G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Pt. 8

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #34 (1985)
Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky

•This is a very strong issue, and a good candidate for any "best of" G.I. Joe collection, at least among the issues I've read so far. It's a done-in-one story, with no real connection to the various ongoing storylines...in fact, were it not credited to the regular creative team, I would suspect it might have been a fill-in issue. Perhaps writer Larry Hama just wanted to give readers something of a "breather" issue after the bigger goings on of the last few issues...and what's to come in the near future.

•At McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, G.I. Joe pilot Ace is going up in the team's fighter jet, the Skystriker, to test some newly installed equipment. Lady Jaye (still spelled "Lady J" here), is going with him. Meanwhile, at Springfield Municipal Airport, Wild Weasel is taking the Cobra Rattler up to test some of its new modifications, and The Baroness is riding along with him. That's some coincidence, huh? The entirety of the comic is devoted to the two enemy pilots encountering one another and then engaging in a prolonged duel in the skies, one that will bring all their various talents and the attributes of their planes to bear.

As for the ladies? They seem to mainly be there to give each pilot to talk to, explaining to them what is going on and what they are doing, so Hama doesn't have to resort to endless text boxes of narration, or having Ace and Wild Weasel think to themselves in thought clouds for 20 pages. 

•The aerial action is quite well rendered by the artists, and Hama does a great job of balancing the military talk with clear explanations of what's going on and why. In the end, the two pilots batter one another's planes badly, and expend all of their ammo, from their various missiles down to the last bullets in their guns, giving them apparently no choice but to call it quits and return to their corners.

As you can see here, though, they do so with a mutual sign of respect for one another's flying skills..."mutual respect" being something we haven't seen much of between the two opposing armies in this war comic thus far, given that, perhaps Storm Shadow aside, the bad guys aren't generally portrayed as being particularly noble. 

The above page is the penultimate one of the book. The last page features three panels, one a long shot of the two smoking planes flying away in opposite directions, followed by two more panels which are each parallel to one another, the ladies in the back seats asking their respective pilots why they are disengaging, while the pilots seem to stare stoically into the horizon, not answering. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #35 (1985)

Art by Rod Whigham, Mark Bright, Bob Camp, Larry Hama, Andy Mushynsky and Mike Esposito

•I wonder how popular the Dreadnoks were with G.I. Joe fans...? This is their third cover appearance so far, and all three of those covers came within the last six issues. 

•I also wonder what went on behind the scenes with this particular issue, as there are four pencil artists (including Hama himself, who is third credited) and two different inkers. Perhaps remarkably given all the artists involved, the book holds together quite well visually, and if you skipped the credits box, you might not realize it took the work of six different men to draw the 22 pages of G.I. Joe that hit the stands this particular month in 1985.

•This issue's story seems pretty straightforward, with three of the bad guys taking to the highway on a joyride, simultaneous to three of the good guys starting out on a road trip. Obviously, the two plotlines will eventually intersect violently, as the parallel testing of the planes did in the previous issue.

The bad guys are The Dreadnoks. They discover Zartan's shiny new motorcycle in a subbasement beneath Springfield, and while the others fret, Buzzer sits on it, demonstrates the holographic gadgets that allows it to disguise itself as other vehicles and ultimately decides to take it out for a spin, with Ripper and Torch following on their bikes.

And the good guys? Well, Rock 'n Roll is headed home to Malibu, and he is taking Breaker and Clutch with him for some surfing. They are traveling in style, riding in Rock 'n Roll's fancy car, which a stunned gas station attendant tells us is a 1956 Bel Air Nomad. 

•Interestingly, when the kid at the gas station overhears the Joe's talking about working in the motor pool (their cover story) and expresses an interest in joining the army himself, Rock 'n Roll isn't exactly encouraging: 

•The joyriding Dreadnoks and the road-tripping Joes have their violent intersection on page five, in a panel of Rock n' Roll looking out his side window, where all we can see are speedlines and two big, red sound effects, "VRRROOOM!!" and "RRRRIIIIPP!!" Apparently, Ripper used the huge, weird bayonet on his gun to gouge the whole side of Rock 'n Roll's car, the start of a vehicular rampage.

Note that the Dreadnoks didn't know the car contained Joes, only that the guys inside were "squares."

•The Joes chase them into a tunnel and then see this strange sight coming careening out of the tunnel, which is shocking enough to send them skidding into a crash (Note the license plate on the semi with the skulls and chains all over its grill). 

It's a bad crash, too, as the car flips over and bursts into flames. The Dreadnoks hang around to taunt the injured squares for a little bit before taking off. (And if you're worried about the Joes, don't be; emergency services arrive in time to get them out of the wreck, douse the flames and get them bandaged up and loaded into the back of an ambulance).

•Meanwhile, another strange vehicle is on the road, a bus emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, and with a familiar looking license plate. Curiously enough, it stops to pick up a passenger. I suppose you can guess who this is, right...? 

•The Dreadnoks next use Zartan's special bike's camouflage abilities to make them look like a general's car accompanied by two motorcycle officers (by extending the field a little, Buzzer can also disguise the other two if they are close enough) to sneak onto an air force base and start cutting, burning and chopping up the planes there, just like they did in G.I. Joe #30 ("Us Dreadnoks do love to bash planes!" Cutter exclaims). 

When one explodes, summoning base security, Buzzer is able to disguise them again and they take off unnoticed. One thing that doesn't ever seem to change when the appearance of the bike does, however, is the license plate number. And so even as they speed away disguised to look like an Air Force security team in a Jeep and on a pair of motorcycles, Rock 'n Roll notices the "ZTN-123" plate on the Jeep and commandeers the ambulance to give chase. 

