G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #2

The second main story of Marvel's original GI Joe run takes us to the opposite climate extreme, probably by design. From a Carribean jungle island to a cold desert.

They sure get to see some exotic locales in this line of work. Anyway, the previous episode was pretty good for the most part, so hopefully this one will be pretty good for the most part as well.

From the beginning, we learn that this operation will be the polar (heh) opposite of its predecessor in more ways than just geographical. Last time, G.I. Joe knew who they were up against and what they needed to do. This time, they're going in blind and trying to figure out what the hell even happened. A military research station located way up in northeastern Alaska went dark due to severe weather, but then didn't go bright again after the storm had passed. They sent a recon team in to see what was going on, and found the base destroyed. All personnel dead, all equipment and documents missing, and plenty of battle damage to the structures. Whoever did this was competent and methodical, and they timed the attack very carefully; the storm not only blacked out their operation, but also buried any evidence that might have been left behind.

The same two generals from last issue trade theories about who might have done this. The base's closest neighbour was a similar research station on the Russian side of the ice sheet. It's doubtful that Moscow would choose to start world war three in such an underwhelming fashion, though, so if the Soviet personnel are responsible then it's probably the work of a rogue officer.

The dialogue also hints at these arctic research bases being up to some really, really weird and secretive stuff. As well as reminding us that these generals are a murky shade of grey at best, themselves.

Whatever weird bullshit they're studying, or trying to spy on each other studying, this is a great excuse to find out what the soviet side of it looks like. GI Joe will be sent to do covert reconnaissance of the Russian station. If they find the culprits, great. If they don't, they can still sneak in and look at all their shit while having a good excuse if they get caught.

It's kinda too bad that the front cover spoiled this.

I suspect the writers weren't happy about that addition.

Heh, with those spoilers in effect, this setup is really making me think of "The Thing," what with the two ant/arctic stations from different countries and the blizzard and so forth. HAH! Oh wow, I just looked at the dates, and John Carpenter's "The Thing" had actually just hit theatres two months before this issue came out. Yeah, okay, they were definitely trying to cash in on someone else's hype lol.

This is a top secret recon mission, not a commando raid like last time, so they'll be sending a small team of just four. Honestly, I'm not sure why this is even a GI Joe operation at all. I thought they were a dedicated counterterrorism outfit, shouldn't this be someone else's job? Heh, then again I guess the American armed forces step on each other's toes often enough in real life that I shouldn't be questioning this. Well, anyway. The GI Joe A-team are all on leave after that bitch of a mission against Cobra, but this once-in-a-lifetime chance to spy on the Soviets' latest snow experiments is just too damned important. Four of the Joes are selected for the mission, and hilariously it's this one poor shmuck who has to race all over the CONUS scooping them up. The comic does get some decent gags out of this, but man, this guy's job sucks.

First in the montage is Stalker, the jetpack guy with the troubling views about civilian oversight. He's enjoying his break from going out in camo and shooting people by going out in camo and shooting at deer. Corporal Buttmonkey has to go out in a damned chopper to find him, and does so just in time to scare away the buck he'd finally gotten in his sights. Angering Stalker to the point of "your face" expletives.

There's a final gag to this skit, where it turns out that Stalker is wielding a big high-rez field camera. The most overtly ruthless and violent GI Joe member isn't a hunter, just a really avid wildlife photographer. It got a chuckle out of me.

Next up is uneventful, albeit surprising. And also by far the easiest on Cpl B. Monkey. The communications expert known as "Breaker" is borrowing a computer at MIT to familiarize himself with some new software tricks. Getting ahold of him is pretty simple, even if it comes juuuust in time to stop a cute grad student from asking him on a date. Fucking pentagon amirite?

One photobomb and one cockblock in the bag. Two recruitments left to go!

In the last issue, "Scarlet" was part of the spearhead, and also kind of the voice of reason among the troops. In this issue, she's introduced mid-match in an MMA tournament. Naturally, just a second before she can win the round.

Scarlet fairs a little better than the first two when it comes to the noble battle against Uncle Sam's wet blanket. Her opponent flies into an unreasoning bloodlust and throws herself at Scarlet's retreating back, conveniently forcing the later to kick her out of the air in self defence and thus end the match properly.

Heh, Scarlet's opponent is a real bro. She's totally going to buy her a beer for that, after this mission.

...or maybe not. I don't think you're supposed to make aerial kicks into people's faces even in MMA. That might have actually been Scarlet fighting for real at the end there, in which case either she horribly misunderstood the situation, or her opponent really did go insane. Odd.

