Rereading Chistopher Moeller's JLA: A League of One and "JLA: Cold Steel" via the new JLA: A League of One: The Deluxe Edition

I used to think about the Justice League a lot in the late nineties and early '00s, and I remember at one point thinking that a good qualification for whether or not a hero belonged on the team at the time was if they would conceivably be able to defeat all of the other members of the line-up.

That probably sounds like a pretty dumb criteria—like, if Martian Manhunter is able to defeat Superman, would Superman be able to defeat Martian Manhunter?—but I was just thinking conceivably, not that, say, J'onn could take Superman every single time if they fought repeatedly. 

Of the "Big Seven" in 1997's JLA #1, I think that criteria holds true, for the most part...I guess Aquaman is the only character I can't see reasonably beating any and all of his peers one-on-one, although he did drive away an early version of the League featuring Wonder Woman and J'onn in 1996's Aquaman #16.

This many decades later, I'm afraid that I can't necessarily think of in-comics examples of stories in which a particular Leaguer had to, for some reason or another, take on the rest of their teammates, but Christopher Moeller's 2000 fully painted JLA: A League of One is the story in which Wonder Woman has to take on and takedown the other six founders of the JLA. 

The "One" referred to in the title is, of course, Wonder Woman, and, if you're wondering why she's on the cover by herself, well, all the boys are on the other half of that image, as you can see in this lovely, text-free image from the JLA: A League of One: The Deluxe Edition, which pairs the title story with one published in 2005-2006 miniseries JLA Classified: Cold Steel. 

Moeller's story opens in 1348, as the world's last dragon is being driven back to her underground lair by the warriors of the day, who engage in furious battle with her humanoid dragon servants while she hides. The humans ultimately seal the lair's cave entrance, and the problem of dragons is solved once and for all...or, at least, for the next 652 years.

In the present, we get a bit of day-in-the-life of the JLA, as J'onn, Wonder Woman and Superman do some Justice League business, and then, perhaps surprisingly, we meet a pair of gnomes in Switzerland: These are small, spindly, mostly naked little guys with bald heads, no beards and pointed ears. We get a little bit about a day in their life too, and then the pair, Emrick and Elmen, return to find something extraordinary in the history of their people has happened: Behind a set of gigantic doors deep underground, the gnomes have discovered the slumbering Drakul Karfang Drakonis Serpente, the last dragon from the opening scene. 

She is shown cradling a large crystal in her arms. This is her heart, as, we are told, dragons, like unkillable characters in some folklore, hide their hearts outside of their bodies so that their enemies can't hurt it and thus kill them. The gnomes, who used to serve dragons in their olden, glory days, plan on waking her up to lead them to greatness once again.

Meanwhile, we spend some time with Wonder Woman at home on Themyscria, where she hangs out with a wood nymph named Althea and nereid named Zoe. Under Moeller's brush, these characters look like photorealistic little girls, save for the fact that the former is green and the latter blue (Moeller's Diana, I think, has more than a touch of Lynda Carter to her face and expressions, and she wears a costume that hangs and fits in ways evocative of Carter's, rather than simply resembling body paint). 

(It's not just me, right? You see a bit of Carter in there too, right...?)

The girls accidentally reveal to Diana that the oracle in Delphi is expected to foretell Wonder Woman's death in a prophecy that night, and Wonder Woman decides to attend. 

The prophecy is, of course, vague, but Wonder Woman thinks she gets the gist of it: There's gonna be a dragon, the Justice League is going to fight and defeat it, but, in so doing, they will also die. 

Within the week, the full League—or at least the main seven—are seated around the meeting table, with J'onn bringing up various issues and the team deciding who will tackle which mission. Aquaman notices that Wonder Woman seems a little out of it, and Batman (who Moeller draws without the usual white triangle eyes, as if there's always a shadow over his face, giving him a creepy eye-less look) notices, and seems suspicious. (Indeed, he's so suspicious that, when the other Leaguers all leave, he uses tweezers and a plastic bag to lift a fiber from Wonder Woman's chair to analyze.)

Once it becomes clear that this dragon business is about to come true, Diana executes a plan she had apparently put together over the last few days. If the Justice League is destined to die defeating the dragon, she has no choice but to defeat her fellow Leaguers for their own good, removing them from play, and then taking on the dragon by herself. In other words, by beating up her teammates and sacrificing her own life to defeat the dragon, she can save the rest of the Justice League.

And so, then we get to what might be the most interesting passage of the graphic novel, and what I imagine was the selling point when Moeller was making his pitch: Wonder Woman versus the Justice League.

Now, given her powers—super-strength, super-speed, near-invincibility, flight—and her combat expertise and magic lasso, I think Wonder Woman could conceivably take out each of her allies in a protracted one-on-one fight, with J'onn's mental powers probably proving the biggest threat to her (Aquaman and Batman would, obviously, go down easiest). 

Moeller doesn't actually have her engage in long drawn-out fights with each of the other Leaguers, though. She mostly resorts to surprise to ambush them each, taking them out before they have a chance to mount a defense. 

J'onn she lassos, punches and then tosses into a teleporter, sending him to a prison from which he can't escape (This attack actually seems the most cruel, as, in a bit of foreshadowing, J'onn shares with Diana, and the readers, how much he would hate to be in that particular place).

For Green Lantern, she slyly removes his ring and then headbutts him into unconsciousness. There seemed to be an element of seduction to this scene to me, the way she touches Kyle, but maybe I'm just reading too much into it:

Perhaps oddly, the third panel on the second page above, the one with the star imprint from Wonder Woman's tiara on GL's mask, is the single image from this comic that stayed with me over the past 26 years. It's a neat visual of just how damn hard she must have hit Kyle there, and I'm actually kind of amazed she didn't pulp his head. I guess she has amazing control of her super-strength. 

Aquaman, with whom she was assigned a mission, is taken out easily enough. After they save a shit, she simply picks him up and flies off with him. He protests the whole time—"I won't have this, blast you!"—until she dumps him into Charybdis, the mythical whirlpool*, while the nereid Zoe looks on and laughs. 

The Flash fight is even funnier and also involves one of her little mythological friends. Flash and Batman have been sent to the Amazon to thwart Poison Ivy's nefarious plans there, and the nymph Althea causes a root to grab The Flash mid super-speed stride. 

The scene includes my favorite sequence of the whole book, as The Flash tripping is watched from afar by Batman using binoculars. On the next page, Wonder Woman steps out of the jungle, and no sooner does The Flash, not expecting anything untoward from her, is in the middle of realizing that his leg is wrapped up by a vine, when Wonder Woman kicks him into unconsciousness ("WHD").

The next two are, perhaps surprisingly, the most challenging: The World's Finest.

Batman is the only one Wonder Woman doesn't surprise attack, and, ready for a fight of some kind, seems to fare the best against her. She's on the Watchtower and in the middle of trying to launch the unconscious Flash and GL into space in little statis tube thingees when Batman confronts her ("I've fallen into the same trap his opponents always make-- --I've underestimated him," she tells herself...with somewhat awkward phrasing on the first half there; I think an editor should have cleaned that up to, "I've made the same mistake his opponents always make"...)

After the confrontation and argument, the fight takes a full seven pages, with Batman having a clever way to escape her lasso, but while he manages to dodge and trip her up a few times, she eventually prevails, hitting him in the head with a chunk of rock and then taking him out with a pair of punches.

Their dialogue is interesting here. At the outset, Batman is charmingly dickish to her regarding Greek myth and her belief: 

He takes it pretty far, though, and at one point I recoiled at a few of his lines, which are sexist and show a remarkable lack of empathy (she calls him a "reptile" at that point), but a few panels later she says, "I...know what you're doing...Trying to goad me into a mistake." I wonder which of Batman's mentors and teachers taught him to weaponize Being An Asshole in order to win a fight...?

Finally, there's Superman, and this leads to the funniest scene in the book:

The guileless Superman falling for such a simple trick (and just pages after Batman told Wonder Woman to get out of the betrayal business, because she's such a bad liar...but apparently good enough to trick Superman!), the kicked Superman skipping like a stone, and then his face skidding along the ground...? Comedy perfection. 

