This time, I'll be covering the milestone 25th issue, as well as the two-part origin of Snake-Eyes! As always, each issue is written by Larry Hama, unless otherwise noted.
Art by Frank Springer and Mike Gustovich
•Storm Shadow is chained at the wrists and ankles in the back of a boat taking him to be imprisoned in Alcatraz, which the Joes are now using as a brig. Roadblock is holding a machine gun to his head, but Storm Shadow doesn't seem at all phased about any of this, telling the Joes that "A prison is just a building...It can't hold a ninja." No wonder this guy was so popular!
•As with their capture of Cobra Commander a few issues back, I'm not really sure how it works when G.I. Joe takes a prisoner. Curiously, they don't unmask Storm Shadow (and let him keep the rest of his ninja outfit on), and I doubt it's because he too has plastic explosives in his mask, like the Commander did. Is Storm Shadow being charged with a crime? Is he going to be questioned? What's the legal process for members of a terrorist organization determined to rule the world in 1984, as far as a secret federal strike force like G.I. Joe is concerned...?
•Meanwhile, in the Everglades, Cobra Commander, Destro and The Baroness are traveling over water via what looks like the Cobra Water Moccasin (the same vehicle seen on the cover), although it is being piloted by a generic Cobra trooper, rather than Copperhead, whose action figure came packaged with the vehicle.
•"I'm sure you're going to like my new friend..." the Commander tells his two peers, "...Too bad Major Bludd couldn't join us!" The Baroness tells us this is because the Commander had Bludd placed in a dungeon back in Springfield due to his treachery in Switzerland, and when she reminds her boss that she too was involved in said treachery, he replies, " True. But you're much more charming than the major in every way my dear Baroness--"
•In the Gulf of Mexico, aboard a ship we will later learn is called the G.I. Jane, we meet a handful of new Joes, as the team prepares to investigate the sole clue found on Storm Shadow when he was apprehended: That he had something shipped to Chokoloskee, Florida.
Well, there's Cutter, a Coast Guardsmen in a Boston Red Sox ball cap, whose figure came packaged with the Killer WHALE hovercraft (That's "Warrior Hovering Assault Launch Envoy") but who is here captaining the Jane; Deep-Six, a quiet. even anti-social guy who Wild Bill describes as "the best diver and deep water man the Navy has" and whose figure came packaged with the "flying submarine" the SHARC (Which stands for "Submersible High Speed Attack Recon Craft", although Hama's script doesn't point that out; these were pretty cool ships that looked slightly Star Wars to me, and could dip in and out of the water); and, finally, Mutt and Junkyard, the team's extremely ornery dog-handler and his remarkably friendly dog, respectively (Note Rock 'n Roll and Trip-Wire's discussion of this pair: "Notice which one of 'em is wearing the muzzle?" the former says, while the latter replies, "The one that bites--").
•Snake Eyes brings a cup of crawdad gumbo to Gung Ho in the hospital, where the Cajun marine is recovering frow a sword wound delivered by Storm Shadow. When he catches a glimpse of Snake Eye's tattoo, he comments that Storm Shadow had the same one and that maybe they went to the same tattoo parlor, but Snake Eyes completely disappears from the room mid-sentence, the way Batman is always disappearing on Commissioner Gordon.
•The Joes manage to insert the team of Torpedo, Trip-Wire, Mutt and Junkyard via helicopters, but not without the bad guys noticing them on radar, giving Hama a chance to demonstrate the over-the-top accent of one of Zartan's Dreadnoks.
Here is Buzzer, who apparently can't or won't pronounce "H" sounds: "'Eads up, Zartan! We got 'elicopters comin' in low and suspicious-like! You want me and the boyos to cook up a reception party with a couple o' 'eat-seekin' missiles?" (By the way, I just looked him up online, and apparently, he's from England and fell in with biker gangs in Australia, so he's accent could be either, or some kind of combination, I suppose).
•Cobra's Water Moccasin, the Joes' Dragonfly helicopters and the SHARC all engage in a short battle, but like the majority of Cobra vs. Joe firefights, no one is killed or injured during it.
• Back at Alcatraz, Storm Shadow's cell is found empty; he has apparently already made good on his promise to escape. And then, back in Florida, we get another demonstration of just how anti-social Deep Six is:
•In the swamp, Junkyard catches a scent and runs off, treeing Cobra agents Firefly and Wild Weasel, who had of course managed to abandon the Water Moccasin just before the SHARC had blown it up and, just as Mutt and the Joes capture them, Junkyard runs off again...this time arriving at Zartan's headquarters! Uh-oh.
