Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky
•This issue's cover by Mike Zeck and John Beatty is an interesting one, as it is maybe the first "symbolic" cover of the series so far, depicting a hooded skeleton with a machinegun blasting away (And, in that respect, looks a little like one that might have appeared on an old issue of DC's Weird War Tales, which regularly featured skeletons).
Having now read the issue, I see that the skeletal figure above is meant to be a Grim Reaper or Death-like figure, but, because its robe is colored red instead of the traditional black, that's not as clear as it could be. Also, because Larry Haman's G.I. Joe narrative includes red ninjas that dress pretty much like this, I assumed that the image might have been in reference to them rather than some sort of personified death.
•The issue opens right where the last left off. In front of the Vietnam Memorial, the Cobra Crimson Guardsman code-named Fred II is holding Stalker and Snake Eyes at gunpoint, and he's just made a dramatic revelation: He used to be Wade Collins, a member of their Long Range Recon Patrol that they had left for dead during the Vietnam War. What a small world, huh?
Much of this issue is thus devoted to Fred/Wade telling the two captured Joes what happened between the time Stalker saw him take a machine gun blast to the chest in Vietnam and now, after he ushers the pair into his car, keeping his gun on them from the back seat while Snake Eyes drives.
I found this all rather interesting, despite the rather preposterous coincidence (and there will be several more such coincidences revealed in the years to come, showing how various Joe and Cobra characters crossed one another's paths during Vietnam and its immediate aftermath).
That is mainly because, as I've mentioned before, Cobra doesn't really have a clear, articulated reason for being, a shared goal of the sort one would think necessary to inspire so many people to join the organization.
By this point in the series, we've only gotten a few vague hints of what binds Cobra together from Cobra Commander's occasional speeches and glimpses into his origins. So far Coba mainly seems to a pyramid scheme inspired by vaguely libertarian-sounding talking points, a pyramid scheme that somehow went from selling cleaning products to becoming an independent military whose budget must rival that of the United States and the Soviet Union...and has just become its own nation state.
Fred/Wade's story is the first time we hear any member of Cobra explain how and why they joined.
Wade had a rough time of it after Stalker and the others left him for dead. He survived the AK-47 blast to the chest that Stalker had thought had killed him. He was found by "the NVA regulars" (there's no footnote here, oddly, but he's referring to the North Vietnamese Army), who dug out all the bullets ("They didn't have much in the way of anesthesia...") and held him captive for two years.
When the war ended, he returned home...only to have a hippie spit in his face in a San Francisco airport, and his wife's lawyer meet him there with divorce papers. And it gets worse. He couldn't get a job ("I found out that the captains of industry weren't too keen on hiring vets," he says "We had a bad reputation, they said...")
This is the passage that deals with his discovering and joining Cobra, presumably in Springfield: 
As you can see, it's pretty vague. Wade says he believed, but never mentions what about the organization, exactly, that he believed.
From what little writer Larry Hama gives us here, it seems as if that what Cobra provided was acceptance and a sense of community, both of which he felt he had lost after the war. It's easy to imagine that someone who was a prisoner of war so long, or felt that his fellow soldiers had somehow betrayed him, might want a degree of payback against the United States and its army, and might therefore join a terrorist organization opposing the U.S., but he doesn't ever articulate that here. (Likewise, as a former soldier who we can assume was pretty damn elite—he did serve with Stalker, Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, after all—Wade would have been an attractive recruit to a paramilitary organization, but, because this is Wade telling his own story, we never hear why it was that Cobra might have wanted him.)
•Meanwhile, several other storylines intersect, as various characters move towards Springfield.
From what little writer Larry Hama gives us here, it seems as if that what Cobra provided was acceptance and a sense of community, both of which he felt he had lost after the war. It's easy to imagine that someone who was a prisoner of war so long, or felt that his fellow soldiers had somehow betrayed him, might want a degree of payback against the United States and its army, and might therefore join a terrorist organization opposing the U.S., but he doesn't ever articulate that here. (Likewise, as a former soldier who we can assume was pretty damn elite—he did serve with Stalker, Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, after all—Wade would have been an attractive recruit to a paramilitary organization, but, because this is Wade telling his own story, we never hear why it was that Cobra might have wanted him.)