I shared this anecdote on Bluesky when I was rereading this story in the Deluxe Edition a few weeks ago, but I remember a friend of mine excitedly showing me this scene a few years ago, laughing as she did so.

I believe this is the "There's the door spaceman" of fight scenes.

Now, I think Wonder Woman could take Superman, especially after a devastating surprise attack like that. I mean, just throw the lasso on him, and the notoriously vulnerable-to-magic Superman is done, right? 

But Moeller apparently thought having Wonder Woman take out Superman was a bridge too far, and so she has devised another plan to remove him from the dragon fight: Those pods she was loading The Flash and Green Lantern into? (And then, after beating up, Batman as well?) These were basically designed to keep Superman busy, as the time it would take him to fly into space to rescue them would be the window in which Wonder Woman would fight the dragon. Why fight him at all? (They trade a few more blows, including one that sends Wonder Woman skidding along the desert floor.) Well, Wonder Woman explains that she wanted to weaken Superman enough that he couldn't save the others too quickly. But I imagine it was actually because devoting a few pages to a fight allowed for that hilarious scene.

So with the League out of commission, it's up to Wonder Woman to face the dragon, the climax of the story. She does have a little help, from Althea, Zoe and one of the gnomes. By this point, A League of One very much transitions into a Wonder Woman story more than a JLA one, and while I was originally put off by this fact half a life-time ago, now I really appreciate how much work Moeller put into the lore of his characters and story here, making the fantasy characters and the dragon actual characters, with distinct personalities and motives (He will do the same with the aliens in "Cold Steel", which we'll get to in a little bit). 

I don't love his dragon, her huge nostrils making her quite distinct among dragons but also a little funny-looking, I always thought, but she's well-conceived and rendered. And, as I said, it's admirable that Moeller makes her an actual character, rather than just a generic threat. 

You won't be at all surprised to find that the dragon is destroyed and that Wonder Woman is still alive at the end of the book, the result of the prophecy being only technically true. (That is, she does die...but just temporarily, Superman bringing her back to life with some super-CPR.)

The rest of the League seems to forgive and forget pretty quickly...with the exception of Superman, whom Wonder Woman has a few pages worth of a heart-to-heart conversation with. It ends with a happy group shot, though: 

And no one ever brought this up ever again. Meanwhile, the team kicked Batman off the team over the events of that same year's "Tower of Babel" arc in JLA, and still seem to give him shit about his whole developing-plans-to-defeat-them-all-in-case-any-of-them-ever-go-bad thing...

It's a pretty good JLA story, from a time when there were a lot of JLA stories, many good and many not so much, and it's an even better Wonder Woman story. I'm glad to see that DC republished it in this format, as it gives it another chance. 

I'm more glad still that they collected it along with "Cold Steel", though, as I think that story probably got rather lost in the shuffle of the publisher's chaotic nature at the time of its release.

Despite being written and painted by Moeller, and featuring the same seven Justice Leaguers, "JLA: Cold Steel" could hardly be more different from A League of One. Perhaps most distinctly, it is a true Justice League story rather than a Wonder Woman story featuring the Justice League in it. 

The presentation was pretty different, too. While A League of One was an original hardcover graphic novel, the follow-up was published as a standalone two-part miniseries in early 2006, under the unlikely title of JLA Classified: Cold Steel. 

A discrete JLA story not tied to month-in, month-out continuity and published shortly before the 1997-2006 JLA title would be canceled, it came out in the "End of JLA" period I wrote about last year, and would thus seemingly have fit into either JLA proper, which, in its last years had become a Legend of the Dark Knight-style anthology series featuring different story arcs by different creative teams, or the pages of JLA Classified, a 54-issue, 2005-2008 ongoing that was also an anthology series featuring different story arcs by different creative teams. 

Instead, Moeller's Cold Steel was a Classified miniseries, a spin-off of a spin-off, apparently. 

I would love to know what, exactly, was going on behind-the-scenes regarding DC's JLA material around the time, as, between the two books, the publisher seemed to be burning up inventory stories and repurposing miniseries. Moeller's short text page about Cold Steel suggests part of what might have been going on, but we'll get to that in a bit. 

At any rate, this new edition rescues Cold Steel from the relative oblivion of 20-year-old back-issue bins and re-presents it to what I hope is a more appreciative audience.

Oh, and because this book came out when it did, you will notice that the line-up doesn't fit into JLA continuity anywhere. The line-up are the same Big Seven heroes that were in the first issue of Grant Morrison and company's JLA, and the same that were in Moller's own A League of One. 

But you will note a few cosmetic changes meant to update the cast. So, the Watchtower exteriors we see show the squatter redesign that Brian Hitch had given it during his short tenure on JLA, with the emanating out-buildings. Green Lantern Kyle Rayner is now sporting his newer, Jim Lee-designed costume, the all-black-and-green one with the prominent collar, that he started wearing in the summer of 2002. And Aquaman has cut his hair, trimmed his beard, picked up a magic water hand and put on a new pair of pants, a short-lived look that lasted only about 14 issues of his 2003-2006 series (After which he would start going cleanshaven again for a while, and put his favorite orange shirts and green pants back on).

And yes, Kyle left the League in 2003's JLA #76 and never rejoined. Similarly, while Aquaman came back to life in the present, the epilogue to "The Obsidian Age" arc (the only issues of JLA in which Kyle wore that particular costume), he also left the team, and didn't reappear in the title until deeper into the "End of..." era, appearing briefly in "Syndicate Rules", "Crisis of Conscience" and the post-League "World Without a Justice League" arc, though not in this particular get-up).

In other words, these seven Leaguers, wearing these particular costumes, were never on the team at the same time.

So, if the elevator pitch for A League of One was Wonder Woman vs. The JLA, that for "Cold Steel" seems to be "the JLA pilot giant robots." In fact, the book seems to have been reverse-engineered from that concept, much of it—probably too much of it, actually, as Moeller explains later—written to get the team into the particular circumstances where they need to climb aboard giant robot versions of themselves.

As with his previous story, Moeller does an admirable job of world-building, thinking through the biology, culture, religion and technology of the two warring alien races in the story and, gradually, revealing them not to be simply a good race and a bad race, but two complicated peoples.

Their conflict pretty much crashes into the team's lunar Watchtower in the opening pages of "Cold Steel," as a crescent-shaped, metal ship containing a Ghoji expedition seeking out the League is attacked by a stranger ship, one that seems to be alive, pursues and seeks to destroy them. It's piloted by the Voruk.

The former are roughly humanoid, extremely thin with pale skin, big eyes, antennae, and "backwards" legs like the hindlimbs of some mammals. The latter are more fish-like, resembling rays and prehistoric creatures, and floating through their water-filled ships, which are organic in nature.

After the Ghoji are taken into the Watchtower and everyone is speaking the same language—the Ghoji, it turns out, are psychic—they tell the story of an interplanetary war, one in which the Voruk attacked and sought to conquer the Ghoji home world, taking them as slave labor. In the end, the Voruk subjected the Ghoji's planet Penumbra to a strange super-weapon. A huge metal ring in appearance, it has the effect of putting everyone on the planet to sleep from which they cannot wake, and during which they don't seem to age. 

The Leaguers discuss whether to involve themselves in a war like this at all. Aquaman has reservations and Batman has suspicions that they aren't being told everything, despite J'onn's telepathy and Wonder Woman's expertise revealing that the Ghoji are telling the truth. The deciding factor, however, seems to be that a Ghoji Green Lantern had previously ventured to Penumbra, back when there was still a Green Lantern Corps, and thus Kyle wants to rescue her if they can, and finish her work.

So, after a brief call to the JSA to tell them they'd be off-planet for a bit, the League boards a ship and heads to space, intent on saving Penumbra, rather than picking a side in the war. After scenes set among the Ghoji, we eventually get to the giant robots. The Ghoji have technology to shield ships from the effects of the sleep weapon, but it's big technology, not something that could be worn on a belt or as a backpack.

Luckily, the Ghoji also have very large robots.

And so, in short order, with Batman doing the design work and the super-strong and super-fast Leaguers the heavy-lifting, they have the giant robots from the covers to pilot.

"I've designed the armatures to mirror as closely as possible our personal strengths and abilities," Batman explains: 

In battle, I want our instincts to work for us, not against us. 

For example...

