G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #31 (1985)
Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky
•Say, did you know that David Mazzucchelli inked this cover...? He did!
•This issue sees the introduction of Spirit, who is referred to repeatedly as "Spirit Iron-Knife" ("Spirit" is his codename, while "Charlie Iron-Knife" is his real name). Spirit is technically the team's second Native American member, following Airborne, but his character design makes his origins more obvious. He wears his long hair in braids, he has a headband and he even wears a loincloth over his pants. My main memory of him from the cartoon was that he had a pet bald eagle named Freedom and sometimes fought Storm Shadow, so I guess he was there supposed to be pretty well versed in martial arts. I do wonder if I revisited the cartoon show today, if his portrayal would be particularly cringey or not.
In this issue, Hawk, Ace and Wild Bill are abusing government resources to drop Snake-Eyes off at his mountain cabin so he can take his leave there ("This is a training flight, Ace," Hawk says when questioned, "If Snake-Eyes wants to parachute out while we happen to be over his cabin in the high Sierras, that's not my business...").
After Snake-Eyes jumps, we meet Spirit, who, with Airborne, has been hiding in a cargo container throughout the flight. Hawk has apparently assigned the pair to watch over Snake-Eyes in secret.
•At his cabin, Snake-Eyes has taken off his bodysuit and facemask, and is wearing civilian clothes...including a wide-brimmed camouflage hat that keeps his eyes and the upper half of his face in perpetual shadow. Remarkably, the rest of his face looks completely normal, which is...odd, given how many times we've been told how horribly disfigured he's supposed to be and seen people reacting to the sight of his face (Writer Larry Hama will eventually explain why Snake-Eyes looks normal without his mask now, but not for a few more issues, so I was pretty puzzled by this.)
•What does a ninja commando do on leave while at his mountain cabin...? Well, Snake-Eyes plays fetch with a wolf.
•Conveniently, Snake-Eyes has changed back into his uniform, complete with all the pouches strapped on, when Fred pulls up to the cabin. Seeing Snake-Eyes in the door, Destro immediately opens fire. Snake-Eyes dodges the first hail of bullets, grabs his Uzi and starts blasting back. A huge firefight has broken out, complete with explosions, as Destro fires a wrist-rocket and Snake-Eyes targets their car's gas tank.
•Hearing the first shots, Spirit and Airborne rush to the cabin. They were positioned, we are told, ten miles away. I am sure the Joes are all in peak physical condition, but I think Hama over-estimates just how fast human beings can run. In what couldn't possibly be more than a few minutes, they cover five miles, with Spirit cajoling Airborne "It's only another five miles!"
•Destro takes a few bullets to the face. I like when bullets bounce of his metal head. Here, they go "TZING!" and "CLANG!" and he responds simply with "Unnhh! He nicked me!" If only he could have worked something about polished beryllium steel into the panel...
•Seventeen action-packed panels later, Airborne and Spirit arrive! Dudes shouldn't be on the Joe team; they should be in the Olympics.
•Things look grim for Snake-Eyes. Firefly had tossed a grenade into his cabin, and though Snake-Eyes threw a big, heavy table atop it, the force of the explosion was enough to bounce him off a wall. Destro enters and seems to have the drop on the prone Joe, pointing his gun at him and telling him, "I think you will die like a dog..."
And hey, speaking of dogs, Destro is about to pull the trigger when he thinks he hears a dog, but it turns out to be "A wolf!!!" Snake-Eyes' semi-tame wolf friend pounces just in time, engaging Destro and keeping him too busy to pull the trigger.
•Eventually, Destro is able to beat back the wolf with his metal gauntlets, dismissing it with pretty much exactly what you might think Destro would say: "Get off me, you filthy cur!"
(I guess I would have also accepted "mangy cur").
And hey, speaking of dogs, Destro is about to pull the trigger when he thinks he hears a dog, but it turns out to be "A wolf!!!" Snake-Eyes' semi-tame wolf friend pounces just in time, engaging Destro and keeping him too busy to pull the trigger.
