full of some of your favorite cartoonists—and if I were independently wealthy (that is, I didn't have to go to work ever) I would reread and write my way through this shelf, posting a review a day on the blog like I was able to do in the good old days.

Alas, I need health insurance, food and shelter...

After some dithering, I finally read the deeply weird Blue Lock Vol. 1.

Ever since I finished reading the last volume of Haikyu!!, I've been casting about for a replacement series of sorts. In part, I've been curious about how typical Haruichi Furudate's volleyball manga might be of sports manga. Like, is it a truly exceptional example of the genre, one that transcends interest in volleyball or sports in general? Do any other series offer such strong and compelling characters, and manage to be dramatic and suspenseful enough to suck a reader into caring about something a relatively trivial as a high school volleyball game?

Writer Muneyuki Kaneshirto and artist Yusuke Nomura's soccer manga looked like a good candidate. While the high school sport being played differs, it too is a popular comic originally published in a weekly shonen book, and it is apparently pretty popular. I see tankobon volumes of it coming though the library on a fairly regular basis, and it seems to have lasted quite a while, as I've seen numbers in the twenties on the spines (It looks like there have been 39 volumes released in Japan to date, and Kodanasha Comics just released volume 32 in the states last week). When I've flipped through them, the soccer action seems incredibly intense.  

But it's really the anime that sold me on finally giving the series a try.

Not the anime proper, but just the opening, which you can see here. It looks ridiculously over-the-top, with boys and soccer balls raining from the sky at one point, the ground similarly littered with fallen soccer players at another and the hero Yoichi Isagi posing atop a veritable mountain of players in one of the many striking images in the relatively short sequence.

And then there's an image that seals the deal, as there seems to be a super-villain of some sort involved...? At the very least, a thin man with opaque glasses and a big, thin, toothy grin appears on the screen, gesturing grandiosely with his arms. Can a soccer comic have a supervillain in it...? 

So, I finally gave in and reserved a copy of the first volume from the library. 

Blue Lock is...not what I thought it was. Nor is it what it looks like. 

Now, at this point, millions of readers all around the world know this, but I am writing this post for comics readers like myself, who know the comic exists and think merely "soccer manga," not for current Blue Lock readers. 

The first volume opens with a portentous three-panel, three-page, full-color section about the uniqueness of a particular soccer position, that of the striker:

Within the world... ...of soccer...

You can train a player... ...to be a first-class goalie, defender, or mid-fielder. 

But strikers are entirety different...

A first-class striker can't be taught...

They naturally appear... ...wherever the game is the hottest!

Okay, I have no idea what that means, exactly, but it sounds cool, and that last line appears over a two-page spread featuring Isagi holding a soccer ball, surrounded by a bunch of determined, colorful-looking kids. 

From there, we visit a meeting of the Japan Football Union in the wake of the Japanese team's sixteenth round loss of the 2018 World Cup. New hire Anri Teieri, a strident young woman whose bust and butt seem to swell when she becomes angry (Is this the creators' way of saying that she is sexy when she's angry...?), lays into the men in the room, chastising their complacency, their "soccer is just business" attitude and their acceptance that the Japan will never win the World Cup. 

She has a plan. "I will produce... ...players who can lead this country to a World Cup victory!!" she shouts. She then dramatically slaps the monitor at the front of the room, upon which we see a headshot of the "supervillain" I glimpsed in the anime opening.

"Please observe!" she continues. "This is the indispensable coach who will help us destroy and remake Japanese soccer... ...Jinpachi Ego."

Next, we jump to the climax of a high school soccer game which will determine which of the two teams competing will go to nationals. Isagi has the ball and is driving towards the goal, with only the goalie left to stop him; if he makes this goal, it will tie up the 0-1 game and give his team a chance. If he misses, all is lost.

At the last moment, Isagi remembers that "Soccer is... ...a team sport played by eleven people...", and we hear one of his coaches call his motto from the sidelines: "'One for all, and all for one'!!" 

Isagi passes to a teammate, who takes the shot...and hits the post of the goal, thus failing to score. The other team gets the ball, and their star forward Ryosuke Kira drives all the way to the opposite goal and sinks a shot, winning the game and crushing Isagi's dreams of going to nationals. 