Superman's machine is loaded up with armor. It can take a hit from a battleship and keep going. 

We've installed cutting lasers that he can trigger instantly, from inside the cockpit, with his heat vision.

Aquaman's vehicle has been equipped with undersea propulsion and a harpoon arm-- 

--while Martian Manhunter's machine has been fitted with a powerful psychic amplifier. 

And so on. Some of the exact abilities won't be revealed until the robots are in use, like the fact that The Flash's humanoid-shaped vehicle can uncurl what looks like a giant backpack on it to turn it into a sort of giant super-speed wheel...

Or that Batman's can transform, Robotech-style, into a sort of Batplane...

It almost sounds like a Transformer, doesn't it...? 

As for the color schemes and superhero sigils, those are the work of Green Lantern and The Flash. "Something's missing," Kyle says, regarding the giant gray robots, "Can we get ahold of some paint? We'll need a lot."

Not sure why Moeller left that up to artist Kyle Rayner. I mean, when has Batman not matched a vehicle of his to his costume colors, and applied a bat-symbol to it...?

Finally inside their giant robots at the end of the first issue, the second issue is devoted to their mission on the sleeping planet, where they fight alongside the Ghoji—each has one of them as a co-pilot within their vehicle—against native dangers on the planet, as well the Voruk and, ultimately, the super-weapon, which is malfunctioning in a way that threatens the planet...and galaxy...maybe even all reality. 

I don't want to spoil anything else about the second half of the story than I already have, as this is where Moeller subverts a lot of what we think of as standard genre tropes, and we get payoffs regarding Batman and other characters' suspicions about the Ghoji, but it's a pretty great story, showing the Justice Leaguers as peacemakers as much as warriors, and giving each of the heroes an equal share of the spotlight.

Oh, and Kyle manages to rescue the long lost Ghoji Green Lantern, and they get along pretty well:

At this point, I don't remember who Kyle would have been dating back on Earth (Was it Jade, maybe...?), but I suppose the fact that this issue doesn't really fit neatly into JLA continuity anyway means he's off-the-hook for flirting with and kissing an alien lady, right? 

I wonder if any other writer ever picked up this character, Shirea Vaas in the 20 years or so since this story saw publication...? I mean, there are thousands of Green Lanterns, right? She could be one of them now. Oh, and I wonder what became of her, her ring and her lantern between the end of this story and the return of the Corps after Green Lantern: Rebirth...? 

Anyway, this was a really fun story, and probably one of the most toyetic Justice Leaguer stories I can think of off the top of my head...

After this story ends, there's a 25-page "Making of JLA: A League of One" section, a 34-page "Making of JLA: Cold Steel" section and seven pages of paintings related to the covers, one of which went unused, but featured League of One's dragon fighting Cold Steel's Superman mech fighting in the background, with Wonder Woman leading the seven Leaguers and GL Shiera Vaas in a dramatic charge, Aquaman in his gladiator harness and Kyle in his later GL costume.

There's a prose passage about working on each of the books, and plenty of sketches and design work. Moeller went so far as to sculpt the head of the dragon for League of One, and the Cold Steel section is full of detailed designs for each of the robots in Cold Steel. 

In discussing the later project, Moeller reveals that he was approached by then-JLA editor Dan Raspler to do a follow-up to A League of One, and was reluctant to do so, as he was busy producing covers for the series Lucifer. He was given a longer-than-usual production schedule, and had completed the obviously extensive design and world-building work as well as the script and the art for the first of what was meant to be three issues before Raspler was laid off and, as he says, the project was "orphaned."

In the end, the last two issues were compressed into a single issue, and I imagine this orphaning is why Cold Steel came out as JLA Classified: Cold Steel, rather than as a standalone miniseries...and I imagine Raspler's layoff might explain some of the chaos in the last few years of JLA. 

For fans of this particular era of the Justice League, I'd definitely recommend this book. 

*Not to be confused with the villain Charybdis, who's the guy that had Aquaman hand chewed off by piranhas at the beginning of Peter David's Aquaman series, and whom Erik Larsen later brought back as Piranha-Man.

Bookshelf #32

This week we move to the next bookshelf, the top of which is full of books, upon which have since been piled more books.

Let's start at the bottom and work or way up. The bottom layer is, of course, stuff from 2000 AD, the vast majority of which came out in trade between 2005 and 2010 or so. A good half of it is Judge Dredd in collected forms; it looks like, at the time, they were releasing collections as Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files (of which I have volumes 1-4 and, um, 11 for some reason), as well as specific storylines, (Judge Dredd: The Chief Judge's Man, Judge Dredd: Brothers of the Blood and so on). 

It's obviously been a while, but, if I recall correctly, this must have been from during a time I was writing for one of the bigger websites-covering-comics, and ended up on a review copy list, as while those Judge Dredd books certainly look like things I would buy, something like, say, The Complete Ro-Busters doesn't seem like something I would have picked up on my own. 

I do recall buying one of those Dredd comics from a comic shop though. That would be Judge Dredd: Emerald Isle, on the far left, which I purchased because it was by Garth Ennis, who, at the time I picked it up, was writing Hitman, my favorite comic at the time (and, come to think of it, probably ever). 

On the far right, there's a bit of Humanoids stuff, from when DC was releasing that. 

Of all these books, I don't remember anything specific in great detail but, as is often the case when taking a closer look at some of these forgotten bookshelves in my house, I find myself wondering why I stopped following particular series, and wishing I had not. At the very least, why didn't I get The Complete Case Files volume 5-10...?

Stacked atop them are the IDW collections of DC's TSR books, the 1988-1991 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, which lasted 36 issues and an annual, and the 1989-1991 Forgotten Realms, which lasted 25 issues and an annual (which was a crossover with the cast from AD&D). 

I've talked about AD&D repeatedly before. That's the comic book series that got me started reading comic books; I had received #2 as a gift when home sick from school, and then later started buying it regularly with #7, very gradually picking up the earlier issues as back-issues (I remember #1 and the annual took me forever to get around to). By the time these trade collections came out, the word "Classics" added to the titles on the spine to distinguish them from IDW's more recent, 21st century comics based on the role-playing games, I had long since completed my collection of AD&D, but bought the trades anyway, in part to re-read the series all in one sitting, and because the trades are so much more re-reading friendly. 

I never bought Forgotten Realms new off the rack, aside from the annual, but read it in back-issues over the course of several years. I don't think I ever had all of those issues, and I tended to read them out of order, with long stretches in between (the same way I read the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League comics, come to think of it), so the trades gave me the opportunity to read it in the proper order all at once.

I'd recommend both as fun, action-packed, often funny fantasy comics featuring monsters, characters and setting from the role-playing games. 

AD&D's big selling point was the pencil art of Jan Duursema, who drew the majority of it (there were a few fill-ins by her husband, Tom Mandrake). After writer Michael Fleischer wrote the first four issues (probably the most straightforward and thus weakest arc of the book), Jeff Grubb and Dan Mishkin took turns writing arcs starring an unlikely group of characters—I quite clearly remember reading a ltter to the editor decrying the lack of white guys, as there weren't any white, male, human characters in the core cast—operating in and around an inn in Waterdeep. Mishkin's "The Spirit of Myrrth" and Grubb's "Catspaw Quartet" were probably my favorite arcs.

As for Forgotten Realms, it featured art by Rags Morales, which was so good that it attracted me to the book in the first place (That, and the paladin character from the first AD&D arc starred as the book's POV character, making it read a bit like a spin-off). I think it also benefited from being more closely tied to the Forgotten Realms novels of the time, some of which I read, as characters from the novels would show up in the book, as would several of the settings, as the book's cast was devoted to travelling the Realms to recover powerful magical artifacts. Grubb wrote the whole series, and Morales drew about 20 issues of it, with Chas Truog and Tom Raney also contributing pencil art. 

Finally, stacked atop those, are three completely random books: 2010's Showcase Presents: Dial H For Hero, collecting Jim Mooney and company's inspired superhero feature from the pages of 1960's House of Mystery (and including Plastic Man's first appearance in a DC comic!); the fifth volume of Yu Watase's epic shoujo fantasy Fushigi Yugi; and the fourth volume of Leave it to PET!, manga-ka Kenji Sonishi's funny kids comic about a boy who recycles a plastic drink bottle, which returns to him as a little plastic robot. 

