G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Pt. 11

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #43 (1986)
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. 

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).

•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:

He even makes a "whiz" sound when he runs!

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. 

•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. 

But it was all for naught anyway, as the second missile takes out the burning car. The Cobra guys didn't know who was in it—and presumably wouldn't have blown it up if they knew Cobra Commander's son Billy was.

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. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #44 (1986)

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.

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 panel contains a musical reference, in case you needed evidence that this comic was indeed from 1986.

•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. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #45 (1986)

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.

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?"

•In the canteen they share with the chaplain's assistants at Fort Wadsworth, Flint introduces Snake Eyes and Spirit to two new Joes: Quick-Kick and Alpine, whose areas of expertise are silent weapons and mountaineering, respectively. Both of these guys would play pretty big roles on the cartoon, bigger than they do in the comics.

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. 

•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...

It was Zartan...!

•While it might look coincidental within the context of the book, Hama was no doubt intentionally foreshadowing this reveal when he had Zartan pick up his old bow and start stalking the island, looking for the intruder who parachuted in. 

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! 

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. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Pt. 10

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #40 (1985)
Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky

•This issue, entitled "Hydrofoil", involves a couple of introductions from the toy line, including one I have been waiting for. That would be the introduction of Shipwreck, one of my favorite characters from the cartoon (That was where he first appeared, in 1984's "Revenge of Cobra" mini-series, and then Hasbro released him as an action figure in 1985). Here we see his first appearance, and he seems awfully grumpy, seemingly annoyed at having to work with "landlubbers." He's aboard a ship that is transporting the Transportable Tactical Battle Platform; it will be picked up and flown out into the Gulf of Mexico by helicopter.

That battle platform was a playset from 1985 and looked a little like those oil platforms you see in the ocean sometimes. My best friend had it, and I remember it being a lot of fun to play with. 

Another Joe making his first appearance here is Barbecue, the Joe team's new fire fighter.

"Fireman? This is a combat unit!" Shipwreck growls after Barbecue hands him a copy of his orders. "We don't need a fireman!"

 Barbecue cooly responds, "That's what everybody says... ...until their house is on fire!"

•But wait, there's more...! Also making their first appearance in this issue are the Cobra Hydrofoils, or Morays. These were red boats that came packaged with a driver action figure, codenamed Lamprey. Cobra Commander inspects them above. Interestingly, Hama had just used Cobra hydrofoils in issue #36, but those seem different than these, as they were colored standard Cobra blue.

•Much of the issue revolves around Hama playing with the new toys. There's talk about the sea base and scenes of it being put together, and then there's a battle against the Hydrofoils that pretty much totals it, as these new Cobra vehicles are so fast that they are hard for the Joes to hit with standard weapons. 

And, as it turns out, the Joes did need a fireman, as Barbecue suits up and uses his fire axe to chop off burning bits of the base. 

"Those blasted Cobras are tearing my base apart!" Shipwreck shouts at one point, and once again Barbecue is ready with a rejoinder. 

"No," he says while hacking at another piece of burning base. "They're shooting holes in it and setting it on fire...I'm the one who's tearing it apart."

•Aside from a battle involving the new toys, what's going on here is a little complicated. Inside a Cobra sub in the gulf are Cobra Commander, Tomax and Xamot, Zartan and a man Zartan refers to as "the master planner of this venture, the mysterious Crimson Guardsman with the daughter who wears the bear suit!" (That's Candy's dad, of course). They dock in a secret base within a sunken ship.

Meanwhile, there's another underwater Cobra base, a heavily fortified bunker that the Joes are unable to even scratch with the armaments aboard the investigating WHALE and SHARC. But they have to destroy it, and do so fast, as it is transmitting a wavelength through the water that is killing all marine life...if that bunker isn't taken out soon, it could kill all the fish in the Gulf! The situation is so urgent that the Pentagon is contemplating dropping a tactical nuke on it. 