Okay, so far, so good, and pretty much what one might expect from a soccer manga.

But then things get weird. Arriving home after the game, Isagi finds a letter waiting for him. It's an invitation to join "a special player training program." He accepts and, arriving at the designated location with him, he finds Kira. They go in together, and find the room filled with other boys, all of whom seem to be forwards like them. In fact, there are 300 of them total.

And then things get weirder still. The lights go out, and a spotlight falls on thin, wiry Jinpachi Ego, dressed all in black with a soccer ball bolo tie, glasses and a pair of spectacles: 

I'll say this plainly. 

Only one thing is necessary for Japanese soccer to become the best in the world: 

The birth of a revolutionary striker. You 300 will be my subjects...

...in an experiment aimed at creating the world's best striker.

To this end, he has had the Football Union construct a pentagon-shaped facility he calls "Blue Lock." If the boys decide to join the program, they will abandon their homes and move into the facility together and begin his training regime. 

"Whoever survives this Blue Lock," he says, " And outlasts the other two hundred ninety-nine...the last remaining player... ...will become the world's best striker."

The assembled boys think he's mad, an assessment that come in part from the national philosophy of what soccer/football actually is. 

Ego explains: 

Just what is soccer? 

A team sport played together by eleven comrades...?

A band of brothers...?

Each relying on the others...?

Wrong. And that's why this country's game has always been weak. 

I'll tell you...soccer is...

...a sport in which you must score more points than your opponent.

Whoever scores the most points is the best. 

If you want to play at 'getting along,' then piss off. 

Ultimately, the passage concludes when the spidery Ego cajoles and convinces them that he can make one of them the greatest player in the world, the one who will score the final goal that will win Japan as World Cup, and the climax of his speech leaves Isagi shaking, with what looks like a cloud of gray energy or fire igniting in his eyes.

At the end, he and all 299 other candidates rush forward to join the program.

The rest of the volume is devoted to the boys in the compound, something of a prison, military installation and laboratory rolled into one, in which Isagi finds himself in "Room Z" with eleven other players. They wear weird, tight-fitting black uniforms that automatically rank them based on their abilities (Isagi is 299, which is why he is in room Z, with the others who are among the worst of the 300). 

Oh, and it is only at this point, after they are all already in Blue Lock, that Ego reveals that whoever is eliminated from the program "will forever lose the right to represent Japan." 

So, there is a real penalty to failure. The losers won't die, exactly, but they will lose their "soccer lives."

The first trial is a game of "tag," in which whoever is "it" has possession of a soccer ball, with which they have to hit one of their fellows...and eliminate them from Blue Lock (Which would then leave each room with 11 occupants, the same number of players on a soccer team). 

So Blue Lock is a sports manga...sort of. But the massive elimination, all vs. all set-up put me in mind of Battle Royale, too. There's an element of science fiction and of dystopian fantasy to the book as well.

By the end of the first trial (and the first volume), we see that Isagi is willing to become ruthless and cutthroat in the way Ego wants them all to be, as, after showing mercy to a rival at one point, another of his new roommates puts him in a position in which he must act without thinking about it, and the action he takes is apparently one born of pure survival instinct...or, perhaps, his true self...?

The premise, then, seems to be watching what happens to a regular, decent kid in this situation, and how he deals with the immense pressure to become a sort of supremely selfish psychopath in pursuit of becoming a soccer star. And with 299 other boys in the same position, there's plenty of room for Kaneshiro and Nomura to fill the cast with interesting characters, a few of whom we meet in this volume.

It's honestly a pretty crazy premise for a book, and it's easy to see how intensely dramatic and suspenseful it can be. It's a sports manga with an angle that makes it far more than a sports manga. 

I'm not sure it's for me. While I am curious about how it ultimately ends, and if Isagi will make what seems like a Faustian bargain in pursuit of being the best (and if the creators will settle the conflict between Ego's vision of the game and what is presented at the more standard vision of soccer in Japan), it doesn't seem like a particularly fun comic.