As for where the rest of Leave it to PET! and Fushigi Yugi are, well, I do have the first three volumes of the former, but I never completed buying and reading the latter. They are scattered about in a pile of "to be shelved books", most of which are manga, which maybe we can go through together at some point in the near future.

The pile looks like this, and is right in front of this particular bookshelf: 

"Man's Underworld" from Batman: The Brave and the Bold: Tomorrow's Heroes

When I was putting together last fall's post on all of Plastic Man's team-ups, the Plastic Man/Wonder Woman team-up from the pages of Batman: The Brave and the Bold #19 and #20 had long since shipped, but it hadn't yet been collected into trade, so I decided to wait to address it in a later post, not wanting to spend...let's see...$16?!...just for a blog post.* 

Well, the trade is here now. So now I can post about it.

The Plastic Man/Wonder Woman team-up is the first story collected in Batman: The Brave and The Bold: Tomorrow's Heroes. Entitled "Man's Underworld", it is the work of writer Dave Wielgosz and artist Nikola Čižmešija. 

The pairing of the two characters struck me as a particularly interesting one, because not only have they never had a team-up like this before (unless you count those two pages from "The Great Super-Star Game!"), but I am having trouble recalling even a particular significant scene featuring the two characters during the seven years or so they were on the Justice League together between 1998 and 2005 (Although Wonder Woman was dead for part of it, and Plastic Man was on a sort of sabbatical for another). Certainly not in the main, Grant Morrison-written portion of the JLA title, although it's possible I am forgetting something from an anthology, spin-off or a JLA Classified story...please let me know if you can think of any!

This story is set, an asterisk and editorial box on its third page tells us, before Absolute Power, so presumably sometime during the 2018-2022 Justice League series, when the team was based in the Hall of Justice...and Wonder Woman was on the team and Plastic Man was not (Although, come to think of it, wasn't Wonder Woman dead for part of that series too...? At least, Hippolyta seemed to have temporarily replaced her on the team again for some reason during Brian Michael Bendis' run...).

An opening full-page splash has Wonder Woman seemingly addressing the reader directly: "My lasso of truth has been stolen...I have come here to request your assistance to help me find out where it is and who is responsible...Will help me?"

A turn of the page reveals who she is addressing, which, of course, the cover—for the single issue or the trade—has already spoiled. 

Sitting behind a desk with a "W. Winks" name plate is a smiling, bald and round-faced Woozy Winks, who answers that, "My partner and I do excellent P.I. work..." That partner, standing behind Woozy, shadow obscuring his face, is an uncharacteristically silent and grim-looking Plastic Man...who will snap back to his chattier self in the very next panel.

It's been a while—the last time I remember Plastic Man's day job coming up, he was running a security firm of some sort during Joe Kelley's JLA run—but Wielgosz remembers that Plastic Man and Woozy opened a detective agency in Phil Foglio and Hilary Barta's 1988 miniseries, which then played a role in the Superman team-ups that followed it.

Plas first questions why someone with Batman and Martian Manhunter in her contacts would turn to him for this, and he seems disappointed in her answer. That is, they (and the apparently not-dead male Question) recommended she go to Plas, telling her he would be "the most capable of getting in the mind of a thief."

Woozy and Plas have a somewhat pointed exchange regarding Plastic Man's need to prove himself, to which Plastic Man tells his old pal, "I didn't make a great impression back in our JLA days."

Again, I found myself struggling to think of any time the pair had really spent together in JLA. Plastic Man obviously acquitted himself well throughout his time on the team, helping save the world/the future/the universe/all reality alongside his teammates repeatedly. Still, he was generally portrayed as something of a jackass, constantly making annoying jokes. 

And he was often portrayed as particularly libidinous, asking Power Girl if she wanted to know why he was called "Eel" in the Mark Millar fill-in or, perhaps most famously, disguising himself as teammate Barda's dress in one of Mark Waid's fill-ins issues during Morrison's run.

I don't recall him sexually harassing Wonder Woman or coming on to her at any point, but, given his behavior in a lot of comics during that time, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if he did in a tie-in or spin-off and I'm just blanking on the instance. 

All I can think of at the moment is a passing comment about a peephole during his triumphant return to the team during Kelly, Tom Mahnke and company's JLA arc in which the team faces Fernus/The Burning Martian:

He could, of course, just be kidding here, but, uh, what a think to joke about.

Oh, and I suppose Plastic Man could be referring to something beyond a particular interaction with Wonder Woman in general, or a general feeling of insecurity about his status as a true hero given his criminal background. I mean, Kelly did write Plas as something of a bad person, a dick to his ex-lover and literal deadbeat dad, so...

So, the idea of Plastic Man being asked to "think like a criminal" in order to solve a case that Batman or Martian Manhunter couldn't knock off in a couple of pages is an intriguing premise, although it's worth noting that Wielgosz doesn't really come up with such a plot (In his defense, I guess this entire story is only 24 pages).

Like, solving the case basically just requires reviewing some security footage of a tour group at the then semi-public Hall of Justice, a working knowledge of DC supervillains that any Justice Leaguer (or reader!) should have, busting up a bar and then busting up an auction full of criimnals. I'm pretty sure Wonder Woman could have handled this case solo...or with the help of pretty much anyone else.

Seeing a shadow in Wonder Woman's room steal the lasso, Plas tells her it is Shadow Thief Carl Sands, who Plas apparently knows from his old days as gangster Eel O'Brian (The criminal underworld in the DC Universe, according to this story, was a very, very small world). 

I liked Sands' dig at Plas, in which he pointedly refers to him as "Elongated Man."

Next stop? Central City, for an auction of superhero memorabilia to a club full of criminals, all of whom are disguised by gas masks, making them relatively easy to infiltrate (In introducing the set-up, Wielgosz refers to both Final Crisis and Scott Snyder's "Black Mirror" story from pre-New 52 Detective Comics).

The pair do so, which requires Wonder Woman changing into a fancy black dress on a rooftop with Plas, who says, "I'll just...turn around and not look and you tell me when you're done gearing up." Which he does, without turning his eyeballs into periscopes or anything. 

Again, he talks to Wonder Woman about his insecurities, particularly during his tenure on the Justice League: 

Once inside, the two split up. 

Wonder Woman, being a statuesque beauty, even when wearing a gas mask, draws the attention of the old guy presumably running the operation (Not great at this undercover thing, the superheroine imbued with the gifts of the Greek gods introduces herself as "Cassandra Troy"...although given those are the names of two of her Wonder Girls, maybe she just panicked and grabbed two names out of her memory, like a disguised Bruce Wayne introducing himself as Tim Grayson...). 

Plastic Man, meanwhile, stretches and wriggles through the ventilation system until he spots the lasso, and is confronted by a flame-thrower wielding Roulette, the actual boss of the operation. As she explains, she wants to move on from superhero fight clubs and get into other criminal enterprises. 

As it turns out, Plastic Man also used to know Roulette, back before he was a superhero and she was a supervillain (I had completely forgotten this story when I read "Man's Underworld", but Neil posted about it on Bluesky between then and my writing this post, reminding me that Plas and Roulette have shared a story before, the Len Wein-written, Tom Derenick-drawn Justice League of America #35-37 from 2009; now I wonder if that Justice League story mentioned that the pair had a past...?)

There's a flashback, some "Join the dark side" talk and a brief fight. During all that, Roulette needles Plastic Man as "the superhero permanently on probation," adding, "I saw how Wonder Woman talked to you out there, with so little respect...You know that won't ever change."

Plas rushes out of the back with the lasso, Roulette on his heels, blowing Wondy's cover, and leading to our heroes back to back, the whole crowd circling them. 

Wielgosz takes a shortcut that doesn't really make much sense here, as, at one point, we're meant to believe that Plastic Man is somehow in danger of being torn apart by the crowd, as he's being stretched in different directions by each limb, but, well, the panel or so devoted to it isn't terribly convincing (see the middle one below), as Čižmešija doesn't draw Plas all that stretched, certainly not to anything that looks like a breaking point, and, besides, stretching is, like, his whole power's deal, right? 