•Meanwhile, several other storylines intersect, as various characters move towards Springfield.
The fan belt in the stolen truck Candy Appel ejected Buzzer from has given out, and she accepts a ride from the guy with the spiked coffee who had dropped The Soft Master off in Springfield. When they realize "the little oriental fellow" left his suitcase in the car, they circle back towards Springfield in order to return it to him.
Billy, still wearing a black gi with a white belt, has been riding towards Springfield with some nuns who drop him off ten miles outside of town. The spiked coffee guy ends up picking him up too.
Candy has just called out the driver out for drinking and driving—"That coffee you've been drinking isn't just 'laced with brandy'--it's mostly brandy!"—and, as they argue, Billy has a vision of impending death, giving us an image of The Grim Reaper to echo that on the cover:
•As for Buzzer, after parting ways with Candy, he rode the rails back to Springfield, and there he runs into Firefly and Scrap-Iron, the latter of whom is making his first appearance in the comic and gets perhaps the most perfunctory introduction of any Cobra agent so far: 
"Say hello to Scrap-Iron!"
Scrap-Iron was released as part of the 1984 line, and I recall him being a pretty cool action figure (Even if he didn't have too much to do in the cartoon). He's another figure that my best friend at the time had. He was Cobra's "anti-armor specialist" and was dressed in Cobra blue and red, although he had his own costume and gear that separated him from the masses.
His action figure came with a little missile launcher with two red missiles. (You can see he and Firefly setting it up just after the 40 second mark of the opening sequence of The Revenge of Cobra mini-series, just before Mutt and Junkyard appear to knock them down and then Blowtorch sets it on fire).
His action figure came with a little missile launcher with two red missiles. (You can see he and Firefly setting it up just after the 40 second mark of the opening sequence of The Revenge of Cobra mini-series, just before Mutt and Junkyard appear to knock them down and then Blowtorch sets it on fire).
•How fast is The Soft Master...? Well, previously, Destro had said he could move too fast for Destro to see. Here, after he discovers who it was that had really killed his brother The Hard Master, we see The Soft Master making for the exit as Cobra agents posing as Springfield's municipal police force enter the station, and Whigham and Mushynsky draw him not unlike the way someone might draw The Flash for the Distinguished Competition:
I've heard it said before that the G.I. Joe toys/cartoons/comics of the 1980s were a recruitment effort for the United States military. Maybe they started out that way, but, the longer I read the comic, the more it becomes clear that while, sure, they make the people who serve in the military seem pretty cool, they're still not nearly as cool as ninjas are.
If anything, I think the G.I. Joe toys/cartoons/comics of the 1980s were a recruitment effort for ninjas.
If anything, I think the G.I. Joe toys/cartoons/comics of the 1980s were a recruitment effort for ninjas.
•The various storylines finally intersect quite violently at the climax. The Soft Master is speeding out of town in a stolen police car, pursued by Buzzer, Firefly and Scrap-Iron, and he manages to lose them by maneuvering around a speeding train in the nick of time.
At that same moment, the car containing Billy, Candy and the drunk driver are barreling towards the train in the opposite direction. There's a struggle for the wheel, and their car ends up crashing into the railroad crossing signal, instantly bursting into flame.
The Soft Master goes back to save them, but Scrap-Iron has climbed up a telephone pole in able to survey the damage on the other side of the train and fires his missiles.
The first strikes The Soft Master directly; we know he's fast enough to dodge a missile, but he intercepted it in order to save the people in the burning car.
The Soft Master goes back to save them, but Scrap-Iron has climbed up a telephone pole in able to survey the damage on the other side of the train and fires his missiles.
Now, characters in superhero comic books have a tendency to escape death and/or come back to life after actually dying on a fairly regular basis, but these seem to be some pretty permanent deaths, right...? Surely we've seen the last of The Soft Master, Candy Appel, Billy and The Drunk Driver in the pages of G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero. I can't imagine anything happening in future issues to contradict this at all.