The setting made me feel a little uncomfortable and claustrophobic, and the set-up seems to be one that will accentuate the nastiness of the characters. Also, at this point, there wasn't much in the way of soccer. I know that will change—based on that anime opening, it looks like each room's team will play against one another, as you can see letters on the characters' jerseys—but the fact that they are playing in the context of the Blue Lock program rather than for their schools seems somehow less interesting to me.

Anyway, Blue Lock has great art, great action and a totally insane premise, so it's not really a surprise that the book is as popular as it is. 

My seven favorite parts of Ngozi Ukazu's Orion

"Hmm, is the world ready for a dreamy Orion....?" 

That was my first thought when I saw the cover of Orion, the new original graphic novel from Ngozi Ukazu, the cartoonist responsible for Check, Please!, Flip (reviewed in this column) and, most relevantly, Barda, the last of which is something of a prequel to this work, as its events kick off those here. 

Of course, when Jack Kirby created Orion, who originally appeared in 1971's New Gods #1, his looks were integral to the character, as he had a handsome face provided by the fantastical technology of the mother box, as well as a truer, bestial face that he tried to keep hidden from others, a state of affairs reflective of the dual nature of the hero Kirbys' multi-book, mythology-inspired "Fourth World" saga. 

But while Kirby is an almost unparalleled artist in the history of American comic books, I don't think drawing sexy characters was necessarily his strength. When he drew a handsome man or a beautiful woman, particularly by that point in his career, they tended to look more peculiar than like they possessed standard good looks (Particularly, I think when read today; like, if you read the recent-ish DC Finest: The Demon: The Birth of the Demon, collecting Kirby comics from the early seventies, it's clear that Jason Blood and Glenda Mark are meant to be good-looking young people, and you can see it in their smoother faces with less exaggerated features than that of characters like, say, Harry Matthews, but they would stand out as odd is stood side by side with other DC heroes and their love interests of the time). Kirby's Orion, at his most handsome, was more rugged than dreamy.

But Ukazu's, as seen on that cover? That is the most handsome I've ever seen Orion. He looks young and sexy in a way Kirby's or John Byrne's or Walt Simonson's Orion's never really did, and I like the longer, seventies-style hair, as if Ukazu was drawing him in the style of handsome young man from the years in which he first appeared in comics.

In fact, while I didn't see it so much in this particular image, Ukazu's Orion reminded me quite a bit of a young, original trilogy era Mark Hamill, in his hair and in his face (if not as much in Orion's bigger, more muscular build). That is, of course, wholly appropriate, given that Hamill played the quintessential space fantasy hero of the seventies...and doubly so in that Hamill's Luke Skywalker was so inspired by Kirby's Orion, particularly in his conflict with his evil father. 

But enough about the cover image. How is Ukazu's Orion? It's good. I reviewed it at Good Comics for Kids last week, and I found it a satisfying portrait of the character, who is at the very heart of Kirby's Fourth World story in a way that Big Barda wasn't. 

While Ukauzu works in the space opera mold of Kirby's original comics here, there were also some really fun and a few funny moments. My favorite are below...but I would encourage you to read Orion prior to reading the rest of this post, so that you enjoy these moments in their original and proper context before reading my excited babbling about them (Like Godzilla's The Odyssey, I see Orion is also available on Hoopla, so you can read it online for free immediately, provided your library has Hoopla, and you have a library card). 

1.) Insecure Orion. Do you think this is the New Genesis version of "Would you still love me if I was a worm?" 

I should probably note that the love between Orion and Lightray here is entirely brotherly...although it is so strong and so affectionate, and neither of them have a female love interest in this book, so I would not be at all surprised if some young readers find themselves reading more into their relationship here.

2.) Orion meets the Female Furies. Lashina seems struck with both Orion's looks ("Never put that silly helmet back on, Orion. You're a delicious sight without it!" she says when she first meets him) and his political future on Apokolips given his heritage. And so, when she meets him, she approaches him, sits on his lap and rather PG-13-ishly comes on to him.

You can see his response in the panel above. I like how perfectly blase Ukazu draws him while he quite forcefully pushes Lashina off of him, as well as the look on her face. 