The artist only has a single panel to work with, and Plas is in the background. A legitimate threat to Plas could have been posed by the flamethrower—indeed, Roulette temporarily melts him with it in one panel earlier—but the creators would have had to do something different to present a realistic threat to Plastic Man then what they do here. Maybe another draft of the story might have helped.

Anyway, Plas being in danger at all is simply an excuse to have Wonder Woman throw her lasso around him in order to pull him to safety...and give readers the opportunity to see its effects on Plastic Man, or what Wielgosz suggests those effects might be.

Here, he transforms back into Eel, seemingly losing his powers (and goggles) and completely freaking out, as if in pain or having a brief panic attack. In the last two pages of the story, Plastic Man reveals bits of his origin to Wonder Woman, who I was fairly certain knew that he used to be a criminal named Eel O'Brien from Mark Waid, Bryan Hitch and company's JLA #51-54, wherein the Leaguers with secret identities, including Plastic Man, are each split in two (It's been a while since I've read that story too, though; Waid's short, 18-issue run was a real mess, and, outside of "Tower of Babel", I haven't really ever reread any of the JLA arcs he wrote during that time).

During his brief talk with Wonder Woman, Plas tells her that "Plastic Man" is "a character I created" and, having played him so long, he sometimes loses track of that. He explains that, after getting his powers, he started fighting crime, "hoping one day I could do more good things than Eel O'Brian had done bad". And that "being the goofy, loud guy no one wants to deal with works in my favor."

Some of this psychology seems to echo what Marv Wolfman wrote of Plas in his not-very-good 2011 one-shot Green Lantern/Plastic Man: Weapons of Mass Deception, and it also perhaps helps explain the somewhat bifurcated nature of Plastic Man since Morrison folded him into JLA. Specifically, that he's at once a hyper-competent superhero and an irritating comedy relief character who often appears dumb, libidinous and borderline criminal or immoral...usually as part of an unfunny joke a writer might be setting up for him. 

At any rate, Wonder Woman stifles a laugh when he says, "I know more than I let on, except when I don't," and proposes the two keep working together as, while they've recovered the lasso, there's still Roulette, the auctioneer guy and a bunch of criminal types obsessed with superhero memorabilia to deal with. 

In the lower right corner of the last panel, there's a red "THE END", followed by a yellow "of our story, but the start of a lovely partnership."

So as Plastic Man stories go, this has the strength of being an unlikely, somehow never done before one, as well as exploration of what goes on in Plas' head, even though I'm not fond of the insecure take on the character, whether that insecurity comes from his criminal background, his concern that he's regarded as a clown or unserious superhero by his peers (Something explored in the Eclipso half of 2007-2008 Countdown to Mystery, collected in 2009 as Eclipso: Music of the Spheres**) or, here, how he behaved/was written during his JLA years. (Although I suppose that is kind of interesting in a meta way, and Wielgosz seems to be attempting a retcon of sorts, or least an explanation to square JLA Plas with "real" Plas.)

Of course, the idea of keeping score with himself, weighing Eel's bad against Plastic Man's good, and worrying about always being regarded by others as a criminal on some level, that seems like a better story for somewhere in Plastic Man's past, sometime before he was inducted into the line-up of the World's Greatest Heroes, got a seat at the Justice League meeting table on the moon and started saving the world from the likes of Solaris and Mageddon and company on a monthly basis.

Čižmešija's art is quite strong throughout. I don't know the name, and his Plastic Man, perhaps appropriate for this story, is toned down quite a degree, looking consistent from panel to panel, rather than flowing from one shape to another as is usual the case. He also looks like a straightforward superhero character, rather than having, say, big ears, or a cartoonish grin, or some of the other signifiers some artists have given him over the years to demonstrate that he's a "funny" character. I wouldn't mind seeing more of Čižmešija's Plastic Man...or other characters. 

*DC was really selling a comic book for $7.99? That is insane, even for a 68-page book. This 120-page trade paperback collection is only $17.99; why bother with single issues once they reach the cost of, like, half a trade...?

**I actually bought and read that trade paperback in December, when the omnibus collection of John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake's Spectre series had me curious in revisiting various later takes on The Spectre and Eclipso. I ultimately decided not to write about it at all though because it wasn't very good, or interesting in any way, so it didn't really seem worth my time or that of the reader. It's a really bad Plastic Man story, though! And has a terrible, terrible take on Woozy Winks!

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Pt. 4

I wasn't sure exactly how much G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero you guys could take—like, is a post a week too much?—so I took a few weeks off from my posting my way through the series. Also, so far these have all ended up taking much longer to put together than I had originally expected, in large part because there's just so much to say about each issue.

Before we attack the next six issues of the series, remember that I'm currently reading it 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 #19 (1984)
Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino

•There's a lot going on in the opening splash of issue #19 (which is above, at the top of the post). A bunch of shirtless Joes are assembling a "pre-fab fortress" in the lower levels of their base The Pit for reasons they haven't yet been told. Gung-Ho seems to recognize The Baroness from across the room, despite the fact that she is completely wrapped in bandages, mummy-style, with only her hair visible (Maybe Gung-Ho just recognized her hair...? Of course, at this point, there are only three female characters in the series, so I guess that might actually be enough to distinguish her from Scarlett and Cover Girl). And Snow Job, complaining to Doc that Gung-Ho seems to turn his Cajun accent "on and off like a faucet", is answered by Doc in what I guess what would have been called "jive talk" in 1984, which he turns mid-sentence into all big-word doctor's talk.

•Cobra's ongoing plague toxin plot gets even more complicated. The infected Scar-Face shares the plan with the Joes, and gives them the antidote for it that he had secretly stolen ("At least with you I've got a chance...right?"), and Hawk realizes Cobra's plan wasn't necessarily to kill them all with the disease, but to force them to initiate a quarantine procedure, which would give away the location of their secret headquarters, which Cobra would then attack in force. Got all that? 

Okay. So, Hawk has a counterplan. The Joes will kinda sorta give away the location of their base...at least the surface level. By raising the pre-fab fortress up to the surface and letting Cobra attack that, the bad guys will think they've found their base, while remaining completely unaware that the real base is below ground. 

Is it a good plan? I don't know, but it's pretty clever on Hama's part. That's because, although the comic has long since established that G.I. Joe's base was a vast underground complex, in 1983 Hasbro released the G.I. Joe Headquarters Command Center playset, which gave the toy Joes a base...but would seem to contradict the comic continuity. So here Hama finds a way to include that base—it's the pre-fab one the Joes were assembling below ground, which is then raised to the surface in time for Cobra to find it—without scrapping the already established one from the comics. 

•Cobra Commander and Destro take the bait and prepare a full-scale attack. First though, they have to gather Dr. Venom, who is in one of his private bases...and receiving unwelcome visitors Snake Eyes and Kwinn, who have been hunting for him since they parted ways in Miami. Lucky for Dr. Venom that a bunch of Cobra soldiers arrive to collect him at that point.

•Hoping to hold them off, Snake Eyes climbs into "some sort of Cobra battle armor." You may recognize this as Coba's SNAKE (System Neutralizer Armed Kloaking Equipment) battle armor, and sure, that's not how you spell "cloaking", but if they spelled it right the acronym wouldn't quite look right, now would it?

Also released in 1983—as you'll notice, with this issue Hama seems to be trying to squeeze in everything from the toy line he hasn't yet worked into the narrative previously—it was a white plastic toy that could be snapped around an action figure. They appeared in the original cartoon miniseries, but I believe that was their sole appearance on the TV show.

Unfortunately for Snake-Eyes and Kwinn, one aspect of the armor that Venom didn't immediately volunteer was its "complete subjugation of the will of the user to the control module," meaning that, as long as Snake Eyes is in it, Venom "can control his every move." 

Cobra sticks the unconscious Kwinn into another suit, and they plan to use the attack on Joe HQ as a field test for the SNAKEs. 

•During the preparations for the upcoming battle, a pair of Joes raise ethical concerns that are both shot down. 

In the first instance, Short-Fuse and Tripwire are setting up mines near the ambulances that are parked around the base, there to suggest to Cobra that the Joes have indeed initiated their quarantine protocol (and thus to lure Cobra into an attack). These will essentially act as booby traps when Cobra arrives. Short-Fuse says he doesn't like it, and that "setting up claymore mines in ambulances must be against the Geneva Convention!" Tripwire corrects him, noting that they're setting up the mines underneath the ambulances as opposed to in them, and then goes on, "Besides, did you know that most weapons used by American police departments are illegal under the rules of the Geneva Convention?"