•Oh, and by the way, Cobra Commander refers to the Crimson Guardsman who had come up with this whole plan, Candy's dad, as "Professor Appel." Which means Candy's name full name is "Candy Appel."

•It is Doc who comes up with an alternative to deploying a tactical nuke, as he points out that the explosive power of a nuke could be matched by conventional explosives...provided they just use enough of them. And so, rather than dropping a nuke, a bunch of Skystrikers take off from the nearby USS Flagg on a bombing run targeting the Cobra base...which sits on a fault line...which is disturbed by the explosions....exactly as Cobra planned. 

What's going on here...? We'll have to wait until the next issue to find out, but Cobra is pretty happy about it. I mean, look at the Commander's fist pump there...

•And what of the professor's daughter, Candy Appel, still being held for questioning at The Pit...? Well, things aren't going great for her. She has a chance meeting with the captured Dreadnok Buzzer, who calls her "Candykins", "My little sweet potato" and offers to sweep her away to New South Wales. Then, after the Joes receive orders from the Pentagon to relocate the pair, both Candy and Buzzer are being transferred from the Pit into the custody of the Army's Military Police...when Buzzer hijacks the bus, taking her captive...!

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #41 (1985)

Art by Rod Whigham and Keith Williams

•What do you notice about Mike Zeck and John Beatty's cover for this issue...aside from the fact that the Joes pictured are wearing a lot of bandages...? Did you notice Snake Eyes' mask? Zeck has drawn the character's "new" mask, the one with the knight-like visor worn by the second, 1985-released action figure, rather than his original mask, which looked more like a ski mask with goggles over it. The comic book version of the character will eventually adopt the mask on this cover (and a new and somewhat different costume), but not yet; indeed, in the few interior panels in which he appears in this issue, Snake Eyes is wearing his original costume and mask.

•So, what, exactly, was Crimson Guardsman Appel's plan in the Gulf of Mexico? Apparently, it was to trick the United States military to attack a precise point on a fault line with sufficient force to shift a section of the sea floor and, in the ensuing geological upheaval, raise it above the surface, creating an entirely new land mass. 

Is this plan scientifically sound...? Could an explosion of a big enough magnitude at just the right place create an island in the Gulf of Mexico...? Well, I wouldn't think so, but I certainly don't have the scientific background to rule it out. Nor, do I imagine, did many of the little boys reading this comic in 1985. 

Personally, I'm a little suspicious such a plan would work—and worked so perfectly, as the emerging island carries Cobra's secret base in a sunken cargo ship up to the surface with it!—but it seems well within the bounds of comic book science, and G.I. Joe is a comic book. Certainly, it was far more realistic and grounded than Marvel's superhero line, but, at the end of the day, it's still a comic book from the people who regularly tell stories about the likes of Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men and Thor.

•Creating the island was just step one, of course. Step two? Plant a flag on it and have the already-positioned lawyers stride into the Capitol building in Washington D.C., the United Nations building in New York City and government buildings in Mexico City and Havana, Cuba. And, before you know it, Cobra's new island becomes the officially recognized nation state of Cobra Island...!

•But such legal maneuvering takes time, and while awaiting recognition, Cobra unloads ASPs, HISS tanks, FANG copters and Stingers from within the tanker base to defend the new land mass. After surviving the massive tidal wave caused by the rise of Cobra Island, the Joe team in the Gulf quickly gets its shit together and attacks. 

A small team of Joes aboard The WHALE hovercraft land on the beach (With Ace in the Skystriker, having made a seemingly impossible takeoff from the listing USS Flagg, providing air cover). They do remarkably well, and have Cobra Commander, Zartan and Professor Appel cornered by the end of the issue.

•This issue's vocabulary word? "Enfilade."

•What the Joes lack in numbers, they make up for in jokes. 

Now remember, Barbecue, the guy making the joke in those last two panels, is a fireman, and his role on the team is to fight fires. The axe he carries (and that his action figure was packaged with) was specifically to chop down doors of burning buildings and, as we saw in the previous issue, cutting loose burning parts of enflamed structures.