In the very next panel we see her rubbing her butt, while squiggly pain lines radiate from it, and Orion asks about Big Barda, to Lashina's disappointment. (Barda has escaped Apokolips for Earth off panel somewhere between the end of Ukazu's Barda and this point in Orion).

3.) Not quite Dredd level, but close! Unfortunately, Ukazu did not seem to be writing for quotability, or meme-ability, as you can see in this sequence. Throughout the book, Orion and his half-brother Kalibak fight repeatedly. In this, their second battle, Kalibak roars a bit about the psychology behind his enmity, noting that Darkseid doesn't really "see" him because of his focus on Orion, and returns to the motif again, saying "Then let all Apokalips see my brother's defeat at my hand!"

Orion comes up with a nice retort—"See my fists." But Ukazu inserts a wordless panel between those in which the two share dialogue, one in which she shows us Kalibak throwing Orion's astro-harness into a nearby firepit, and then she further has Orion make an aside about how big Kalibak is before his line about the fists.

Thus, though it's in the neighborhood, we don't get a classic moment like that of the "GAZE INTO THE FACE OF FEAR!"/"GAZE INTO THE FIST OF DREDD!" sequence that the comics Internet (so rightly) loves. 

4.) Was Orion cute when he was a baby? No, no he was not. 

5.) Barda is awesome in this book too. Things come to a head when Orion goes to Earth looking for his pact brother, the son of Highfather who was traded to Darkseid as a baby in exchange for him. As you know, this is Scott Free. This leads to a fun sequence where we see Scott and Barda grocery shopping on Earth, only for a pair of boom tubes to open up in rapid succession. Orion and a parademon tumble out of one, and Lightray emerges from the other. Naturally, Barda leaps into action when her old enemy suddenly appears ("Why did you clobber that guy?" Scott asks after she punches Orion across the store, "And how did he survive one of your punches?").

There's obviously a lot of confusion and some misunderstandings in the scene, but I love Barda's last line in that panel above, which actually made me laugh out loud.

Though her name and image aren't' on the cover of this one, and her panel time rather limited, it's well worth noting that Ukazu's Orion is also a pretty great Barda comic. 

The entire Earth sequence, in which Orion and Lightray encounter ways familiar to us but strange to them, is a lot of fun, and reminded me of the best parts of the original Thor movie, where the hero of another old Jack Kirby mythology-inspired comics saga was confronted the mundane world of Earth (and its breakfast foods).

6.) I do so love a comic book catchphrase. Look, I'm only human. I get excited every time Orion says some version of "I have heard the word — —and it is battle!"

The last time I did so was when rereading the John Ostrander-written Armageddon: Inferno a few months back, and Walt Simonson drew Orion appearing among other heroes in dinosaur times, spouting a version of that line.

By the way, this splash page, which kicks off the book's fifth and final chapter, is probably the Kirby-est of any image in the book. 

7.) Orion does not fight by Queensberry rules. This was the second time I laughed out loud. I love that Ukazu managed to depict Orion's ferocity in battle while simultaneously making it funny, and Scott's reaction to the sight of Orion biting an opponent. Why use the astro-force when you can just use your teeth...?

Bookshelf #39

This week's bookshelf is a manga shelf, and it's dominated by two creators, one of whom is among the most influential Japanese artists to ever put pen to paper. 

That is, of course, the late Akira Toriyama. On the far left we have four volumes of his Dragon Ball, volumes 13-16. Why does my collection start with the 13th volume...? Good question! If I had to guess without a more thorough investigation, I would guess that I had read the earlier parts of the series via single issues, when Viz was still publishing some manga series in floppy, stapled comic book format on a monthly basis (Note how much lighter volumes 15 and 16 are compared to volumes 13 and 14; I fear that the sun must shine through the blinds in that room in just such a way to land directly on those two volumes). 