I sure didn't! Hama wrote that line some 42 years ago now; I wonder if that's still the case? Given how much more militarized most major police departments have gotten in the 21st century, I imagine it is.

In the second, Doc tells General Flagg that The Baroness is in "critical condition" and never should have been brought to The Pit in the first place, let alone during an expected fire fight. Flagg simply responds that he's aware of the risk and ethical considerations, and that he'll take full responsibility. 

•And then it's time for battle! Cobra's got HISS tanks, FANG copters and the two SNAKE suits targeting the new Joe base. The good guys respond by rolling out their three PAC RATs (Programmed Assault Computer/Rapid All Terrain), automated weapons systems that were, of course, part of the toy line (I remember having one of them, but now I can't recall if it was the flame thrower or the machine gun one; they weren't terribly exciting toys, to be honest, and I think I would have traded mine for pretty much any action figure from the line). 

And with those appearing, I think that is the entirety of the G.I. Joe line through 1983, action figures, vehicles and bases, officially introduced into the comic book. 

•During the battle, Venom taunts Snake Eyes that even if he manages to break free of the SNAKE's mind-control function, he won't be able to target Venom, as the SNAKEs can't fire on anything painted "Cobra blue", like the HISS tanks (The toys of which were black but yeah, I guess that tank up there looks blue). So, Snake Eyes fires on the white SNAKE suit occupied by Kwinn, freeing the mercenary, who picks up one of the PAC/RATs and carries it like a machine gun!

Kwinn and Venom have one last face off, and Kwinn decides to walk away, sparing Venom. In turn, the Cobra doctor shoots Kwinn in the back, killing him. But Kwinn was holding an armed grenade, which bounces back to Venom's feet before going off. In killing Kwinn, then, Venom also killed himself.

•Meanwhile, Major Bludd manages to escape the stockade, shotting General Flagg to death, and making off with the bandaged and unconscious Baroness, whose body he straps to a FANG copter like so much cargo.

•Hawk's plan seems to work, as Cobra destroys the faux, pre-fab Joe base and then retreats. But, as we've just seen, there were big losses for the team, as revealed in this rather moving last few panels. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #20 (1984)

Written by Steven Grant

Art by Geof Isherwood and Jon D'Agostino

•Okay, Clutch seemingly falling high out of the sky toward certain doom on the cover looks like a very difficult situation for a soldier to find himself in, and a hard one for a comic book writer to plausibly save them from, right? Well, would you believe Clutch finds himself in those exact circumstances not once, but twice during this issue...? (Of course, the cover artist, some guy named John Byrne, doesn't draw one particular detail that kind of changes the direness of Clutch's situation).

•You'll note that this issue isn't written by Hama, but by Steven Grant. And that the pencil artist isn't Vosburg, who has drawn the last batch of issues. This, and the nature of the story, makes me suspect that this fill-in might have been an inventory story ready for whenever Hama and company needed a break. Given that the last eight issues or so were essentially one big story arc, this certainly seems like a good time for a break. 

•In this issue, Clutch is leaving for a vacation to visit home. After three pages of him and his fellow Joes (Flash, Scarlett, Wild Bill and Gung-Ho) racing through a training exercise, he hops into the driver's seat of the VAMP and then speeds to the bus station. ("Razz Scarlett a little for me, okay?" he says over his shoulder to Stalker as he leaves; I guess we're meant to think of his bickering with Scarlett as teasing rather than actual harassment). 

•He's walking into town when he meets his old friend Billy Kline, who is driving a fancy sports car he says he built at his new job. Kline takes him to that job site, a factory with a sign out front reading Watash Automotive, and Kline says they can work like they used to, "me building cars, you testing and racing them."

The set-up proves too good to be true. Watash Automotive is a front for Cobra, who has been holding Kline's family hostage, and forcing him to build a new compact jetpack for them. To test it, they tie up Clutch, strap one around his waist and then fire him into the night sky, turning the jet pack off (And thus leaving  him falling back towards Earth, as on the cover).

Luckily, Kline slipped him a knife, which is all Clutch needs to break free of his ropes and hotwire the jetpack, saving himself. 

•At one point, Clutch makes this face:

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #21 (1984)
Art by Larry Hama and Steve Leialoha

•At last, we come to issue #21, the infamous "silent" issue, which is perhaps the best-known issue of the entire series, and rightly so. The issue contains no dialogue, no sound effects and the only words other than the story title ("Silent Interlude") and the credits on the opening splash page are those that Destro reads on a computer screen in a few panels. 

It's a bravura example of comics storytelling, one that proves how powerful sequential imagery is and one, I think, that is all the more remarkable in that it appeared in a Marvel comic in 1984, a comic that was most definitely meant to be read by children.

•You'll also note that I credited Larry Hama with art above. The book credits him with "Story and Breakdowns", while Leialoha is credited with "Finishes". Thought best known as a writer, Hama is also an excellent artist. (In terms of reading this series, I'm only on issue #31, but I know Hama handles breakdowns on at least one future issue as well.)

These specific credits make me wonder a bit about the behind-the-scenes of the book. Did Hama and his collaborators make G.I. Joe using the "Marvel method"...? Wherein the writer provides the artist with a plot, and the artist than breaks the action down into specific panels? I mean, that seems like a good bet, given that this is a Marvel book. 

And, if that was the case, then I wonder if that explains why Hama decided to handle breakdowns on this issue, as perhaps it would have been just too difficult to do a wordless story Marvel method? Like, maybe it was just easier to communicate the action via breakdown, as opposed to writing it out, which I guess would have entailed a panel-by-panel full script...? 

•Here is what occurs in the issue. 

What looks like a jet-powered hang-glider streaks towards a mountain castle festooned with cobra sculptures and satellite dishes. It is piloted by a ninja dressed in all-white, and he has a captive, which is dramatically revealed to be a wounded Scarlett (She has a bandage on her cheek). The ninja presents her to the hooded Cobra Commander, and she is thrown into a dungeon. Snake Eyes parachutes onto the castle. Destro, who is contemplating chess pieces that resemble G.I. Joe and Cobra characters, gets an intruder alert on his computer, although the computer calculates the odds of "successful airborne insertion" at .000018, so he returns to his toys. While Snake Eyes fights his way in, against Cobra soldiers, the ninja in white and some other ninja clad in red, Scarlett uses a hairpin to pick the locks of her bonds and starts to fight her way out. The pair end up rescuing one another at the climax, and escaping on that jet-powered hang-glider. The last two panels reveal that Snake Eyes and the white ninja have identical tattoos on their forearms.

•The glider is the Cobra CLAW (Covert Light Aerial Weapon), a pretty cool vehicle that is prominently featured in the first few minutes of 1987's G.I. Joe: The Movie, which is among my favorite three minutes of cinema, and which I rewatch on YouTube every few months or so (In fact, I just paused to do so while writing this sentence; here, you can watch it too...!)

The ninja in white is, of course, Storm Shadow, a character that was so well-liked that he would later switch sides and become a member of the Joe team. Although I suppose it's possible that Hama always intended for him to switch sides as, in a future issue, Storm Shadow will reveal that he has a good reason for throwing in with Cobra, and he didn't join the ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world just because he was, you know, evil. 

Both the CLAW and Storm Shadow are from the 1984 toy line. 

•Speaking of the toy line, note how the Baroness figure from Destro's chess set is dressed. She's wearing the costume that her action figure—which was also released in 1984, despite the character being in the comics since the beginning—wears, but she hasn't yet worn it in the comic. So Destro's chess piece of The Baroness is actually the first appearance of that particular costume, which the real Baroness wouldn't don for a couple of issues yet. 

Also, if you're wondering, I double-checked. Spaceballs came out in 1987, so this scene predates that of Dark Helmet playing with toy versions of the movie's characters by a few years. 

•I just thought this bit was cool, with the ninjas hanging upside down from the ceiling like bats.