Art by Larry Hama and Steve Leialoha
•How's that for a cover? Artists Mike Zeck and Bob Wiacek may not have drawn an action-packed image here, but you could scarcely ask for a more dramatic cover, hinting as it does at Snake Eyes' origins...and a connection between he, Stalker and Storm Shadow....?
•The first page splash is interesting too, mainly due to its credit box, which tells us that this issue was both scripted and the art broken down by Hama, while Leialoha handled the "finishes." This is the exact same team, we got on issue #21, the silent issue.
•This is a pretty big issue, with a whole lot going on, and one that does indeed begin to tell the origins of Snake Eyes, just as the cover promised.
There are three strands to the story. First, there's the action in the swamp, which takes up relatively little page space (and doesn't involve Snake Eyes in any way, shape or form). Second, an old, overweight Japanese man running a Cuban-Chinese restaurant in Spanish Harlem we will soon learn is known as "The Soft Master" is approached by Snake Eyes, and he begins telling Snake Eyes elements of his own origin story, one which Snake Eyes knows just about every aspect of, so the retelling is apparently for the benefit of the readers. And third, Stalker, Hawk and Scarlett, all gathered in the Pit around a computer monitor with the red hexagram from the I-Ching that Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow have tattooed on their arms, tell one another about the parts of Snake Eyes' past each of them know.
•There's a lot of plot and backstory here, obviously, and this post format isn't a good way to share it. Presumably, you've already read this issue.
If not, as briefly as possible, the Joes part of the story involves Stalker, Snake Eyes and a Japanese-American with an "unpronounceable" last name that everyone called Tommy, all soldiers in the Vietnam conflict. They are boarding a helicopter when Snake Eyes is shot in the face and though Stalker commands Tommy to leave him, Tommy nevertheless risks a hail of gunfire to retrieve Snake Eyes and get him aboard the copter. (Throughout this section, Snake Eyes wears a wide-brimmed hat that casts the upper half of his face in shadow, so that even though this is prior to his disfiguring accident, we don't really get to see much of his face here either. After he's wounded in battle, his face is swaddled in bandages; these facial wounds aren't the real bad ones though, the ones that he would later sustain on a G.I. Joe mission, which we've already seen dramatized). When Snake Eyes arrives back in the states, there's no one there to meet him at the airport...Hawk is the one that eventually tracks him down there, and has to deliver the news that his whole family was killed in a terrible car accident.
The Soft Master's story involves Snake Eyes coming to join "the family business" in Japan, a position that Tommy had promised him. This was that of a ninja clan, led by The Soft Master, his older brother The Hard Master, and their nephew Tommy, aka The Young Master. Snake Eyes trained with them for two years, and had begun to surpass Tommy's skills, so much so that The Hard Master spoke to Snake Eyes of having him replace The Young Master, something that Tommy had overheard. And then The Hard Master is killed by an arrow. Due to various ninja techniques, it appears all that certain that the person who shot the arrow was Tommy, as he had mastered "The Ear That Sees", allowing him to kill a target outside of his line of sight, based solely on his sense of hearing. And it seems clear that the intended target was Snake Eyes, as the Hard Master was using a different ninja technique to mimic Snake Eyes' heartbeat at the time he was shot. Pretty strong circumstantial evidence!
Both Tommy and Snake Eyes disappeared after that. Later, a ninja turned up in Cobra's employ using the name "Storm Shadow", the translation of the family's name, the "unpronounceable" "Arashikage." Storm Shadow then, is Snake Eyes' old friend from the army and ninja training.
As for the swamp storyline, that's much more simple and straightforward!
Mutt, who seems to have removed his muzzle between issues, is pissed at Junkyard, who he thinks has betrayed them.
But the dog is playing the long game, and leads the Cobra high command—Cobra Commander, Destro, The Baroness and Zartan—out into the swamp...and directly into quicksand!
Amusingly, not only does Hama continue to portray Mutt and both more temperamental and less clever than his dog, but despite supposedly being his partner and handler, Mutt never seems to have any idea what Junkyard is up to.
Art by Frank Springer and Andy Mushynsky
•Alright, if Mike Zeck's cover for the previous issue wasn't exactly action-packed, Michael Golden makes up for it with this one: Ninjas fighting on an elevated train, while a helicopter gives chase!
•This issue, entitled "Snake-Eyes: The Origin Part II" obviously continues the origin of Snake Eyes, but Hama and Leialoha have turned over art duties. (Oh, and yes, there's a hyphen in Snake Eyes' name here; you'll notice that hyphen seems to come and go; it's not just me spelling it differently in diffeent instances.)