•Eventually, Destro is able to beat back the wolf with his metal gauntlets, dismissing it with pretty much exactly what you might think Destro would say: "Get off me, you filthy cur!"
(I guess I would have also accepted "mangy cur").
•The issue ends in highly dramatic fashion. By this point, Airborne and Firefly have shot each other, Spirit shot Fred, Spirit and Destro ran at one another shooting and then the cabin explodes. The children of 1985 would have to wait an entire month to find out who lived and who died. Luckily, in 2026, we have only to turn the page of Image Comics' G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero Compendium One...
Art by Frank Springer and Andy Mushynsky
•What's this? A cover featuring Zartan and his Dreadnoks? That seems an odd choice, given where we left off last issue.
Into this tableau strides a person whose identity is disguised by their winter gear. The newcomer shoos away the "carrion birds," telling them, "These men have too much meanness in them for your delicate stomachs!" Noting that this figure speaks to vultures, the wounded Spirit asks him if he has "medicine powers."
Destro says nothing but aims a pair of wrist-rockets at the man's back and fires them from what is probably not more than 20 feet away. Without so much as looking over his shoulder, the stranger whirls his climbing axe in a horizontal vertical eight shape, deftly deflecting both rockets with a "SPAK!" and "KA-THAKK!" and they fly harmlessly off-panel.
I'm not sure why they didn't explode either on contact with his axe or when they landed somewhere nearby, but I guess the stranger must have hit them just so.
The stranger pulls off his hood and goggles and introduces himself as The Soft Master. He said he already knows who the Cobra agents are, and tells Destro that Firefly's wounds are superficial, so that he can "help you carry this other villain off this mountain and leave me to my work."
He tosses an armful of guns after them, adding "And take these weapons with you. They are useless to me."
He tosses an armful of guns after them, adding "And take these weapons with you. They are useless to me."
•Hama leaves the action on the mountain just long enough to check in on The Pit, where preparations are underway for a party, to introduce two new Joes to the comic, both of whom were 1984 releases in the toy line: Recondo, a jungle trooper with a jaunty hat and big handlebar mustache, and Blowtorch, a yellow and red clad flame thrower. Their introduction isn't terribly dramatic; they are riding in a Jeep driven by Clutch, dropping off ice cream and soda for the party.
•Fred, the most badly wounded of the Cobra agents, is mad at Firefly and Destro for leaving rather than staying to fight, and Destro tells him, "I am not fool enough to fight a man who can move faster than I can see." It's not entirely clear, but it looks like the tail on a dialogue balloon or two attributes dialogue meant to be Fred's to Firefly on the page featuring the retreating Cobra.
•Back by the cabin, The Soft Master heals Spirit and begins extracting the two bullets in Airborne...apparently with his bare hands. The portly ninja gives a little speech that sounds a bit like "guns don't kill people, people kill people":
Guns do not covet wealth, seek revenge or justify their actions with righteousness. Fear not the weapon, but the man who wields it.Though middle-aged Caleb is a staunch proponent of gun control, an issue that never even occurred to eight-year-old Caleb in 1985, I guess I can buy what the Soft Master is selling here.
•I'm much less convinced by The Soft Masters reasoning for why he gave the Cobra guys their guns back:
These are desperate, crafty men. Who knows what kind of diabolical instrument of destruction they could improvise if they were driven to such extremes?
...
We would be battling the unknown. Give a man a weapon and he will use it.
We know their weapons and therefore we know their limitations.
Maybe...? Although I guess it's easier to dismiss the danger gun-wielding enemies might pose if you're fast enough to knock missiles out of the air.
I like that Billy's "Cobra Youth" costume looks pretty much exactly like what I would have been wearing in Cub Scouts at the time (save for Cobra sigils on it rather than images of a bear's head).