•There is one more scene after that of the civilian characters being blow up, though, so the issue doesn't end on a down note.
Rather, Wade-turned-Fred shows up on the doorstep of his house, with Stalker and Snake Eyes behind him. He gives a sincere little speech to his fake, Cobra-assigned wife and kids, telling them he is quitting Cobra and going on the run, and how much he enjoyed being a family with them. To his surprise, they feel the same way, and the four of them decide to go on the run and live the rest of their lives as a real family.
Rather, Wade-turned-Fred shows up on the doorstep of his house, with Stalker and Snake Eyes behind him. He gives a sincere little speech to his fake, Cobra-assigned wife and kids, telling them he is quitting Cobra and going on the run, and how much he enjoyed being a family with them. To his surprise, they feel the same way, and the four of them decide to go on the run and live the rest of their lives as a real family.
Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky
•This is the first issue of the series I had read when it was originally released since 1984's #2. I don't remember where or why I bought it, and it's certainly possible it was a gift because, as I've probably mentioned before, as a child most of the comic books I read were ones that my mom or grandmother bought for me to read when I was home sick from school. If eight-going-on-nine-year-old Caleb did buy this for himself, I imagine it probably had something to do with the Lady Jaye, one of my favorite characters from the cartoon (and something of a cartoon character crush of mine) being on the cover. That cover artist Mike Zeck drew her shirt unzipped below her breasts might have also been a factor.
•Boobs! A motorcycle! Gunplay! A robot driving a semi! What grade-school boy could resist such a comic book cover!
•I can't tell you how many times I must have read this issue as a child, but I am assuming it was a lot, as rereading it 40 years later, I was somewhat surprised to realize I remembered it so well, including particular images, lines of dialogue and events that happened within.
•A very solid done-in-one, the issue features Lady Jaye taking a group of new Joes on one final training mission in the desert outside Las Vegas before they move from the "provisional" to "official" roster. Between the five of them, they are driving three different vehicles from the toy line which are here being introduced to the comics readers.
Meanwhile, a bald, buff, mustachioed, caped and monocle-rocking mad scientist is trying to convince Destro and The Baroness that Cobra should buy a couple of his inventions, robot soldiers and "creeper-bombs", the latter of which, when detonated, cause the instantaneous growth of thorny, entangling vines that further emit a strong pollen that works like a knock-out gas.
Meanwhile, a bald, buff, mustachioed, caped and monocle-rocking mad scientist is trying to convince Destro and The Baroness that Cobra should buy a couple of his inventions, robot soldiers and "creeper-bombs", the latter of which, when detonated, cause the instantaneous growth of thorny, entangling vines that further emit a strong pollen that works like a knock-out gas.
Coming across the Joes, the evil scientist decides to use them as test subjects. While they are knocked out by the pollen, he strips them and their vehicles of their weaponry, transports them to a maze of junked cars and then sics more robots carrying the spore bombs on them.
•As for the introductions, Jaye is driving the Silver Mirage motorcycle (sans sidecar). The new Joes are Bazooka, Crank-Case, Heavy Metal and Airtight, and they are riding in the AWE Striker (which stands for All-Weather and Environment) and the Mauler MBT (that's Mobile Battle Tank).
The Crank-Case figure came packaged with the former, and Heavy Metal with the latter. Bazooka, as his name suggests, was a missile specialist who carried a bazooka in battle, and the green and yellow clad Airtight was a "Hostile Environment" specialist who came with a gas mask of sorts. (The latter two appeared more frequently on the cartoon than either of the former two; Bazooka seems particularly prominent in my memory. He was often paired with Alpine, who we haven't met in the comic book yet, and he was characterized as being very, very dumb.)
The mad scientist is Dr. Mindbender, who would go on to become quite prominent in both the cartoon and the comics, although amusingly it doesn't seem like his name was quite settled on by the time this issue saw print. Repeatedly he is referred to as "Dr. Brain-Wave", although he is referred to as Dr. Mindbender in two instances.