In any case, the tail end of the montage brings us to another university laboratory. Monkey is so exhausted at this point that when the so-mysterious-even-his-rank-is-classified individual known as "Snake Eyes" doesn't come to the door, Monkey just barges in and starts looking for him. He's in a sensory deprivation chamber, it turns out. He spends eight hours at a time in there, on a regular basis. Of course he does. Monkey bangs on the tank, prompting Snake Eyes to emerge prematurely and present the interloper with a horrifying sight.

The isolation tank crew have had a long time to get used to Snake Eyes' unmasked face on their own terms. Corporal Buttmonkey, on the other hand, is probably going to need therapy of some kind himself now.

It basically goes without saying that Snake Eyes has his mask back on before we can see his face ourselves. But hey, we know that he still has hair and both ears now. That's more than we could tell before. It's something.

It's off to the arctic. It looks like one of the generals is actually sitting along for the plane ride, which...well, maybe that used to be a less unusual occurrence in the pre-information age days than it is now. At any rate, he briefs them during the flight. This is a spy mission, so they're not to engage the soviet station crew. If fired upon, attempt to retreat to safety and update command on the situation; only shoot back if there's no other choice. After they've observed the base for long enough to learn all they think they can, it's time to move on to the tricky part.

Of course, they don't really have any way to tell for sure if something is stolen from the American base or not. The brass is obviously hoping to get a decent sampling of whatever the soviets are studying in addition to possibly recovering the American stuff.

They parachute down just too far from the Russians to be spotted. On this terrain, it's going to be quite a long period of freezing, miserable marching before they can set up camp. The four are about as thrilled with this mission as you would expect, considering the everything.

After trudging through the snowdrifts and staving off the cold by grumbling about it for some hours, they reach the Russian base and set up their little duckblind. The base is intact, and at least the outdoors equipment appears to all still be there, so it clearly didn't get hit the same way as the American base.

However, as far as they can tell, it is no less abandoned. At first they think the Russians are just having a nice lazy afternoon laying around in their heated hut sipping borscht and performing gentle nonpenetrative sex acts on each other, but after enough time goes by without any sign of human presence they start to realize that there's something up.

Finally, they spot a man approaching in a dogsled. His snowsuit doesn't have any recognizable soviet markings or insignias, but when he reaches the station he just opens the door and walks inside like he owns it. Also, despite him being some distance away and mostly covered up in his snowsuit and goggles, they're somehow able to distinguish his ethnicity.

I wouldn't expect a bunch of random commandoes circa 1982 to know that "eskimo" is a derogatory exonym for the arctic tribes. I would hope that a bunch of writers who made the active decision to include such a person in their story would take the time to read up on them enough to know it, regardless of the year. So far we only have the commandoes to infer things from, so I'll wait and see before passing judgement.

Anyway, their new acquaintance is a big guy. He practically has to duck to get inside the facility's front door, and he's carrying a big gun. Belt-fed 30 cal autocannon thing.

Dunno if Vulcan Raven actually was a rip-off of this exact character, but I wouldn't be surprised.

As they watch, Gatling Corvid disappears into the hut and then exits a few minutes later and gets back on his sled. A detail that catches Stalker's attention is that when he leaves, he doesn't bother closing the door behind him. More importantly, when he fails to close the door behind him, it doesn't slam on its own a few seconds later and/or open wider so an angry Russian man can scream at Corvid for leaving the fucking door open in the literal arctic. In turn suggesting that it's abandoned.

So, they wait until Corvid is a good distance away before heading in. If the base is empty, then this is their chance. It's a little surprising that none of them expected the litter of frozen corpses; you'd think at least one of them would have predicted this, yeah?

Well, the mind control machine was a bit of a rugpull, sure. But the bodies shouldn't have been.

I'm somewhat alarmed at Breaker's ability to identify that machine on sight. Just pointing it out, you know?

Anyway, the bodies have been dead for several days, but most of them don't appear to have died violently. The technobabble mind control array is missing a little piece of technobabble that makes the entire rest of the machine work, and the safe has also just been pilfered. The implication being that Corvid took them all, though if so he must have known exactly what he was looking for and known just where to find it, because he wasn't in there for very long.

They also don't have time to poke around much more, because Snake-Eyes notices the explosive charges just in time for them to barely be able to flee the building. It always works that way with timed explosives, doesn't it? Breaker picks up his thread from last issue of being kind of an idiot savant.

What I want to know is how they failed to notice Corvid carrying all those explosives into the building. It looked like there were quite a few charges, and they were individually fairly bulky. He's a big guy with a thick snowsuit, sure, but still.

...actually, I just looked back, and when Corvid enters the building he clearly has a big utility belt with large, boxy things hanging all over it. When he exits, these objects are no longer in sight. So, that's good attention to detail from the artist, but incredibly poor attention to detail from the characters. They were able to pick out this guy's ethnicity, but somehow failed to notice something like this? I think these four might need to go over some remedial recon exercises lol.