But, having used the axe for that purpose already, Hama does what surely every kid who had the toy version of Barbecue had him do with it: Attack people. 

•Duke and his team have just about won the day, when Hawk radios in new orders, informing the team of Cobra Island's new sovereign status. 

Do note Cobra Commander's declaration in that last panel above. "What a great system!" he declares. "If you have enough money and you can hire the best lawyers, you can do anything you want!"

What comic book character do you think is most emblematic of American values? Superman? Wonder Woman? Captain America? Maybe Scrooge McDuck (as Chris Sims once made a convincing argument for)...?

I don't know. Sometimes I think it might actually be Cobra Commander. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #42 (1985)

Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky

•It's Billy. The silhouette with the question mark over it that Storm Shadow seems to be about to strike on the head with his sword on Mike Zeck's cover? That is totally Cobra Commander's young son and, of late, Storm Shadow's apprentice Billy. And the cover is a fake out, as Storm Shadow isn't actually going to cut him down; this is just part of a training exercise. 

•There's an awful lot going on in this issue. In fact, there are five distinct narrative thread (two of which intersect in this issue). All but one of them involve a road trip of one kind or another. I'll break it down if you're invested in the ongoing G.I. Joe story but, um, not so much that you've actually picked up the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero Compendiums and started reading it for yourself. 

1.) Hawk and company go to Washington, D.C. General Austin is in the middle of "a private reading of the riot act" to Hawk over some kind of video monitor, complaining that the Joes weren't able to defeat Cobra on the new island in the Gulf fast enough, and now Cobra Island is an official country, with diplomatic immunity, printed money and so on. In mid-sentence, he has a heart attack. Hawk has Snake Eyes and Stalker take him to see Austin in D.C. in a VAMP Mark II (released in '84 although the one in the comic is colored green rather than tan and is missing the toy's missile rack). While Hawk's at the hospital, the pair go visit the Vietnam Memorial and, while discussing how everyone else in their unit beside Storm Shadow were killed in action, they notice a name missing: Wade Collins. They thought he was dead, but if he's name's not there, perhaps he survived after all...?

2.) Crimson Guardsman Fred II follows them. He is in bed with a fever, the result of being dumped in the drink while fighting Snake Eyes and Scarlet on the ferry in #36. His doctor advises him to stay in bed (Doctors still did house calls in 1985...?), but he disobeys and goes to drive around. He happens to drive by Hawk and company's VAMP, and he then follows them to D.C. He confronts Stalker and Snake Eyes at the memorial, pulling a gun on them and making a shocking revelation: "Wade Collins isn't dead at all! Cobra gave him a new face, a new life and a new name!" It turns out that Fred II is Wade! Gee, what a small world...

3.) Buzzer and hostage Candy Appel are still on the run. Candy is continually trying to escape, and she eventually makes good when she gets her hands on a shotgun, dumping Buzzer on the side of the road and taking off in the truck he had stolen.

4.) The Soft Master is hitchhiking to Springfield. He takes a ride from an obnoxious reckless driver who sips from a thermos of coffee laced with brandy while driving (Don't hitchhike, kids!). He's eventually dropped off in Springfield, to the surprise of the driver, who says there's something not quite right about the city. "I'm not intending to stay for long," The Soft Master says, "Just taking care of some old business, family business." He forgets his suitcase in the back seat, which seems significant, as they show us a silent panel of the suitcase in the back seat as he leaves.

5.) Storm Shadow continues to train Billy. They are in Stormy's New York City water tower base, and Billy is blindfolded and hanging upside down from a trapeze as Storm Shadow swings his sword at him Billy is able to catch the blade, take it, dismount from the trapeze and throw the sword at Storm Shadow, who is able to catch it in the scabbard on his back. Again, Billy is a fast learner; it apparently doesn't take long at all to become a pretty decent ninja. Later they do a different variation of this, one that more closely comports with what we see on the cover. 

