G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #2 (continued)

As the GI Joes hand over their weapons and stack their supply packs on the sled, Kwinn says that it's "ironic" that their fear of death is making them comply, because the thing they were chasing after to begin with is incarnate fear itself. I don't really see the irony there, personally. I do see a forced transition written by a none-too-skilled writer, but not irony. Could be my eyes. As for what he means by "incarnate fear," well, the brainwave machine in the Russian base is apparently a fear-generator.

Now, you might be wondering why the soviets were testing this weapon so close to the American border. It's not like the USSR lacked for remote tracts of vast, largely-uninhabited land to test dangerous secret shit in comfortably deep within its own territory, after all. Well, the answer to that question is:

Oooh boy. Where to start pointing out the problems with this?

The comic doesn't say how large an area of the United States is being targeted with this weapon, or which region of it (I'd assume just a northeastern chunk of Alaska, for this to be targeting mostly the United States rather than mostly Canada with a little bit of America on the sides, but who knows). But in any case, how are the soviets expecting to monitor the effects of the weapon within hostile territory? I guess if the effect is strong enough to make entire towns self-destruct in riots and sabotage it would be easy, but doing something like that would also bring a hell of a lot of attention from the US gov, which I don't think the soviets would want.

Amusingly, the USSR - much like the USA - did have quite a number of poorly-regarded ethnic minorities, especially along those same remote peripheries, that I would *absolutely* expect them to test this sort of weapon on. Barring that, they also had quite a number of weaker countries around Eurasia in their political orbit whose governments would probably be fine with letting them test the weapon on their own poorly regarded peripheral minorities in exchange for some other favors or finances or whatever. Do it this way, and not only do the soviets have free reign to monitor and study the effects in a controlled-ish environment, but they also don't need to worry about provoking their nuclear-armed archrival if they get caught. So, why aren't they doing that?

...

I suspect that it's because the author of this comic doesn't believe that the great revolutionary republic, saviour of the oppressed and shield of the world's working class against capitalist exploitation, would ever stoop to testing weapons on its own civilians. The American worker meanwhile, while no doubt suffering under the boot of empire, is still in some capacity a petite aristocrat within the global system of capital. An enemy, at least nominally, and thus one could make the argument that testing weapons on them is - if not justified - at least the kind of moral compromise that the world revolution as embodied by the soviet vanguard party might conceivably make in a moment of weakness.

It's also possible that the author is just making the Bad Russians do something nonsensically evil to Innocent Americans out of sheer laziness while lacking any understanding of the USSR's actual failings. However, I'm trying to work on being more charitable in my reviews, so I should give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume he simply has politics I disagree with before I start calling this stupid.

...

Whatever the soviets were hoping to accomplish up here, they had a malfunction in the fear-engine's shielding systems, causing it to effect the device's operators as well. The station's crew were overcome with paranoia, and attacked the American base out of the wild belief that they were spying on them and would figure out what they were doing. Unfortunately, the soviet personnel also were too panicked and deluded at this point to maintain their heaters properly, so they froze to death themselves shortly afterward.

Hey. I have a question.

What was the American base doing?

There's apparently this ultra-shady soviet base within striking distance of it. Why would they not have been spying on it?

I guess it's possible that it was doing weather research or testing comm systems or something. Maybe the soviet base was pretending to be doing something innocuous like that too. Maybe? It seems weird that these mutually hostile powers wouldn't be keeping a closer eye on each other's nearby bases just by default, though.

Also...let's not forget that Breaker was able to recognize the mind control technology on sight, even if he couldn't tell it was a fear-amplifier specifically. The USA must also be working on something similar, for him to be able to do that. Did BOTH of these bases have mindfuck devices in them that the USA and USSR were testing on each other?

Trying to approach this through the author's ideological framework...on one hand, Kwinn might be lying, and it was really the plucky agents of the world proletariat who stole the American fear-engine and killed the imperial thugs guarding it out of necessity. On the other hand though, ascribing the parasitic, creatively bankrupt American bourgeois-"democracy" with the creative brilliance necessary to invent such a game changing device before the collective intellect and free spirit of the workers' republic could also feels off for this comic. So, yeah, I don't know. There are definitely a lot of secrets being kept among these frozen bases.