After that, we have ten tankobon volumes of Dragon Ball imported from Japan, which I bought at my first Mid-Ohio Comic Con in 2000. I of course could not read them at all, but I thought they looked neat...and I especially liked the connecting images on the spines. I believe the comics within had yet to be published in English at that point, and while it was a long time ago, I want to say that part of the series had yet to arrive in the U.S. in anime form yet either. So, they were fascinating to look at, and I still appreciate them as objects. I assume they were relatively cheap since I bought so many of them. 

Then we have a few collections of Toriyama's Dr. Slump, his breakout work that preceded Dragon Ball, and Cowa!, a super-fun one-volume comic about some monster kids. 

Moving along the shelf, we then get to the work of Kiyohiko Azuma. First, there's his Azumanga Daioh, a slice-of-life comedy series about a half-dozen or so schoolgirls, the stories presented in the four-panel comic strip format. And then we have his later and better-known work, Yotsuba&!, a book I can't speak highly enough of. Here I've shelved the first nine volumes, while the later volumes are on another shelf we've already looked at in a different room on a different floor of my house. Here you can see how the design of the spines changed when the book changed hands from ADV to Yen Press. 

Finally, there's a trio of books from neither Toriyama nor Azuma. First is the CLAMP collective's Shirahime Syo, short stories set in the snow and featuring the legendary Snow Princess, and two volumes of Jae Sung Park and Sung Jae Park's romantic comedy Couple...which is actually Korean rather than Japanese, so is technically manhwa rather than manga. It looks like it only ran four volumes, so I guess I read the first half of the series before losing track of it. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Pt. 6

It's time once again to revisit Larry Hama and company's original 1982-1994 Marvel Comics series, G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero (via Image Comics' 2024 G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero Compendium Vol. 1). Today we we'll be looking at issues #28-30. (Only 20 more issues to go...! In this volume. And then 105 more issues after that until the end of the series.)

As per usual, I am pulling the covers posted below from the Grand Comics Database, rather than from the collection itself, which is why they still say "Marvel" on them. And Larry Hama wrote all of these, which is why I'm not listing his writer credit on each. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #28 (1984)

Art by Marie Severin and Andy Mushynsky

•If the last couple of issues, which featured the two-part origin of Snake Eyes, were too heavy on backstory for you, Hama makes up for it with this issue, which is pretty much all fighting...plus a little comedy relief, with even some of those comedy relief characters involving themselves in the fighting.

So, the Joe team that was inserted into the swamp has retreated via rubber raft back to the G.I. Jane (see the splash page atop the post), from which a heavier team will launch to attack the Cobra base there. Zartan and his Dreadnoks, all of whom are piloting little Chameleon swamp skiers, have tracked the Joes to the boat, and assuming that a strike force will be on the way, warn Cobra Commander and then split: "My friends and I are departing for parts unknown...My lair is yours--Just leave the keys under the mat." 

Destro, The Baroness and Wild Weasel all climb into Rattlers stashed nearby, while, in Zartan's HQ, Cobra Commander and Firefly discover a hidden panel which controls a secret army of Cobra robot troopers and remote-controlled HISS ("High Speed Sentry") tanks. (The robots look like regular Cobra troopers, albeit with metal faces and blinking antennas atop their heads; these are apparently a comic book predecessor to the later B.A.T.s, or "Battle Android Troopers", black and yellow androids introduced into the toy line and the cartoon in 1986.)

The Joe force consists of the WHALE (The toy package reads "Warrior Hovering Assault Launch Envoy", but an editorial box here says that acronym stands for "Water-borne Hovercraft Assault Landing Experimental), piloted by Cutter and carrying Deep-Six, Duke and Roadblock (the last two of whom have just arrived off the coast of Florida from Alcatraz); a Dragonfly helicopter piloted by Wild Bill, with Doc riding shotgun; and a tank crewed by Steeler, Clutch, Braker and another Joe in green who I don't think gets named in the issue.

Everybody fights. 

•As for the comedy relief, there's a Florida sheriff and his deputy, R.L., who see the Joe tank arrive suddenly and dramatically, with Steeler driving right through the wall of a box car on the moving train that was delivering it to Florida. It scrapes and damages the sheriff's vehicle, after which the lawmen give chase, demanding the tank pull over, which the Joes refuse to do ("This here is a tank, if you haven't noticed," one of the Joes tells the sheriff when he splutters a threat over his loudspeaker). When they meet up with the robot Cobra force, the sheriff joins the fray, blasting robot soldiers with his shotgun while hanging out of the passenger side window of their vehicle.