•Ripcord (spelled "Rip-Cord" above) was wounded in the battle of Cobra Island, but the more serious injury is that to his heart. Not only did Candy dump him a few issues back, but now she's somewhere on the road with Buzzer, and it's unclear if he has taken her hostage or if she went willingly, as they suspect she might be a Cobra agent, like her dad. 

Here he mentions letting his sadness wear off naturally. I'm...not entirely sure if that works, but then I guess sadness is different than depression, and while I've dealt with both, I've never been in Ripcord's exact circumstances before. 

•At the Springfield police station, The Soft Master says he needs access to their computer system and they rebuff him. The series push past the officer in charge anyway, at which point the officer sics a trio of others on him. Note their names in the second panel.

This is interesting in 2026, now that I know Hama's lifelong comics writing ambition is to write Uncle Scrooge comics. And now Marvel, which is owned by Disney, is publishing Scrooge comics! Let Larry Hama write Disney duck comics, dammit!

No idea what's all over The Soft Master's tie there. 

•After beating everyone up, The Soft Master and the original officer are alone, and the officer threatens to shoot him. "You've already tried to shoot me five times and missed," The Soft Master says. "What makes you think you can hit me with your last shot?"

After he indeed misses a sixth time, The Soft Master hands him a card reading "Hard Master." At least, I like to imagine that it was an old business card of his brother's.

•Finally, Billy leaves a Dear Storm Shadow letter, in which he expresses his desire that he could have had a cool ninja for a dad rather than a terrorist leader. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero Pt. 9

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #37 (1985)

Art by Frank Springer and Andy Mushynsky

•In this issue, writer Larry Hama introduces several characters and vehicles from the toy line (and, by this point, the cartoon). Most prominent among them is probably Flint, whose action figure referred to his role as "warrant officer" but who was one of the main characters in the cartoon's ensemble cast, where he played a leadership role and was romantically paired with Lady Jaye.

And then there are Tomax and Xamot, the Crimson Twins. Identical twins and circus acrobats/lawyers, they were colorful characters even by Cobra standards. On the cartoon, they generally finished one another sentences, and had the unusual (but, for the Joes, convenient) ability to feel one another's pain. They were also the leaders of the Crimson Guardsmen, although in the comics the CGs were introduced prior to them. (Their action figures, by the way, came together in a two-pack; I had these figures when I was a kid). 

•Most of the action in this issue is set at The Arbco Bros. Circus. Joes Gung-Ho, Ripcord and Blowtorch are smuggled into the circus by Bongo the balloon bear, who met in issue #33, "Celebration." Here she tells someone the soldiers are helping her with her balloon delivery given that they owe her after absconding with her vehicle previously. 

She also takes off her bear head and tells the stranger her real name is Candy, to the annoyance of Ripcord, who she wouldn't share her real name with, because he won't tell her what his is ("I told you, I can't tell you my real name--" he protests; I don't suppose he could have just made up a normal sounding name, or used his middle name or something...? Sharing his codename "Ripcord" with her sounds like a security breach in and of itself, doesn't it...?)

•By the way, this isn't mentioned in the comic, but Ripcord's real name is Wallace A. Weems, and he hails from Columbus, Ohio.

•As to why the Joes are interested in the circus, aside from the fact that "Arbco" is an anagram of "Cobra", well, they are there to investigate a meeting of the Young Executives for Community and Home (Which, yes, acronyms into YECH). They suspect correctly that the groupe is a Cobra front. 

•Tomax and Xamot aren't exactly undercover. They wear matching uniforms, each of which are mirror images of one another, with prominent Cobra sigils on their chests. Tomax sits at a card table in a tent where the YECH meeting is scheduled, while Xamot is keeping watch from the track of a roller coaster. They seem to communicate psychically with one another, talking to one another from far away in dialogue balloons distinguished by red, wavy borders. They also seem to be able to see through one another's eyes here. 