Kwinn was hired to recover the key working parts of the fear engine, as well as any documents taken from or written about the Americans, and then to destroy the evidence. They flew him in, and are planning to extract him as soon as the job is done.

Hey. I have another question. I'm having a lot of those, I know, but I can't help it.

Why do the soviets need to hire this shadowy badass mercenary dude to clean out one of their own bases?

Why couldn't they just fly right in and scoop everything up using their own soldiers? It wouldn't even require secrecy. It's their base. Their equipment. Their documents (as far as the Americans know). Sure, the Americans are going be suspicious after the slaughter at their own base, but what are they going to be able to do about it?

It would make sense to bring in someone like Kwinn if, eg, the Americans had somehow beaten the Russians to their own base (despite having inferior intel about recent events in the area) and snatched the doohickey themselves. That's when you DO need a superelite deniable agent to track the American recovery team across the ice and stop them from bringing it home. But that's not how it's written.

Next, Kwinn drives the first bit of tortured logic in even harder by explicitly saying that this crashed plane's pilot and navigator are already waiting at the submarine pickup point on the coast. So, yes, that submarine suspicion turned out to be right after all. Even though it was based *entirely* on a false impression.

Why does the crashed plane even exist in the story?

Kwinn goes on to say that the submarine will pick them up at noon tomorrow sharp. And...oh my god lol:

Name me one point - one solitary point - in Russian military history when this has been true. "Determined," "tenacious," "thorough," those are all accurate complements you could pay them during at least some times in the past couple centuries, but punctual? Really?

Once again, I fear that the author's kneejerk Soviet apologia is running away with them.

After this full page of Kwinn's monologing, Scarlet raises the obvious question: why the hell is the famously tight-lipped Kwinn blabbing about all these top secrets to them apropos of literally fucking nothing? Snake-Eyes replies to her by dragging a finger ominously across his own throat. Kwinn confirms his suspicion, and also takes the opportunity to remind us all that he is a Native American.

How could Snake-Eyes have possibly figured out that the guy who both a) has just told them sensitive info and b) is famous for not letting any info get out, is planning to kill them? Why, he must have the eyes of a shaman! That's the Native American explanation for how a person could have such preternatural deductive powers, amirite?

He leaves them with just the clothes on their backs and whatever little concealable devices they might have in their pockets. Hey, remember in the last story, when Scarlet had those shurikens hidden in her sleeve for exactly this kind of situation? Wouldn't it be hilarious if she pulled them out again now and just fucking anticlimactically killed him as soon as he turned his back on them? Also, are you trying to tell me that neither Stalker nor Snake-Eyes have a secret little hidden gun or the like tucked into their own parkas? It's not like Kwinn patted them all down or made them shed their snowsuits. He'd have had no way of knowing if they didn't give him all their secret weapons along with their obvious ones. His fingers don't appear to be on any detonators at this point. Why aren't at least three of the four GI Joes simultaneously gunning the giant stupid target down with a laugh?

Maybe those snowsuits are just too thick, and by the time they've finished fishing around in them for their shurikens and whatnot Kwinn is out of range.

He's nice enough to not detonate the explosives he booby-trapped them with once he's out of the blast radius, at least. On one hand, letting them starve and freeze to death is probably crueller than just blowing them up and getting it over with. On the other hand, how does he know they don't have another team just a few miles behind them? Or a spare radio that they left at a campsite? Or a plane that's going to be looking for them if they don't report in by the crack of dawn?

I think the best explanation at this point is that everyone is stupid and everything is dumb. Which means that I can go ahead and stop pretending to think the author is a tankie, but I won't, because I want to communicate how little respect I have left for this comic and that's a tool for doing so that I already happen to have onhand. So, let's see how Comrade Larry Hama is going to write himself out of this corner.