Finally, his robot soldiers were B.A.T.s (Battle Android Troopers). Black and yellow in color, these had blank, T-shaped "faces", a clear chest revealing circuity within and their action figures came with interchangeable hands and weapons, including a claw, torch and gun.
While androids might seem a little too futuristic for a military-themed comic book/cartoon/toy line, one of the franchises' occasional flirtations with science-fiction and fantasy, their utility was obvious, especially in the cartoon, where no one ever seemed to get very badly hurt, let alone killed. After all, being robots, these were enemy soldiers that could regularly get shot and blown-up...without any human beings being killed in the process (I always assumed this is why the Foot Soldiers in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon series were robots, too).
While the G.I. Joe comics rather regularly showed Cobra soldiers getting gunned down or blown up, here Hama realizes the military application of robot soldiers, and when we first see them in the story, they are performing a suicide mission, running straight into the Joes' vehicles while wearing creeper-bombs on their backs. (Hama also takes advantage of the Joes having robot foes to depict them being destroyed in ways that would probably have been too gruesome were they human soldiers, though; at one point, for example, the Joes manage to trick a tank piloted by a B.A.T. into a car-crusher.)
•This may just be nostalgia speaking, but the overall quality of this issue coupled with the fact that it is a standalone story makes me think this one would be a great candidate for a "best of" collection of Hama's Real American Hero.
Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky
•Ace is flying a surveillance run over Cobra Island in his Skystriker, with Ripcord in the backseat (Here, his name is spelled "Rip-Cord"; like a lot of Joes with two syllable names, his seems to be spelled different ways at different points. According to the action figure packaging shown on thetoycollectorsguide.com, it's two words, "Rip Cord", whereas the text discussing the figure on the same site calls him "Ripcord," one word. Anyway, sorry if I misspell some of these guys' names constantly).
One thing they see but can't quite make sense of is "a circular thing near the east shore." This is the Cobra Terror Drome, a circular base that was released as a playset as part of the 1986 toy line. In comics, the base was "modular" like the Joe base and could be easily transported and erected. The Terror Dromes would play a fairly sizable part in the ongoing comics storyline, as Cobra sold them to client states around the world for their own mysterious and nefarious purposes.
After recapping his whole deal to Ace in a rather natural sounding dialogue exchange—remember, he was kinda sorta dating Candy Appel, whose father turned out to be a Crimson Guardsman and who, as far as he knows, escaped Joe custody in the company of Buzzer—he ejects himself from the jet and parachutes down to Cobra Island. This was not part of the official plan.
•In a Wahington D.C. hospital, General Hawk is meeting with General Austin, who is still recovering from a heart attack...and what looks like a pretty bad case of Norman Osborn Hair:
(Speaking of hair, Hawk seems to have grown his flattop out, so he doesn't look quite so identical to Duke anymore.)
The pair were talking about what a hard time they were having getting intel on Cobra Island and, at one point, Austin wished aloud that they had a man on the island, despite having been forbidden by their higher-ups to insert someone.
The pair were talking about what a hard time they were having getting intel on Cobra Island and, at one point, Austin wished aloud that they had a man on the island, despite having been forbidden by their higher-ups to insert someone.
Later, Hawk gets a phone call telling him that Ripcord had went rogue and parachuted onto the island...at which point Austin realizes Hawk had put Ripcord in that plane instead of any other Joe specifically because he expected him to jump out to investigate the Appels, given his personal investment (Also, as Ripcord's name suggests, he's the team HALO jumper and his specialty, conveniently enough, is jumping out of airplanes).
Hawk clarifies that he did expect Ripcord to jump, but not to do the surveillance himself: "Now that Rip-Cord has broken security, we are forced to sending a covert team in to bring him back and who knows what kind of nifty photographs and maps they'll bring back with them?"
Hawk clarifies that he did expect Ripcord to jump, but not to do the surveillance himself: "Now that Rip-Cord has broken security, we are forced to sending a covert team in to bring him back and who knows what kind of nifty photographs and maps they'll bring back with them?"