•On a nearby testing range, Lady Jaye (still spelled "Lady J") and Roadblock are piloting captured Cobra HISS tanks as part of a test of some sort of super-speedy new tank. It manages to dodge their fire, close the distance and scrap both tanks in 22 second flat. The tank in question is the Armadillo mini-tank, and it's being piloted by Flint, whom both Duke and Roadblock seem to already know. 

These panels are interesting, I think, in that Flint and Lady Jaye's romance is anything but love at first sight in the comic (It will develop pretty damn fast though, and I wonder if that was Hama belatedly following the cartoon's version of their relationship or not).

That, and because they use the words "obstreperous" and "bailiwick". Good vocabulary for the kids, Larry Hama...!

•At the circus, Ripcord and Bongo/Candy are attacked by what looks like dozens of Clark Kents in the hall of mirrors. The Clark Kents will strip off their blue striped suits to reveal red uniforms and don still not quite on-model masks and helmets to reveal themselves as Crimson Guardsmen.

•Enter another new Joe: Footloose. Wild Bill's dialogue in that last panel sounded so much like something Foghorn Leghorn might say that I imagined the cartoon rooster's voice coming out of the Joe helicopter pilot for the rest of the issue.

•Not a very flattering angle for Gung-Ho, is it...?

•In short order, Flint and Footloose in the Armadillo join the fray, forcing Tomax and Xamot to flee on another new vehicle from the toy line, this one a Cobra one: The Ferret, an ATV that holds two action figures (perfect for the Twins, then!) and has a big red gun and a couple of red missiles on it.

•Although no one is killed or even hurt, Bongo/Candy, who was already annoyed by Ripcord's secrecy before a huge action scene exploded around her at the circus, decides she doesn't want anything more to do with him. 

As Ripcord stutters "Does this mean...", she finishes his sentence for him, and proceeds to tell him off pretty good:

Goodbye? No, that's too nice! This is drop dead, don't bother to call and don't expect a Christmas card!

Ouch. 

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #38 (1985)

Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushnsky

•Warning: This is a pretty damn eventful issue. Kids sure got their seventy-five cents worth from this one. 

•We haven't heard much from Cobra Commander since it was revealed back in issue #33 that Billy, the Springfieldian child rebel who tried to assassinate him, was actually his own son. That changes with this issue, as we open with the trail of Billy! Oh, wait, actually Cobra Commander specifically says that this is an inquest and not a trial, since everyone presents saw Billy attempt to shoot the Commander and that they all know he is therefore quite guilty. Still, Destro acts as something of a prosecutor as he leads the proceedings, and the rest of Cobra high command all seem to look like they are on jury duty in this image.

•During the inquest, Major Bludd's eyepatch seems to come and go, as seen in the panel. Perhaps he's not actually missing his left eye and just wears it for affect.

•Billy refuses to name the co-conspirators who set him up to shoot the Commander—The Baroness and Major Bludd, of course—and eventually Zartan suggest they use the late Dr. Venom's brain wave scanner, which we saw way back in G.I. Joe #10, the same issue that introduced Billy. If you recall, the device allows interrogators to literally read the mind of the subject placed within it, as it translates memories to images on a TV screen. Venom had tried (and failed) to get Snake Eyes to reveal the secret location of the G.I. Joe headquarters back then.

•The Commander orders Billy to be strapped in which then leads to an intriguing sequence where we see a pre-Cobra Cobra Commander, before he started wearing masks, and we get some of the series' precious few hints towards a Cobra ideology beyond, you know, being bad guys.

As Snake Eyes before him, Billy is able to block the machine from finding the memories its operators want by dredging up alternate memories (A process that Destro explains above can cause extreme physical pain).

Here we see the man who will become the Commander in a nice office ranting to his son. His animating belief, the motivation for his terrorist enterprise seems to be that he's opposed to...big government...? Does that mean the Cobra Commander was an old-school, pre-Trump Republican? Or, perhaps, a libertarian? 