The GI Joes scamper around and McGuyver together a wind-sled using stuff they scavenge from the plane and a few bits and bobs they have left on their persons.

They also take the pile of explosives that Kwinn left sitting in that heap like a total moron. At first I'd assumed that he was bluffing the whole time and those were dummy explosives he was threatening to kill them all with, but no. He took the blasting caps, sure, but I sure wouldn't trust these elite commandoes with a planewreck's worth of materials to work with to not jury-rig up a replacement if I were him. And oh hey, it turns out that Snake-Eyes has a bunch of spare ammo in his boots, who could have possibly foreseen that. I'm still just wondering why he didn't have a spare gun in there too.

They overtake Kwinn (at least, they hope they overtake him. They have no way of actually knowing) while staying out of his probable line of sight. They search the path ahead of him, and conclude that surely he MUST be stupid enough to drive his sled under this gigantic easily collapsible arch of ice.

What can I say, they know him pretty well at this point.

The sled and dogs are buried in the rain of ice chunks and snow. The GI Joes descend on their buried opponent; they need to get this guy alive if possible, or at least get his radio, and any surviving sled dogs of his could also come in handy. But then they find that Kwinn isn't under the ice with the sled and dogs. A moment later, he steps out from behind another snowdrift, machine gun in hand and smug grin on face.

So, he knew there was a trap here, but he decided to send his dogs and sled into it anyway?

The GI Joes were standing atop of that arch and only dashed away when they saw the sled with the decoy in it coming close. That means he must have seen them before they saw him. He had his weapon, as well as all of their weapons. Why didn't he just shoot them off of the arch before they ever spotted him?

Or better yet, just, like. Gone around them. That Loony Toons ice arch can't possibly have been the ONLY route to get to the pickup point by noon, could it have?

This sequence is trying to make him seem even craftier than before, but it's really just making him seem even stupider.

Also, the gun-toting commando-for-hire regrets having to shoot anything he can't eat, apparently. Does Kwinn say that EVERY time he has to shoot someone? How many times has he had to tell people that? That's going to have to have become, like, his battlecry. By this point in his career he's probably tempted to just say fuckit and start eating people just so he doesn't have to wallow in constant regret. He's already filled out the checklist of every cringey Native American stereotype besides "cannibal," so it's not like he'd even be making the comic that much more racist than it already is.

Well, to make Kwinn's stupidity even stupider, the GI Joes themselves weren't quite dumb enough to have everyone descend on the collapse at once without leaving someone on lookout. Unfortunately for them though, Kwinn fucks bears for breakfast, and Scarlett doesn't.

I'd tut-tut at Kwinn for creating a hostile workplace environment with comments like those, but with the shit they've been saying to and about him ever since they divined his ethnicity, eh.

The fight continues. Kwinn says some more extremely unconvincing Inuit stuff about weasel spirits and the gods of ice and snow and Snake-Eyes apparently being a shaman. Then, when it seems like Kwinn's won, he tells them that he regrets taking this mission and he doesn't think that the fear-engine should be allowed to exist. Huh, okay. Maybe some of his weird decisions and failures throughout this mission were down to moral ambivalence. That would make this all at least a little bit less stupi-

*blinks*

Kwinn. Why is giving it to the Americans the only way to be rid of it?

Wouldn't giving it to the Americans be the exact opposite of neutralizing it? Wouldn't it be, you know, proliferating the weapon to more parties?

I guess it would be "neutralized" in the sense that neither side of the Cold War would have the other at a fear ray disadvantage. Maybe he's hoping for a fear ray MAD situation that will prevent either side from ever actually deploying it? IDK about that, though. Unless these fear-engines have a WAY bigger and more irreversible destructive impact than has been suggested that would make them analogous to nukes, it seems more likely that both superpowers will just gleefully use them to oppress and terrorize the peoples under their respective bootheels and weaken each other's stooges in their proxy-wars while stopping just short of using them directly on each other.