"Great jumpin' poliwogs!" the sheriff exclaims as the robots and HISS pour out of the swamp. "We done run into a nest o' armed subversive anarchists or some-such!!!" 

He soon corrects himself as he notices the "soldiers" being blown into various metal pieces. "Them's ain't anarchists! Them's robots!!!" 

The Florida lawmen finally leave the battle on foot, when Wild Weasel sends a missile at their car.

•The other bit of comedy relief involves a couple who look like that from Grant Wood's "American Gothic" painting, who are struggling with the TV set on their porch when the WHALE streaks by. They do not get involved in the fight, though.

•There are two bits of real badassery in this battle, both of which you can see in the panels above.  Destro strafes the WHALE in one pass, destroying Roadblock's gun, wounding Deep-Six and damaging his gun so badly that he can't elevate it to find Destro's range as he comes back for another pass.

Roadblock, using just brute strength, elevates the gun himself ("Won't and can't are two words I don't believe in" he tells Deep-Six and, later, when Duke congratulates him, Roadblock hooks a thumb in Deep-Six's direction, saying "I just stood there, Duke. He pulled the trigger.")

Meanwhile, Destro takes a bullet right in the kisser, and reacts as if he had simply been stung by a bee.

•In the end, Wild Weasel picks up Cobra Commander in his Rattler to fly him to safety...the two-man plane not having enough room to take Firefly with them ("But you're a resourceful lad," the Commander tells him, "I'm sure you'll do just fine." Then, he says to himself once in the air, "Ah, yes...I must remember to re-stock my supply of lackeys when I get back to Springfield..."). A pissed-off Firefly stomps through the swamp, swearing vengeance, when he runs into Destro, who was also left behind after his Rattler was shot down.

As for the Joes, their WHALE is badly damaged, and several of them are wounded, particularly Deep-Six. While no one died, this battle does seem to have had a greater cost than some of the others in this series. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #29 (1984)

Art by Frank Springer and Andy Mushynsky

•There's an awful lot going on in this issue. In the aftermath of the previous issue's battle, the Joes are repairing the badly damaged WHALE. Destro and Firefly have to make it out of the swamp and back to Springfield by themselves, which means getting past the Joes. And Cobra Commander unveils a new, long-term plan to subvert American democracy which seems...familiar.

•While the Joes work on the WHALE at a rather public dock in Ehrlinger's Cove, the locals jeer at the "The little sojer boys" who "done bwoke their wubber waft." In the opening splash page featuring the WHALE Springer draws a "G.I. Joe" logo on its side. I thought the team was top secret? Should they really put their logo on their vehicles? Heck, should they even have a logo? 

•Another demonstration of just how strong Roadblock is. Three grown men hang on a big piece of metal armor he's toting around just to mess with him, and he doesn't even notice the extra weight. 

•As soon as he arrives back in Springfield, Cobra Commander goes directly from Wild Weasel's Rattler to deliver a speech, the Nazi-ish, fascist trappings of which puts Donald Trump's most dictator-coded moves to date to shame. There's massive dais with the Cobra logo on it, huge torches and banners everywhere (Of course, if this was Trump, those banners would have his face on them, rather than a logo of some kind; unlike Cobra Commander, the real-world villain doesn't even pretend to be part of some larger group or movement beyond himself).

•The gaslighting claiming military victory after an engagement that was anything but sounds familiar to what I see on the news every day now regarding the Iran war, too: "Do not let false rumors of our military mishaps alarm you! Cobra is winning!"

•I think it worth lingering on the Commander's speech a bit here, as I find it interesting to see what Hama and Marvel circa 1984 thought an evil, anti-American organization might believe, express and strive for. 