They hurry back to what passes for their camp and hurriedly take it down to go chasing after Gatling Corvid and his stolen thingies. In the meantime, Breaker is going to use a new gadget he was issued called a "teleprinter." Fax machine with a very strong miniature broadcaster, small enough to be easily portable and strong enough to get a signal back to civilization. Send some frames of footage they took of Corvid back to HQ and see if they can get an ID. While being casually racist.

Again, not a surprise given the characters and the situation. But the way it's being written...I dunno, it still rubs me the wrong way.

They start after the target on foot. He's traveling by dogsled, but the...wait, this doesn't make any damned sense. In the space of three panels, they conclude that this guy is doing clandestine work for someone who wants him in and out as fast and stealthily as possible, and ALSO decide that he probably isn't going to be hurrying since he doesn't know about them, so they can probably catch up to his dogsled if they run.

Erm. Is he trying to get out of here quickly, or not?

Also, frankly, even if he isn't hurrying (for some reason) and they are, you're not going to outrun a dogsled on foot in these conditions. It just ain't happening. It feels like this would be a great moment for the GI Joes to break out another new gadget of their own; some kind of collapsable motor-sled with high speed but very limited fuel that they were given in case they need to beat a fast retreat or something. That's how they USUALLY deal with grim developments like this, isn't it?

Overall? Meh.

So, they start the questionable chase. As they struggle through the deep snow, Breaker gets a telefax back from base. It turns out that Corvid, better known as "Kwinn," has quite a record.

One of the best mercenaries out there. And good enough business ethics to hop back and forth between opposing Cold War employers without betraying anyone's secrets. And yeah, it's not just the artist; Kwinn actually is supposed to be that big.

Scarlet makes a fairly amusing crack about how much of a pain these "highly motivated individuals" are. They decide he's probably working for the USSR this time, though I'm not sure why they're so sure about this. The Russians don't need a covert ops commando to demolish one of their own bases, do they? I'd much sooner suspect that he's working for a third party who's taking advantage of the situation and trying to steal all the secret shit before the Americans or Soviets can recover it. Weird of them to assume otherwise.

Well, they keep on moving, as fast as they can without exhausting themselves and faceplanting in the snow. Kwinn seems to be moving toward the coastline, so he's likely got a ship (or, more probably, a submarine) to pick him up there. There's no way he can make it there before nightfall, though, so he'll have to stop and camp at some point, which gives them their chance to catch up. It takes them five hours, but they manage to do it. He's camped in the shelter of a crashed plane, which leads to still more confusion.

Why do they still think there's a submarine pick-up point?

The only reason they thought that in the first place was because Kwinn was headed toward the coast. If he was just moving toward the crash site though, then...is there anything to suggest he'll continue in the same direction after this point? Wouldn't it make at least as much sense to assume that he's using the plane's radio to signal when he's ready for pickup, and that another aircraft will be coming here for him?

The entire chain of logic the protagonists have followed since the base scene just baffles me.

Questionable inferences aside, they see Kwinn huddled over a fire in the shelter of the plane, with his sled dogs in a big sleepy pile nearby. He still doesn't seem to have noticed his pursuers, so they decide to try and capture him without a fight.

...

Are they disobeying orders here?

On one hand, they think he's acting as a Russian agent at the moment, and they've been given orders not to initiate hostilities with the Russians.

On the other hand, I don't think that he's working for the Russians, in which case they're free to follow SOP for potential hostiles.

So, they at least THINK that they're violating their orders by doing this. I guess? Are they going to be in trouble for this? Would they still be in trouble if it turns out that he isn't working for the Russians but they thought that he was?

They have the fancy fax machine, right? Shouldn't they have the option of updating command on the situation and awaiting new orders before breaking the old ones? Scarlet in particular is supposed to be the super by-the-book girl scout one, right? Shouldn't she be suggesting this, even if the others overrule her for whatever reason?

I guess it's possible that they did recieve new orders alongside the dossier on Kwinn. It's bizarre for this to not have been made explicit though, especially in a comic that tends to err on the side of too much rather than too little exposition.

This whole thing has been really weird.

...

Snake-Eyes sneaks up on Kwinn, but it turns out they didn't catch him unawares after all.

The plane's door opens up, revealing Kwinn with a detonator in hand. If he dies, everyone dies. In fact, if the attackers don't all drop their weapons right now and reach for the sky, everyone will die anyway. This guy has a way with escalation. As he forces them to take off their supply packs and pile them onto his dogsled, Kwinn explains that...

...Oh boy.

I was going to try and finish this story in one post and then do another one with some supplemental materials that pad out the first two issues, but I think I'm going to have to make this post shorter and the next one considerably longer.