•In the swamp, Zartan and The Baroness fire on the fleeing Junkyard, but Destro aims a wrist-rocket at the base of a nearby tree, knocking it towards them so they are able to climb out of the quicksand. The Joes continue to give chase to Firefly and Wild Weasel, who had escaped their temporary capture...and prepared a deadly Malayan tiger gate for the. ir pursuers. Luckily, Junkyard manages to rush ahead and set that off, without getting impaled himself. That dog's really the MVP of this mission, so far. Once Zartan and the others arrive though, Junkyard and his human helpers are outnumbered, and they all flee the swamp.
•But let's return to Snake Eyes' origin, shall we?
The Joes keep story-swapping. Six years after Hawk saw Snake Eyes at the airport, he and Stalker started putting together the G.I. Joe team. They managed to track Snake Eyes down to a town in the High Sierras, which he apparently visited once a month to pick up his government check. The local lumberjacks told them that Snake Eyes lived in a little cabin up in the mountains and, further, that he was a werewolf.
"A what?" the Hawk in the flashback story says.
"A werewolf," the mailman Hawk questions says. "Fur. Tail. Bays at the moon. Even got some sort of mark on his wrist. Don't pay it no mind. Just logger talk, that's all."
•This exchange leads to my favorite panel in the G.I. Joe series so far, though. The pair go up to Snake Eyes' cabin and, within, they find a wolf, so naturally Hawk addresses it:
•Snake Eyes climbs into the back of their jeep, and Hawk looks over his shoulder at the wolf, now outside the cabin. "He's going to leave that poor animal behind all by himself?" Hawk asks, to which Stalker replies, "Hawk, that 'poor animal' is a wolf. He don't need no walkies, and he thinks Alpo is for sissies."
I imagine this is first appearance of Timber, the wolf that Snake-Eyes kept as a pet in the cartoon, and which came packaged with the second version of the Snake Eyes action figure, the one released in 1985 (That's the Snake Eyes figure that came with the cool visor, like the one you might see on a medieval knight's helmet, instead of the goggles we've seen him wearing up until now, and it's the one that young Caleb owned).
I'm not sure if Timber will show up in the comic again after this, but, following Junkyard, he's the second Joe "pet" to show up in the series. I'm now wondering if we'll see others, like Shipwreck's parrot Polly, Spirit's bald eagle Freedom or Law's dog Order...
•Scarlett then tells her part of Snake-Eyes' origin story: How she met him in the early days of the G.I. Joe team, how they talked and became friends and how she wanted to be more than friends, and was thus "miffed" when he told her that she reminded him of his sister (In these flashbacks, we don't hear any actual dialogue from Snake Eyes of course, we just get yellow narration boxes of Scarlett summarizing their talks and relationship as she tells Stalker and Hawk about them.
And then we get to the recounting of the accident in which he lost his face....and, apparently, his ability to speak. During a helicopter accident, Scarlet was trapped in one of the choppers, and Snake Eyes stayed behind to save her, taking a face full of burning fuel in the process. He saved her life, but at great cost to himself.
"He spent six months in the hospital and all the best plastic surgeons tried every trick in the book but there was nothing in the world that could ever make Snake-Eyes look human again," she says.
I wonder if he ever approached that discrete plastic surgeon in Europe, the one who put The Baroness back together, hotter than ever, after she was blown up....?
Anyway, he wasn't any more into Scarlet after being disfigured and rendered mute than he was before:
•Back in Harlem, The Soft Master is finishing up his story, telling Snake Eyes how he is searching for Storm Shadow, who he believes murdered his brother The Hard Master, when guess who appears...? Storm Shadow snatches the arrow that killed The Hard Master from the hands of The Soft Master, and flees, with Snake Eyes giving chase.
•Soon, we have a white ninja running through the streets of New York City, while a masked man in black toting a machine gun gives chase. It's a fun scene; note the little kid who sees Storm Shadow and calls out "Moon Knight!", a so far relatively rare instance that this is a Marvel comic (though presumably not set in the Marvel Universe proper):
•The Joes eventually get involved, via VAMP (that's "Vehicle Assault Multi-Purpose", in case you forgot) and a Dragonfly helicopter (as per the cover), and Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes end up fighting atop an elevated train. After Snake Eyes saves Storm Shadow from being splattered when the train enters a tunnel, the Cobra ninja throws away his knife and reveals a secret to his old comrade:
Snake Eyes seems to buy it, as he lets Storm Shadow go, and his fellow Joes find him sitting calmly on the train, waiting for them.
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