I think it especially so because, unlike real-world terrorist organizations (or even most fictional ones), Cobra isn't formed around a particular interpretation of a religious faith or a clear animating political objective; instead, they just seem to be anti-American, and, as the opening of the cartoon always says, "determined to rule the world." (And, despite how fascistic they style of Cobra might be, they don't seem to be organized around a strong man; their leader is not only so mysterious nobody knows his basic biography or even real name or face, but those that do know him best seem to be constantly trying to betray him.)  

So, here's more of his speech:

When the citizenry loll back on their fat haunches and hire the poor minorities to do their dirty work, we win!

When love of money eclipse moral conviction, we win!

When good men see the ascension of evil and do nothing, we win!

So, um, 42 years later, is Cobra still winning...? 

•Cobra Commander goes on to summarize some successes, a series of schemes which range from the entirely plausible ("Our nationwide 'Greed Is Good For You' seminars are filled to capacity") to the semi-silly ("Our media department has succeeded in selling ten more mindless sitcoms to the networks to further lower the intelligence of America!"...The Commander would have loved reality TV, social media, YouTube and TikTok...!).

He then goes on to introduce a new plot, involving a handsome, young, upwardly mobile businessman in a suit, a member of Cobra's Crimson Guard. The example the Commander parades here is wearing a very off-model costume, but this comports almost exactly with my memories of the file card that came with the Crimson Guard action figure, which was one of the relatively few G.I. Joe figures I had as a child, which described them as elite soldiers infiltrating the professional class of America while working in secret to further the aims of Cobra.  

The Commander describes him as, "On the surface, an upstanding pillar of the community...a loving husband. A fair and compassionate father-- --The last person to be suspected of being a deep-cover Cobra agent!!"

He goes on: "He will worm his way into the confidences of the mighty and work his way upward in the political machine to the senate and...dare we hope--higher?"

Now, a deep-cover agent being "the last person to be suspected" of being one is pretty de rigueur for 

spies of all sorts. As a little kid reading the file card, and just now again as an adult, this sounded somewhat Red Scare inspired, the idea that prominent people throughout American society were actually agents of our communist enemies. And certainly, the Commander's mention of one potentially achieving a position higher than a senator one day calls to mind elements of The Manchuria Candidate. 

Reading this in 2026, I also thought about the religious right's decades-long effort to fill the judiciary with anti-abortion judges, a plot so successful that, in 2022, they finally had enough such judges on the Supreme Court itself that they were able to overturn Roe v. Wade. 

There's something to be said for the long game, for bad guys posing as pillars of society, for worming one's way into the confidences of the might and working one's way upward in the political machine, huh? 

The Crimson Guard action figure would be released in 1985, the year the first season of the cartoon show debuted, in which the Guard also appeared. That this is some months earlier, that might help explain why the costume this Guardsman is wearing looks so off; perhaps the design wasn't yet finalized...?

The toy and cartoon design are pretty great though, and remains one of my favorite visuals from the franchise.

•As the Joes finish fixing up the WHALE (and Destro and Firefly sneak up on them, intent on stealing it as a getaway vehicle), Cutter drops a tool into a toolbox, wipes his brow and says to himself, "Me for a frosty bottle of Yo-Jo Kola!"

This is the first appearance of the Joe's favorite brand of soda, which inexplicably has their cartoon battle cry in its name. It will be mentioned again and again in the comic and cartoon, although it's usually spelled cola-with-a-C.

I am curious of its origins, if Hama's first draft of a script mentioned a more natural bottled beverage, sometimes described as "frosty", for a grown man to desire after a hard day's work. You know, a beer. 

But this being a comic book marketed to children, the remit of which was specifically to tell toys to those children, perhaps the editors at Marvel balked at the mention of an alcoholic beverage, and thus we have Cutter craving a soda pop in this panel...? (Later in the series, we'll see the Dreadnoks repeatedly referring to grape soada and, in a few issues hence, Doc offers Deep-Six a cup of hot chocolate rather than coffee, and I thought the same thing; especially since Hama has Deep-Six reply that he never touches the stuff.)

•Destro jumps Cutter, who tries to fight him off hand-to-hand, causing the incredulous, metal-faced Destro to respond, "Did you think you could hurt me by punching me? In the face?" 

I love that he always takes every opportunity to point out that his mask isn't just metal, but "polished berylium steel." 