The pair, still dressed in generic army guy dress-up clothes rather than their eventual Joe uniforms, comment on Snake Eyes and Spirit's attire. They will shortly adopt their own personalized uniforms, of course, but it's interesting to hear Quick-Kick of all people commenting on anyone's uniform. The most scantily-clad of all the Joes, Quick-Kick's uniform was a pair of pants, a sash, a headband and...that's it.
Speaking of fashion, that first panel above is the official debut of Snake Eyes' new costume, accidentally previewed on the cover of #41. There's a better look at it later on this same page, which you can see below:
I like this costume a lot. It's definitely my favorite of the...four (?) different costumes Snake Eyes would wear at various points in the series.
Of all the characcters who get new costumes throughout the series, I'm pretty sure that, following The Baroness' upgrade, this is the last good redesign. (I'm on the fence about Hawk's new costume, as both it and his original costume are both so generic and boring.) Most of the others—Roadblock, Cobra Commander, Destro, Storm Shadow, Stalker, Scarlett—would get new costumes ranging from not-very-good to godawful in the years to come, but I guess that is to be expected, as Hasbro would continually redesign the characters in order to sell new action figures of them.
•If you read the dialogue of the chaplain's assistant that Snake Eye's snatched that paper from, he was in the middle of complaining about the "motor pool guys" (G.I. Joe is, of course, a secret team, and their cover is that they work in the motor pool...although Snake Eyes' get-up sure doesn't look like that of a mechanic). Specifically, he's noting the way they dress and that they are always armed. I guess it is weird that Snake Eyes is wearing a bunch of grenades in the cafeteria, huh...?
•Oh, as for the unusual message he was talking about that caught Snake Eyes' attention...? It was apparently a coded one meant for Snake Eyes, sent out by The Soft Master in Springfield and naming the killer of The Hard Master. Snake Eyes takes it and rushes directly to Storm Shadow's NYC water tower hideout.
•Oh, as for the unusual message he was talking about that caught Snake Eyes' attention...? It was apparently a coded one meant for Snake Eyes, sent out by The Soft Master in Springfield and naming the killer of The Hard Master. Snake Eyes takes it and rushes directly to Storm Shadow's NYC water tower hideout.
•The pair of ninjas borrow a Rattler from a nearby safehouse and make their way towards Cobra Island. During the flight over, Storm Shadow reveals the killer's identity to the reader. I know it's been 40 years since this issue came out, but, if you haven't yet read the series and don't want to be spoiled, stop reading until you read this issue, okay...?
Here we get the reveal...
Here we get the reveal...
It was Zartan...!
There's an extremely intense confrontation between Zartan and Ripcord, as they try to pick one another off from afar. Zartan has a compound bow with a listening apparatus to help him locate the camouflaged Joe in the dark, while Ripcord has a starlight scope on his gun.
Eventually, both resourceful men resort to trickery, with Zartan using his "chameleon" abilities to disappear while Ripcord has him in his gun sites. That's followed by a cool scene of an invisible Zartan stalking through the mud, in which the artists draw only his footprints appearing and we get the sound effects of footfalls, and the there's a hand-to-hand battle.
On the very last page, we see Ripcord triumphant...or do we...? His melodramatic dialogue is just vague enough that it's not clear if this is meant to be Ripcord or Zartan-disguised-as-Ripcord.
•What an awesome issue.
•Oh, but wait! Even more stuff happens!
•Oh, but wait! Even more stuff happens!
Back in D.C., General Austin promotes Hawk, giving him a couple more stars and naming him the "Commander in Chief of the G.I. Joe team!"
And then the Joe team that Hawk had previously alluded to sending to Cobra Island to rescue Ripcord (and maybe do some unofficial recon on the way) inserts. This team includes Flint, Spirit, Alpine and Quick-Kick, the latter two now dressed (or, in Quick-Kick's case, undressed) like their action figures.
No comments:
Post a Comment