I also find myself wondering, would I have shot a fascistic terrorist in the face if a hot lady in glasses and black leather had asked me too and hugged me...?
I also find myself wondering, would I have shot a fascistic terrorist in the face if a hot lady in glasses and black leather had asked me too and hugged me...?
•As for the cover boys, they only appear on three pages of this issue. They are speeding down the highway on their motorcycles, recapping their earlier adventure at McGuire Air Force Base, when the back of a semi trailer labeled "Arbco Moving" opens up in front of them. Inside, they find Cobra Commander in a sort of mobile office. He tells them he wants them to be his personal bodyguards, and when Zartan asks what happened to previous personal bodyguard Storm Shadow, the Commander says the ninja is locked up in inescapable Alcatraz and, besides, "he was getting too nosey...He might have found out something dangerous about his uncle!"
As the Commander says this, we see an exterior of the trailer, and Storm Shadow is clinging to its top, his ear to the roof so that he can hear what is being said within. Once the truck arrives in Springfield, Storm Shadow will reveal himself to the Commander, and explain how he made his escape from Alcatraz.
As the Commander says this, we see an exterior of the trailer, and Storm Shadow is clinging to its top, his ear to the roof so that he can hear what is being said within. Once the truck arrives in Springfield, Storm Shadow will reveal himself to the Commander, and explain how he made his escape from Alcatraz.
Later, the Commander tells Storm Shadow that he knows Bludd and The Baroness are plotting against him, and promises to reveal to him the name of the assassin who killed his uncle The Hard Master if the ninja is able to keep him safe through the big upcoming Cobra rally.
•Back on the mountain, The Soft Master finds that Snake-Eyes and his wolf had managed to jump into a secret trap door before the cabin exploded, and that they are both alive, but unconscious. Spirit goes off to find firewood, and has a brief conversation with a bald eagle, which alerts him to a blood trail...this belonging to Fred, who snuck away from Destro and Firefly while they were asleep. He's heading back to the cabin to finish off the wounded Joes, Soft Master or no Soft Master.
As noted previously, on the cartoon, Spirit had a pet bald eagle named Freedom. I wonder, is this meant to be Freedom? Will Spirit and this eagle meet up again and become friends? Or is this just Hama kinda sorta working Freedom into the comic without actually committing to Spirit having an eagle partner with him all the time?
Take a moment to look at that bear. Note that it not only dwarfs the humans in the panel, but that they are in the foreground and it in the background. That is one huge bear.
•The bear trees the trio, and Firefly is about to drop a purse full of plastic explosives on it when Spirit intervenes, noting that the explosion would also knock down the tree they are in ("For someone called the 'Firefly' you're not very bright," Spirit scolds him; sick burn, Spirit!)
He grabs the purse, drops it around the bear's neck, and then jumps to the ground himself, taking off at a run. His plan is to have the bear give chase to him, and get blown up as it does so, safely away from the base of the tree.
The bear doesn't cooperate, though, and starts to climb the tree. The result? The bear is apparently vaporized in the explosion, while the tree snaps at the trunk, topples off a cliff then plunges into a river below, with Destro and Firefly still clinging to it.
I can't really explain exactly why eight-year-old Caleb developed a crush on this particular cartoon character rather than the equally shapely Scarlett, Cover Girl or The Baroness. (I did find Zarana, who hasn't yet been introduced into the comics, attractive as a kid too, though.)
It might have been he short hair, which I've always liked...although maybe the cartoon is the reason I like women with short hair...?
It might be that while she didn't wear the tight-fitting costumes that Scarlett and The Baroness did, her shirt somehow seemed sexier to me than, say, The Baroness fetish gear-esque black leather and corset get-up. On the cartoon, she didn't wear a shirt under it, and she didn't have it buttoned or zipped all the way up all the time, so there was always a little triangle of bare flesh between the base of her neck and her chest. I don't think they ever showed much in the way of cleavage on the cartoon, but that particular costuming choice at least alluded to the possibility of cleavage, I guess. (The image of her on her "file card", the illustrated part of the packaging the figures came in, had her in a shirt with a zipper and there it was pulled down enough to reveal some rather significant cleavage for a children's toy.)