•I also love this scene, in which Snake Eyes decides not to waste any time fighting a ninja hand-to-hand (The next panel, which is on the next page, is filled with an explosion, with the ninja's sai flying out of its center). It reminded me of the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones is confronted by the swordsman and pulls out his gun to shoot him dead. (Raiders, by the way, came out in 1981, so I suppose it's possible that scene inspired this one).

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #22 (1984)

Art by Mike Vosburg and Jon D'Agostino

•So, the previous issue is probably technically the best issue in the run so far, but this issue is perhaps my favorite so far. That's due to a couple of different reasons, but chief among them is that it is broken up into all these little vignettes of a couple of different Joes talking to one another. I think this might be the first real "hang out" issue of the series which, understandably given the subject matter, is generally more oriented around action scenes. 

•This issue's cover, by the way, is by Klaus Janson, and here it really looks like Destro is playing with toys, rather than chess pieces of his foes. I think it's the addition of an airplane that does it. It's sort of an odd choice for a cover image too. Destro's only in five panels of the issue, and given that the issue contains the funeral for General Flagg, it's not hard to think of other, perhaps more impactful covers Marvel could have went with here (Although perhaps they thought a somber image of a flag-draped coffin wouldn't move as many units of a comic meant to sell army guys to little kids; as you can see though, there is a flag-draped coffin on the cover, among the other little figurines Destro is pushing off his chess board.)

•After Cobra destroyed the fake, decoy headquarters a few issues ago, the Joes are working on repairing the Pit. Clutch and Scarlett's weird, bickering relationship continues, and is ignored by Hawk, who is busy with the plans for the base.

•Gung-Ho is strong.

•Wow, shut up, Grunt. I mean, I know it must be awkward to drive around with a guy who can't talk, and maybe one finds oneself trying to overcompensate, doing enough talking for two, but that is a lot of words in so few panels...!

•At one point, we get to look over Hawk's shoulder and see the plans he's looking at, which fill a full page of the comic. I used to love stuff like this in comics and, had I been reading G.I. Joe regularly back then, I am sure I would have pored over this page with great interest, during the long month's wait before the next issue.

•The Joes learn that they will be traveling to Arlington Cemetery for General Flagg's funeral...and Cobra Commander has learned the same thing. He's planned to have Cobra's new prototype tank-smasher plane The Rattler attack them while they are all gathered in one place.

This cool-looking blue plane was part of the 1984 toy line and came packaged with Cobra pilot Wild Weasel, although he's not flying it on this particular mission, for reasons that will become clear in a few moments. I guess that's supposed to be the plane in Destro's hands on the cover, although it's miscolored green.

•Meanwhile, there's a "Meanwhile, in Switzerland..." caption, and we spend a page checking in with Major Bludd and The Baroness. She is still bandaged head to toe, with only her hair visible, and is seated in an old-timey looking wheelchair that Bludd, dressed in civilian clothes, pushes her in. They meet a doctor at The Bern Institute for Reconstructive Surgery. Bludd introduces her as Baroness DeCobray, and while she's obviously still in a bad way, she's at least awake and is capable of speech, albeit halting speech.

•Before the funeral for Flagg, Snake Eyes lays Kwinn to rest. Wild Bill flies him to Montauk point, where Snake Eyes puts Kwinn's body in a canoe, along with his weasel skull necklace, his signature weapon, and the weapon of his defeated enemy, so that "so his soul will serve him forever in the next world." Snake Eyes pushes the canoe out to sea, while it's Wild Bill who does all the talking, letting readers know just what's going on.

•The scene shifts again to Arlington, for eight silent panels spread across three pages. The Joes, all in their dress uniforms, march alongside and behind Flagg's coffin, which is being pulled on a cart by a horse to his gravesite (The image isn't good enough to share, but if you're curious, Snake Eyes wears his mask and goggles as part of his dress uniform, and yes, it looks a bit weird. 

•It's not until the bottom tier of panels on the third page of this sequence that we seek an airplane appear over the horizon, growing a little larger in each succeeding panel until Cover Girl notices it (Clutch, noticing her notice it, is in the middle of scolding her to be quiet; Hmm, perhaps he doesn't just not get along with Scarlett? Perhaps Clutch is a sexist jerk...?)

When they realize what's going on, the Joes also realize that they've had it, as they are trapped in the open with no cover. Stalker pulls the flag from Flagg's coffin, saying aloud, "He's not shooting holes in my flag...", but most of the Joes stare stonily at the incoming plane, apparently aware that this is the end.

Or would be, were it not for two brand-new Joes, who make the best entrance of any characters in the series so far:

•They are, of course, Roadblock and Duke, both of whom were new characters in the 1984 line (Although Duke, a First Sergeant, was available in 1983 as a special mail-away figure). I assume that it was Heavy Machine Gunner Roadblock, toting what we're soon told is a .50 caliber Browning, that actually shot the Rattler out of the sky, although I guess it's cute that Duke shot his little pistol up at it too, perhaps just to be supportive.

I was genuinely surprised that it took over 20 issues to introduce Duke into the comic. My primary experience with G.I. Joe back then was the cartoon, and in the original miniseries, which then became a week-long, five-episode span of the regular cartoon series, Duke was both the leader of the Joes and seemingly the main character, playing the "dad" role in the early G.I. Joe franchise that Optimus Prime played in the Transformers franchise. 

I had known that the earliest issues of the comic featured a leader with a blonde buzzcut, and I had always just always assumed that guy was Duke, but, as I started reading the series via this compendium, I soon realized that that guy was actually Hawk. (In the issues going forward, there will be a few where it can be hard to tell Hawk and Duke apart; when Hawk was later introduced into the cartoon series, during its second season, he always wore a helmet, and that, combined with his quite different uniform that never changed, made him easy to tell apart from Duke).

•Rock 'n Roll, the original G.I. Joe machine gunner, rushes up to Roadblock and immediately starts fanboying: "Most guys can't even lift a fully loaded .50 let alone knock down an attack plane with one... You must be the proverbial baddest dude on the block!" 

Roadblock responds: 

Bad? Me? I'd rather make crepes and bake souffles than fight any day!

You want hard? You want concentrated meanness tied up with concertina wire and hash marks? That's your man standing over there with the smoking 1911 in his hand...

...But you better wipe that smile off your face 'fore you look at him, or he'll wipe it off for you!

He is, of course, talking about Duke who, given this introduction, doesn't seem to be as nice a guy as I remember from the cartoons. 

Duke then introduces himself as "the new top-sergeant around here", and promises that things are going to be different from now on. He makes it sound like a threat. 

•Finally, the scene shifts one last time in this extremely full issue. This time it is to City Island, New York, and a freshly dug grave in a cemetery beyond a sign reading Potter's Field.

As the workmen chat about the nature of their job and how they are always burying "paupers and winos" and John Does, one of them seems to notice something, and remarks to the others, "That's a first for Potter's Field since I've been here! ...Burying a doctor in a place like this!"

The last panel shows us a line of simple wooden boxes, the last of which is marked "Dr. Venom." 

It's a nicely done scene, providing a sharp contrast between what becomes of the Cobra villain and the honors received by Kwinn and General Flagg, despite the fact that all three died in the same battle.

Crime doesn't pay, kids. Nor does mad science or bioterrorism.

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #23 (1984)

Art by Mike Vosburg, Jon D'Agostino and John Tartaglione

•In Europe, Snow Job is posted in The Alps, where he's on a mountain ledge high above The Bern Institute of Reconstructive Surgery's convalescent chalet. It looks like Hama found another setting in which Snow Job could prove useful (Although he was in the previous issue, trying to chat up Cover Girl and convince her he believed in women's lib; his red beard was miscolored white though, so he looked more like Rock 'n Roll).  

His binoculars are trained on The Baroness, who is still covered in bandages, although he refers to her as "completely reconstructed," so these are apparently post-op bandages. 

•Meanwhile, Roadblock and Duke are undercover at a cafe across the street from Major Bludd's Bern hotel, and Clutch and Cover Girl are in a nearby car, waiting to trail Bludd when he leaves. 

Snow Job complains about the different levels of cushiness the various surveillance posts has and makes a passing reference to his C-ration, and Roadblock, the team gourmand, comments to Duke, "What's he complaining about? The food at this place is mediocre at best and absolutely inedible to anyone with a cultured palate..."