There are two things worth noting in that first flashback panel. First, Cobra Commander sure looks like he's Just Some Guy, rather than having a terrible disfigurement that he needs to hide behind masks (Likewise, he doesn't seem to be anyone famous and thus needs a mask to conceal his celebrity). Second, note the "Arbco" name on the business across the street. Apparently, it pre-dates the "Cobra" organization, and therefore it is not an anagram of "Cobra", but "Cobra" is actually an anagram of "Arbco".

The flashbacks continue on the next page, where we see a first mask-less Commander continuing to talk about the government in one panel, followed by another where he has adopted his logo and hood, the latter of which he pairs with a business suit. At the beginning of the organization, presumably before they could afford blue uniforms and helmets, Cobra followers just tied bandanas around their faces and wore armbands.

•Seeing that Billy is just using the scanner to spill tea—"This is highly classified information being bandied about!" are Cobra Commander's actual words—the Commander orders him taken out of the machine and sent to a jail cell. The Baroness and Bludd (again drawn sans eyepatch) are relieved, while Storm Shadow is impressed with Billy's integrity at refusing to reveal his co-conspirators, despite the fact that they have abandoned him. 

•In fact, Storm Shadow is so impressed that he sneaks down to Billy's cell, bloodlessly kills the two guards and frees Billy...leading to a dramatic confrontation with Destro, which Mike Zeck and John Beatty captured on the cover.

Leveling a gun at Storm Shadow, Destro tells him to give up: "Even you can't outrace a bullet!" 

Destro is underestimating a true ninja master. Moving with speedlines, Storm Shadow grabs Billy's wrist and rushes towards Destro, striking his gun arm with a "SPACK" as Destro fires, the bullet going straight into the light above and plunging the room into darkness. 

Storm Shadow is now officially on the outs with Cobra, and he never did find out who killed his uncle The Hard Master and framed him for the crime.

•So that's what Cobra is up to. But what of the Joes...? Well, they have two separate missions that begin to play out in this issue. In the fist, Gung-Ho, Ripcord, Roadblock and Stalker are sent to fictional South American country Sierra Gordo on a mission to rescue Dr. Adele Burkhart (Who the Joes had previously rescued from Cobra way back in G.I. Joe #1). As for the second, a team consisting of Duke, Blowtorch, Cover Girl, "Lady J", Snake-Eyes, Mutt and Junkyard conduct a raid on a suspected undercover Cobra agent believed to have set up the ambush at the circus in the previous issue.

•Do you think Hawk added "flat-earthers" in there as a joke, or is there really a violent, militaristic flat-earther group with political ambitions in South America...?

•The Joes' jungle trooper Recondo gets a much better, second introduction here. You may recall that he briefly appeared in issue #32, where he, Blowtorch and Clutch were shown dropping off ice cream and soda for the upcoming party celebrating the re-opening of The Pit.

Here he first appears in silhouette, telling Stalker's team, "If you're going to come tromping through my jungle like mummers on parade, you gotta cut me a little slack and breathe a little more quietly. You guys are positively deafening!" They don't recognize Recondo at first, and this leads to a tense armed standoff, in which Recondo gains the upper hand when his local allies appear.

These are The Tucaros, Recondo's "Indian friends", who say what they do best is fight and sneak up on people. 

Once everyone's on the same page, Recondo and the Tucaros lead the others to the base where Dr. Burkhart is being kept prisoner. It's an imposing, well-defended fortress built at the base of a sheer cliff. 

While Stalker and Gung-Ho speculate about how many tanks and bombers might be needed to crack it, Recondo says he thinks their small team can take it alone.

"You got a plan or are you just optimistic?" Roadblock asks. He's got a plan: They will attack by rappelling down the cliff wall, which none of the guns are even pointed at, since "no one in their right mind would even try it... ...except us!"

•The other mission, back in the states, is going poorly. The Joes meet unexpectedly stiff resistance from inside the dark suburban home, although Junkyard acquits himself nicely throughout. There are a couple of cool panels showing him charging alongside Mutt and Snake Eyes, barking or howling as he does so. In the sequence above, we see him save his teammates by spotting a tossed grenade, catching it and then dropping down the drain.