(I think this came up previously, but spellcheck says it's "beryllium", with two L's, while the comic says "berylium" with one L. Of course, the comic seems unable to decide whether there's a hyphen in Snake Eyes' name or not, so maybe its spelling isn't to be trusted...)

•Though beat up pretty badly ("Feels like I been stopping bowling balls with my face..."), Cutter isn't about to let Destro make off with his WHALE, which leads to a rather wild chase, complete with a few scenes of comedy relief (including some more appearances by our friends the sheriff and Deputy R.L.). While Duke and Wild Bill chase the WHALE in the Dragonfly, Cutter makes it back to the G.I. Jane and joins the chase, which means driving it overland on its hydrofoils until those fall off and he fortuitously lands in a channel. 

•I'm a big fan of this panel. See Trip-Wire there? That would be me on, like, every G.I. Joe mission.

•In the end, Destro uses his wrist rockets to shoot down the Dragonfly, forcing Wild Bill to make a seemingly impossible landing aboard the Jane in a flaming helicopter. While the Joes are distracted, Firefly has an audacious escape plan: He has Destro lash the WHALE's wheel, and then he and Destro hide away in the barrel-sized containers of emptied depth launchers. When the Jane is finally able to suck up the WHALE through its open hull doors, the Joes find neither enemy aboard....just an impossible to defuse bomb that Firefly left behind for them.

•Trip-Wire prepares to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the others, but Roadblock isn't having it: 

He kicks Trip-Wire off the explosive device, picks it up, and then throws it to a duct leading to a funnel on deck, where it explodes harmlessly in the open air. A few panels later, Roadblock compliments Trip-Wire's show of bravery here but also gives him a lecture: "Uncle Sam paid megabucks to train you to fight with a team. A dead hero don't do his buddies no good, and medals ain't no shinier when they're posthumous."

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #30 (1984)

Art by Frank Springer and Andy Mushysnsky and Pat Redding

•When Zartan and his Dreadnoks think they recognize the Dragonfly from the battle in the Florida swamp landing at McGuire Aire Force Base in New Jersey—which, coincidentally, is where they retreated to—Zartan does some incognito investigation and, seeing some Joes there, reports to Cobra Commander. He's convinced the Joe base is hidden there and prepares Coba for a full-scale attack. 

•Meanwhile, on Staten Island, we see one of the Crimson Guards and his fake family have just bought a new house near the Chaplain's Assistant's School at Fort Wadsworth, AKA right next to the secret location of the actual Joe base, The Pit.

"Fred Broca" doesn't seem to be all that great at staying undercover, though. Note his last name is just "Cobra" spelled backwards, and the Cobra hood ornament on his car above. A moving truck marked "Arbco Moving & Storage" (yes, an anagram of "Cobra") delivers boxes to the family's new house, and these undercover Cobra agents will spend the rest of the issue setting up their highly advanced spy equipment. If G.I. Joe is based in the area—and they are!—then they are sure to detect them. 

Fortunately for the Joes, just as Fred is about to turn the equipment on, he gets a phone call telling him to return to Springfield, as the Commander thinks he's found the Joes' base. Fred and his wife react by smashing their equipment in frustration. 

•Speaking of Arbco, Cobra is using a line of Arbco Brothers Circus trucks to transport their weaponry to the area for an attack. Billy, the little boy from Springfield we met way back in G.I. Joe #10, has stowed away on one and is snooping when he's discovered by The Baroness and Major Bludd. 

"Perhaps he resents Cobra enough to join our cause!" The Baroness says. 

This will prove important later. 

•The rest of the issue involves a sizable Joes vs. Cobra battle. The Dreadnoks were charged with doing recon at the airfield base and then cutting a hole in the fence to allow Cobra's forces to sneak in. Instead, they use their weird weapons to start chopping up planes (see Mike Zeck's cover above), inadvertently causing an explosion and alerting the base (and the Joes) of their presence.

Cobra Commander leads an attack with HISS tanks and FANG (Fully Armed Negator Gyrocopter) helicopters, and the Joes engage and ultimately repel them.