It might have simply been the fact that her voice was somehow more appealing than that of the other female characters on the show too, I guess.
By the way, as an adult I stumbled across Matt Baker's character, Canteen Kate. Is it just me, or does Lady Jaye seem inspired by the character...?
Not so much the Lady Jaye action figure, but certainly the cartoon character...and, to a lesser extent, the comic book character.
There, they are confronted by Grunt and Scarlet, the latter of whom seems particularly confrontational, so much so that Lady Jaye immediately sasses her and Scarlett responds with, "Why, you little--" And then Lady Jaye calls Scarlett "this tawdry redhead". And then, when Ripcord does finally show Grunt and Scarlett their orders, Lady Jaye seems to take some satisfaction in announcing that they they are the old-timers' replacements.
I thought it noteworthy that Scarlett and Lady Jaye have so much enmity toward one another right of the bat.
If you recall, when Scarlett first met Cover Girl back in #16, the two women didn't exactly hit it off either. When Rock 'n Roll complimented Cover Girl's shooting, Scarlett immediately dismissed it, saying it's easier to hit targets that don't shoot back than it is to take out actual opponents.
"Let's reserve our judgement 'til we see how she holds up in a real battle," Scarlett said.
Cover Girl responded: "Better than your face has, Dearie..."
The women of the Joe team aren't exactly a sisterhood, I guess.
Now I'm curious to see how Jinx, who will be the final female G.I. Joe to join the team (at least as far as I know), is received when she's finally introduced...
•Finally, Fred ends up dying on the mountaintop from a loss of blood and, as The Soft Master puts it, the loss of a will to live after he realizes how meaningless his vengeance would be. The final page of this issue shows a new Fred, who looks exactly like the old one, arriving at the home of the old Fred to replace him, to the surprise of old Fred's children.
"You're not our daddy!" the little girl says when she gets close enough to the new Fred to realize something's not quite the same about him. He creepily responds, "I am now."
Art by Frank Springe and Andy Mushynsky
•This issue focuses on two parallel celebrations of sort (And, indeed, the title of the story is "Celebration!"). The Joes are celebrating the grand opening of the new Pit (as well as a surprise they don't yet know about), with General "Iron Butt" Austin in attendance and, in Springfield, Cobra is having a huge rally.
•Although Airborne mentions that Spirit is asleep, when he shakes the blankets where he things the big guy is, he finds out that Spirit has actually snuck out, leaving his bedroll to make it seem like he was sleeping there. He's actually at a nearby mall on crutches, with Blowtorch and Ripcord. What's he doing there? He wants to visit the florist to look for some plants he can use as medicine to help him heal ("It's not that Spirit mistrusts modern medicine, he just feels that there are some things that the old ways do better," Ripcord tells Blowtorch.)
So, what does Destro's true face look like...? Well, apparently, it's something, as the mere sight of it is enough to make The Baroness faint. Is his face horribly damaged like Snake-Eyes' is...? Is he just so handsome that she immediately swooned into unconsciousness...? Or was she so overcome with emotion at the fact that he showed her his face at all that she passed out...? There's no one way of knowing.
Destro rushes the stage and manages to stop Billy from shooting Cobra Commander and stop Storm-Shadow from cutting Billy down. Why? Well, he drops a bombshell: Cobra Commander is apparently Billy's father!
I imagine if this scene was a way to write off some of the original Joes, who we've been seeing less and less of as new characters keep being introduced. Interestingly, despite what Austin says, we'll still see Scarlet and Stalker going out on missions in the future.
Perhaps surprisingly, Bongo will play a sizable role in a future storyline, but that's for a future post.
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