•On the final pages, we see who was defending the house, when Tomax, Xamot and a Crimson Guardsmen all come crashing through the front window on The Ferret (Hey, the box said it could hold two figures, not three!). They fire a missile directly at the Joes' transport and are thus able to make a clean getaway.

•But wait! There's still a last-page dramatic reveal...! The Joes find plenty of evidence that someone in the house was definitely an undercover Cobra agent, and just then Candy/Bongo the Balloon Bear, Ripcord's love interest, pulls up. What is she doing there? Why, that's her father's house...she lives there! Is Candy's dad a Cobra agent? Is Candy?! What a cliffhanger!

G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero #39 (1985)

Art by Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky

•Speaking of cliffhangers, the next issue opens with our heroes literally hanging from a cliff, as the team on the Sierra Gordo mission rappel down the cliff face in order to sneak into the enemy fortress and rescue Dr. Burkhart. They manage to sneak in, rescue Burkhart and sneak out...almost. They're caught halfway to safety, which kicks off a big firefight. The three Tucaros, who stayed atop the cliff to pull up the Joes' ropes, save our heroes when they lay down some cover fire, but they are killed by the bad guys' snipers for doing so. 

•Meanwhile, Storm Shadow has taken Billy under his wing and begun training him. The boy seems to be a fast learner, as it can't possibly have been more than a few days that they've been together. When we first catch up with him, he and Billy are sword fighting and exchanging ninja sayings ("To triumph over fear is to triumph over death!") and then playing a chess game in their heads. I got a real superhero/sidekick vibe from the pair in this issue. Particularly in the above scene, where we see Storm Shadow has a kind of secret base inside a New York City water tower, and then they change from their ninja clothes to street clothes.

•This is kinda neat. Storm Shadow has apparently taken Billy walking around in places they are likely to meet muggers, as a test. We see what look like some middle-aged "punk" shakedown artists, and Billy manages to scare them away with the ninja art of "the dirty look." More wisdom from Storm Shadow: "The more skill you acquire, the less you have to use it" and "The only rational purpose for mastering violence is to abolish it."

Yeah, I can see why little kids in the '80s would have eaten this stuff up...

•The surviving soldiers in the Sierra Gordo bunker talk about various countries' military forces circa the 1980s after the Joes escape with Burkhart.

•After the Joes in Sierra Gordo finally get to safety, which involves a daring river crossing, they are all in a truck full of farm animals headed towards the border and a friendly airfield. During the trip, Ripcord once again expresses his feelings about the Joes risking their lives to save Burkhart, who is anti-military, and once again Stalker puts him in his place with what is some pretty pure, undiluted pro-democracy propaganda.  

It's pretty basic stuff, but damn it feels refreshing to read it in 2026, when the current U.S. government is doing so much to try to politicize the military. 

•Before the last page of the issue, in which Stalker's Sierra Gordo team get picked up by Wild Bill and Cover Girl and are told they are being flown to New Orleans, there are two one-page scenes checking in with the leaders of Cobra and the Joes. Destro and The Baroness inform Cobra Commander that Billy and Storm Shadow have gotten away and remain missing, but the Crimson Guardsman "who is instrumental to our New Orleans operation" was with Tomax and Xamot. And Duke and Lady Jaye interrogate Candy, and Duke is especially curious about her father's maps and charts of New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.

Interestingly, during the interrogation scene, Candy says that she finds "the international conspiracy" of Cobra "a little hard to swallow." Duke explains, "We try to keep the existence of Cobra pretty secret. We don't want to alarm the populace..."

Surely Cobra has made themselves pretty well-known by this point, no? And not wanting to alarm the populace by talking much about terrorist groups...? Well, lived through the U.S.' "Global War on Terror", that was not my experience with how our military dealt with the threat...

What's all this talk about New Orleans...? What does Cobra have planned for the Gulf...? Well, I've already read it and, trust me, it's going to be exciting...!