On the very next page, he will scold the waiter: "This pate de maison is a disgrace to the cheese it shares board with. If you throw it far enough north, they'll call it liverwurst." He keeps this up throughout the issue, until he finally ends up at a good restaurant in Italy.

I've always thought Roadblock was a pretty cool guy, but jeez, he seems like he would be a real nightmare to have as a customer at a restaurant...

•Clutch makes a pass at Cover Girl, using a line not that dissimilar to the one he tried on Scarlett way back in G.I. Joe #6. It doesn't work any better here, although I guess it remains to be seen if this will be the start of ongoing enmity between the pair. 

Now I'm curious to see if he hits on Lady Jaye when she eventually joins the team...

•Using The Baroness as a bargaining chip, Major Bludd attempts to blackmail Cobra Commander, demanding that he meet him in Europe with a suitcase full of money, or he will reveal to Destro that the Commander had plotted to kill him. The Commander tells him off over the phone: "Not only are you out of your mind, but your poetry stinks as well!"

"I always knew you were a philistine!" Bludd responds. "You'll pay dearly for that last remark!"

•Guys, I am here for Cobra Commander talking shit on poets. 

•It is soon revealed that The Baroness has made a complete recovery. In fact, I wondered if she wasn't meant to be more beautiful after the surgery...? After all, Major Bludd seems genuinely shocked by her appearance here...or is he, perhaps, shocked that she looks completely normal now, after being so badly burned that she had spent several previous issues wrapped up like a mummy? (Going back to compare her appearance here to in previous issues really won't settle the matter, as she has been drawn by different artists, and always presented as conventionally attractive).

The comment on "black leather" in the middle panel is interesting, in that she seems to be wearing blue and, while it's hard to tell texture from a panel of comics art, her outfit doesn't look that tight and, well, leather-y as the one she will don in future issues (the one her chess piece was wearing in that panel in #21, and that her action figure would wear).

•The second half of the book is quite action-packed, including a gunfight, a couple of brawls, a Mexican standoff and a somewhat silly car chase. 

Essentially, Cobra Commander and Storm Shadow meet with Major Bludd and The Baroness in an Italian mountain town, but the Commander seems set on having Storm Shadow cut Bludd down rather than pay him. The Joes, who have been trailing Bludd, arrive, and so The Baroness and Cobra Commander flee together with the money  in a limo ("You realize of course, my dear, that this has all been a tragic, tragic misunderstanding...", he tells her). Clutch and Cover Girl follow in a sports car (they will change vehicles during the proceedings, though). Storm Shadow and Major Bludd follow on a parade float. And, finally, Snow Job arrives in the VAMP, picking up Duke and Roadblock.

In the end, it is as the cover and the story title "Cobra Commander Captured At Last!": Cobra Commander is captured. The other three name Cobra agents escape.

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #24 (1984)

Art by Russ Heath

•Of course, maybe he wouldn't stay captured for long. At least, not if Mike Zeck's cover is to be believed. And the title of this issue's story? "The Commander Escapes!"

The issue opens high on a snowy mountain in the Rockies, which the captive Commander, Duke and some other Joes have parachuted onto. The Commander is arguing with Duke that this is a silly place to hold him, given that it' s unfortified, but Ace and Wild Bill drop a couple of huge crates, and these turn out to be another pre-fab fortress, like the one erected in #19 (and like the one Hasbro was selling). 

Major Bludd dramatically presents The Baroness to the shocked Destro (remember, he thought she was dead ever since her tank exploded), and she stops him from trying to kill Bludd, as it was Bludd who rescued her from the Joes...and had her rebuilt in Bern. All seems forgiven between these three, who are eager to take over Cobra now that the Commander has been captured.

Artist Russ Heath (Russ Heath!) draws The Baroness in her new black costume, which here looks uncomfortably tight, and, at least in the first panel, seems to maybe have a corset-like component to it...?

•Heath gives The Baroness a lot more va-va-voom than any of the previous artists did and note her super-sexy posing throughout this brief scene. Is it the new costume? Is she feeling herself after her miraculous recovery? (And I, now an adult man reading this comic book meant for little boys in the 1980s for the first time, wondered if the surgeon didn't just put her face and skin back together, but did some other...um, enhancements while she was under the knife.)

Here the Cobra leaders plot and, in the last two panels, we are introduced to two new characters from the 1984 toy line, Wild Weasel and Firefly. The former, in the flight uniform, was previously mentioned; he's a Cobra pilot, and his action figure came packaged with the Rattler (I like the little wings on his Coba symbol, a detail I've noticed on other Cobra pilots previously). The latter is Firefly, whose action figure card describes him as a "Cobra saboteur." I always liked this figure's look, which is obviously ninja adjacent. 

From what I've seen of him in the title so far, he seems to be a mercenary hired by Cobra, rather than a loyal member of the organization (Um, not that the other name characters in the organization are too terribly loyal), as he doesn't know where Cobra's secret Springfield base is. 

Anyway, there job is to track down Storm Shadow. Bludd says he has placed a homing device on the ninja during their encounter in Europe.

•This issue answers something I've been wondering about for a long time now: How, exactly, does Cobra Commander drink with his battle helmet on...?

Apparently involves a straw and a little concealed opening in his mirrored face plate. 

He also shares that his helmet is lined with plastic explosives to keep anyone from forcibly removing it from him...and keeps to himself that he has a radio in it as well.

The Joes don't seem to have searched him that thoroughly, and, to be honest, it's not clear what they're doing with him. Like, has he been charged with a crime yet? Has he seen a lawyer? Are they not going to interrogate him at all? 

They seem to just be holding him. Indeed, they play poker for chocolate bars and rations while the Commander chills in the background...until Storm Shadow's voice in his helmet instructs him to try and get outside. The Commander announces to his captors that "It's very stuffy in here..." One wouldn't think a guy who always wears a helmet and facemask would be affected by stuffiness, but Duke and the others seem too intent on their poker game to question such things. 

•Storm Shadow arrives out of nowhere in the CLAW, having flown it below radar, and scoops up the Commander. Roadblock clips the vehicle's fuel line with a burst of machine gun fire. This means it only has enough fuel to carry one of the Cobras to safety, and, of course, that means The Commander flies off with it. 

•Duke gives chase, in another new vehicle, the Sky Hawk one-man VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing). This looks a little like a helicopter with no propellers, or maybe a jet engine powered spaceship.

Watching the cartoons in the 1980s, I never questioned this vehicle, but now I wonder...is such a thing possible...? Would it not need any propellers like a helicopter or wings like a plane to stay in flight...? (A brief Google for "one-man VTOL" and "single-seat VTOL" reveals what look like flying cockpits crossed with drones...and the Sky Hawk toy comes up repeatedly. So maybe the toy was a more advanced version extrapolated from then theoretical vehicles...?)

•There's a bit of action, as the comic shows off the Sky Hawk in a brief fight against a couple of FANG helicopters, but ultimately the Commander escapes, while Gung-Ho and Roadblock manage to capture Storm Shadow.

•During a neat reveal at the end, Cobra Commander strides into the command center where Destro, The Baroness and Major Bludd are eagerly awaiting the results of Wild Weasel and Firefly's mission. It turns out that Storm Shadow had discovered the tracking device Bludd had planted on him and mailed it to somewhere in Florida.

That somewhere? Zartan's base. 

And who is Zartan? Well, he only gets a single panel here, but he is another new Cobra agent. His action figure came with the Swamp Skier vehicle. Both were made from "UV reactive plastic" which, in Zartan's case, meant the figure's skin would change from the generic white guy flesh color of the Caucasian figures to a dark blue.

It was an unusual gimmick for a figure from the G.I. Joe line—it seems more like something from Mattel's gimmick-heavy Masters of the Universe line, doesn't it?—and it was apparently meant to tie-in to the fact that Zartan was a master of disguise with, at least in the cartoon, ill-defined chameleon-like powers.

Young Caleb thought Zartan was one of the cooler characters in the cartoon. We will, obviously, get to know him better in the next issues...but those will have to wait until the next post.  

At this precise point in the franchise, by the way, I think one thing is abundantly clear: Though sometimes presented as bumbling, and obviously all immoral in different degrees, the coolest characters in the comics and toys in terms of design belong to Cobra rather than G.I. Joe.