Am I being too cynical and realpolitik for a childrens' comic? No, I'm not. Because, as I've previously praised this comic for, it actually does acknowledge (at least to a degree) the American military's own capacity for war crimes and antidemocratic policies, and it acknowledges these to be bad things that the country needs to constantly work to avoid. This story is not set in a squeaky-clean patriotic fantasy world where no one in the pentagon or white house would ever order atrocities.

In fact, we already know that the Americans are working on a similar technology. Breaker was able to recognize it, remember?

To be fair, the author is obviously intending this to be an eleventh hour tragic twist. The soviets didn't realize just how good a job the Anglo-Imperialists had done at stomping out class consciousness in their half of the Inuit population, and also underestimated the corruptive influence of the duplicitous shamans in the Russian half no matter how gently and benevolently the USSR tried to correct them. It's only natural that a hyper-traditional man like Kwinn, whose mind is poisoned by primitive reactionary religiosity, would betray his benefactors and work with the Americans. Why, it's just like that time in 1917 when so many of the Siberian Inuit tribes sided with...ah, but I digress.

Kwinn wants to give the thing to the Americans, because from his perspective that's going to make things less bad somehow, for some reason. But, he made an agreement with the Soviets, and because of honor thunderbird ancestors igloo he can't break his word. So, they talk over the possibilities. He's doing this now after two battles rather than before or between them, thus saving everyone a ton of trouble, because...um...I guess they had to prove themselves worthy by being good at fighting him, because of mukluk walrus northern lights. But, they manage to figure something out.

Two hours to spare. Did he REALLY not have a better option than the obvious trap arch, with that kind of time to work with?​

Those poor naive men, thinking that Kwinn is one of their comrades.

...why would they have ever thought he was a comrade? He's a mercenary who's worked for America, England, Israel, Russia, and China just following his wallet lol.

Anyway, he gives them the thingy and the documents, and demands the payment immediately. They have it all ready for him, in gold, just as agreed. Apparently they lugged it here from the plane crash. Erm...wouldn't it have made more sense to pay him upon return from the mission? Whatever. He also tells them that the Americans will surely be tracking him to this location, and that he has no intent of further involving himself in the situation now that he's done what he agreed to do. In his own words, he "abhors senseless violence." Ah, I see, that must be what led him to become a mercenary. They beg him to stay and defend them. He tells them that they can double back and try to find the weasel-skull necklace he left on the snow to mark the spot where he left all their weapons, if they want to, but he doubts that these airmen will be able to find it before the experienced commandoes do even though it's closer to them.

He then stupidly turns his back on the pair of Russians who he's just betrayed. Naturally, one of them draws his service revolver and shoots Kwinn in the back of the head.

Not really, but I don't know WHY not really. Were these military black ops airmen actually completely unarmed? Apparently so, because Kwinn sleds away into the sunrise and the GI Joe team approaches with their weapons and Kwinn's skull necklace both in hand.

Maybe the Russians surrender and yield the items, maybe they go down fighting. Maybe the submarine comes early and the joke is on the Americans after all. We never get to see.

I was as shocked as many of you probably are to realize that GI Joe #2 was written by the same people as #1. I guess either "Lady Doomsday" was them having an unusually good day, or "Panic at the North Pole" was them having an unusually bad one. Probably both, honestly.

This story's subject matter also didn't do them as many favors. Like I said last time, Cobra is the perfect enemy for a comic like this; pure cartoon villainy, with no real-world baggage beyond sort of vaguely reflecting the real world sins of the protagonist faction. When GI Joe goes up against a real world country hiring mercenaries from an extremely marginalized real life ethnic group, it makes everything different.

Even without the politics though, this really was just a worse-written, less-sensible, harder-to-parse story than the previous one, on pretty much all levels. "Lady Doomsday" had a couple of dumb moments crammed in at the end to wrap up the plot in time, but was otherwise worked pretty well. "North Pole" was littered with them from beginning to end.

I've got one more GI Joe post coming, for some supplemental material that filled out the second half of the extra-long first issue. I should have looked at it before moving on to #2, but the commissioner and I had some confusion over what I was meant to read (almost entirely my own fault, to be clear), so I'll get to it now instead.