When he eventually catches up, he hurls an oxygen tank at Buzzer, blowing up the special motorcycle. 

As for Torch and Ripper, they find the mysterious buzz speeding towards the...but, at the last minute, it turns into a large transport helicopter, the front of which is open to scoop them up. The copter takes off with the two Dreadnoks—and the little old lady—aboard.

•When Zartan, who is of course who it was disguised as the bus driver, tells them to arrange an accident for the old lady, they find that she has somehow disappeared, a feat, Zartan says, "worthy of a ninja master!" 

But which of the three ninja masters in the book, Snake-Eyes, Storm Shadow or The Soft Master...?

•So, when Clutch took leave to visit his hometown in #20, he discovered a top-secret Cobra plot to build an experimental jet pack and ended up nearly dying repeatedly. When Snake-Eyes went to visit his mountain cabin on his leave in #31, Cobra attacked him and ended up blowing up his cabin. And now when Rock 'n Roll, Clutch and Breaker try to take their leave, the end up running into the Dreadnoks and nearly burning to death in a terrible car accident.

I don't know, if I were a member of the G.I. Joe team, I think I would just maybe not ever try to take any time off...? Doing so seems to be at least as dangerous as fighting terrorists all the time. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #36 (1985)

Art by Rod Whigham, Mark Bright, Larry Hama, Bob Camp, Andy Mushynsky and Mike Espositio

•I think it was upon the first mention of Yo-Jo Cola in this series (in issue #29, where it "cola" was spelled with a "k") that I noted Hama's seeming aversion to having the adult heroes indulge in adult beverages, presumably because, no matter how sophisticated the storytelling might be and how mature the content, it is still essentially a comic meant to sell toys to little boys. (Smoking seems to be okay, though; I mean, I can't think of any of the Joes or Cobra agents doing so, but certainly other characters have done so throughout). Here's another example. 

While the Joes discuss their mission, providing support for the WHALE as it investigates Cobra activity on an island in the South Atlantic, Doc offers Deep-Six not coffee, but hot chocolate. His response? "Never touch the stuff," as if he had just been offered coffee...or whiskey. (I wonder, could Hama have written "coffee" into the script, only for the editors to suggest he change it...?) I don't know; maybe Deep-Six is concerned about his sugar intake.

•The rest of the issue is mostly devoted to a couple of sea battles, as both the G.I. Jane freighter, which Deep-Six and company are on, and the WHALE, 20 miles away containing Torpedo and Snow-Job (wearing his usual white fur-trimmed coat, despite the warm weather), come under fire at the same time. There's a third plotline, which involves more action on a different boat far away, but we'll get to that in a moment.

The Jane is being attacked by "Sea-Rattlers," the standard Rattlers with pontoons attached (these were not different toys sold by Hasbro but seem specific to the comics). The Joe crew, which also includes Trip-Wire, put up a decent fight, but the ship is ultimately set afire and sunk, our heroes escaping on a rubber life raft.

Meanwhile the WHALE, which is investigating a tiny little island that seems to consist almost entirely of Cobra ASP (Assault Systems Pod) artillery units, draws their fire, and in short order, the attention of a Cobra hyrdofoil. This seems like it might be different than The Moray, the Cobra hydrofoil vehicle released as part of the 1985 toy line...or perhaps Marvel just miscolored it, as the one in the comic is the standard Cobra blue, whereas the Moray is red.

Both battles are well-written and exciting, despite the relatively low stakes (That is, by this point in the comic it's a pretty safe bet that no character with a toy based on them is terribly likely to get killed in action). 

The WHALE fight is the more light-hearted of the two, as Torpedo constantly frustrates the expectations of Cobra officer commanding the action, making full use of the hovercraft's ability to switch back and forth between being a land vehicle and a sea vehicle. They also prove more successful in their battle than the guys on the Jane did. 

•Meanwhile, there's a more intense fight on the Staten Island Ferry in New York Harbor, which Scarlett and Snake-Eyes are taking back to base. Scarlett is wearing a long coat, as is Snake-Eyes; his ensemble also includes what looks like a military cap and opaque sunglasses. Again, he looks remarkably un-disfigured, as he did while at this cabin. We can even see his blonde hair under his hat.

They are spotted by Fred II and a couple of other plainclothes Crimson Guardsmen; they recognize Scarlett, but not Snake-Eyes, and when they approach her with guns drawn, a fight breaks out, with Snake-Eyes throwing hot coffees in the face of one Guardsmen at lots of shooting back and forth.

•Near the end, Snake-Eyes has the better of Fred, who is dangling just over the surface of the water. That's when we finally learn why Snake-Eyes has looked so "normal" in these last few appearances: He was wearing some sort of apparently very convincing rubber mask over his own ruined face, which is scary-looking enough to elicit screams from Fred and see him recoil into the water. 

•The issue ends with an in-comics appearance by the ultimate G.I. Joe toy: Aircraft Carrier the U.S.S. Flagg. (Cutter doesn't name it here, but you can see its name faintly on the side in that last panel). The Flagg, first released in 1985, was seven feet long, with a surface big enough to park multiple Skystrikers on. I never saw one in real life, but The Toy Collectors Guide I've been referring to in order to see which figures and vehicles were released in which year, calls it "the largest playset ever created for any action figure line" and, later, "arguably the coolest action figure playset ever created." 

It came with the action figure Keel-Haul, an admiral and the ship's commander. He never made it onto the original cartoon, and isn't seen during this panels featuring the Flagg, either. 

I guess we'll see if he appears later in the series. As an admirable, he would be one of the highest ranked members of the Joe team.