G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (supplemental)

The first issue, with the Cobra-centric story, had a bunch of side materials in it. I don't know if they're given the same level of acknowledgement by the comic going forward as the main events, but I also don't know how hard this comic commits to continuity in the first place.

Anyway, first up is a cool little cross section/infographic of the GI Joe headquarters, nicknamed "the Pit." We've seen some bits of it in the background of certain panels, but not enough to tell if the creators had a solid grasp of the layout in mind. Well, it turns out that they did have a layout in mind! One that's both consistent with everything seen in the comic so far, and pretty dang cool.

It's detailed. It's very marketable as far as dollhouses and posters and stuff go. I don't know nearly enough about engineering to say that it's realistic, but to my layman's eyes it certainly looks believable as a real life military bunker. The placement of elevators, emergency exits, and ventilation elements all add up. The logic of how things are ordered - heavy equipment storage on top, then command and control, then training/staging areas, and finally quarters and essential infrastructure on the bottom - is readily apparent. There's even details like the small arms storage being near the bottom by the living quarters instead of near the training or staging areas above it that seem unintuitive at first, but make a ton of sense if you start thinking about them (keep the guns close at hand in case of a surprise intrusion!). The only thing I can think of that's missing is heat/exhaust e from the generators etc, but it's easy to imagine that there are some vent shafts coming out of the sides just offscreen. Alternatively, stick a couple of chimneys or vent grates on those surface buildings and say that there are pipes running up alongside the elevators and stairs.

Taking into account once again that I'm not an expert on military architecture or underground construction, this design and presentation gets an A+ from me.


Coincidentally, I've recently started trying to draw isometric maps and layouts, inspired by this guy's amazing RPG map work. I think I might try my hand at detailing a level or three of The Pit as an exercise, just for something a little different from the homebrew DnD dungeons I've been practicing with so far.


The next bonus item is a ten-page sidestory comic titled "Hot Potato." Continuing the pattern of diverse mission environments, this one takes place in a hot, sandy desert. We're only told that it's "somewhere in the Middle East," but the scenery looks specifically like a backwater corner of the Arabian Peninsula. If this were written in the 21st century I'd say the political situation narrowed it down to Yemen specifically, but at the time of writing things were more chaotic around there in general.

A full fledged in media res opening, with GI Joe already on their mission. Half of the team is sitting around in neutral territory waiting for the other half to make it back to them with the objective in hand. They've found evidence that a warlord by the name of Colonel Sharif (I'm guessing he's a renegade officer from somewhere or other, going by the title) is acting as a regional proxy for Cobra, and bringing it to light should be enough to kill his movement before it gets any bigger. Recovering those tapes takes priority over everything else in this mission; if the Joes have a choice between the objective and the lives of their own personnel, they've been ordered to choose the former.

The three waiting in the bar are worried about this. Not because any of them would hesitate to give their lives for the mission if need be, but because the recovery team includes Snake-Eyes, and they're worried that he specifically might see Hard Decisions where they don't strictly need to be made. It helps that Scarlet the token adult is the one leading that squad, but still, Snake-Eyes' presence on it is a little anxiety-inducing at least in Stalker's opinion.

Not a lot of faith in their colleague's judgement there, I must say. Dunno if this is a Snake-Eyes problem for genuinely not meriting it, or a Stalker problem for not having it. Those two have consistently been characterized as the shady ones, so it could also be both at once. Either way, this seems like a unit cohesion problem in need of solving. Of more immediate concern, though, is the fact that Scarlet's team got caught during their egress and has just barely survived a real bitch of a fight.

Looks like even the token adult has been forced to recognize a Hard Decision Point this time. It's at her own expense too, so I don't think anyone would judge Snake-Eyes and Rock'N'Roll for going through with it.

Sharif's gang is called the Guardians of Paradise, and the rhetoric we hear over their radio is pretty much exactly what you'd expect from an author who named them that. On one hand, pretty tropey and charicaturistic. On the other hand...maybe this is giving the creators too much credit, but the context actually helps a bit. Cobra Commander runs an over-the-top personality cult that physically can't stop praising him even during crisis situations. If this Sharif guy is an understudy of his, then it would make sense for him to be running a similar over-the-top personality cult that physically can't stop praising him even during crisis situations, just wearing Islamic fundamentalist skin this time (their uniforms even have some Cobra elements visible under the generically Middle Eastern ones, just to rub it in harder). Maybe I'm being too charitable, but having Cobra itself as a non-orientalist frame of reference DOES help a bit.

...

It occurs to me that I made a similar observation (albeit from the other side) about Cobra in "Lady Doomsday," but paralleling the USA itself that time.

That's kind of interesting, having the fantastical BBEG faction exemplify the worst aspects of all the more grounded factions around them and act as a unifying sociopolitical evil incarnate. It's all coming through the lens of the authors' own biases of course, but it's still interesting in concept if not always in execution.

Granted, this might be deliberate themeing by the writers, or it could just be an unintended side-effect of them stuffing every villain cliche they could think of into one spot and then letting its different colors come out in the dynamic lighting.

...

With Scarlett injured, the hot potato evidence tapes get tossed to Rock'n'Roll. He offers to leave his machine gun and some ammo with Scarlett in the hopes she can fend off the next group of pursuers, and she tells him that that's a very good idea; in fact, since he's having such a nervous episode about the thought of leaving her behind, why doesn't he just leave ALL his weapons and ammo with her and concentrate entirely on getting himself with the tapes on his person out of danger. Snake-Eyes is holding himself together much better, so he'll play escort for Rock'N'Roll. With the implication that if Rock'N'Roll gets hurt too, Snake-Eyes will have absolutely no problem at all leaving him in the sand and going it alone from there instead of trying to argue with him about it.

Harsh, but understandable. Even before you consider the amount of physical pain she's probably in, heh.

The two men run across the dunes. It doesn't take long before Rock'N'Roll starts blubbering again. In a way that makes it seem like he might have a thing for Scarlett. If so, I don't think she feels the same way about him, heh. I wonder if it's the personality or the mustache.

He also says something about thinking that Snake-Eyes also has a thing for Scarlett, and tries to play on that to get Snake-Eyes to let him go back. He may or may not be right about that part, but the author is definitely making a point of getting that out there in the dialogue. Hmm.

Snake-Eyes can't or won't answer, of course, which is why it takes Rock'N'Roll a while to notice that he is no longer present. At some point, Snake-Eyes vanished on him. That's not terribly responsible, even if they seem to be clear.

Back to Scarlett, who isn't having nearly as good a time of it. Seems like she's been holding off the baddies effectively enough that they don't realize someone else has been sent on ahead with the tapes, and thus they haven't tried to just go around her yet. She eventually runs out of ammo, but right then Snake-Eyes comes back to the rescue.

She's surprisingly happy to see him, after that chewing out she just gave to Rock'N'Roll for wanting to do the same thing.

Maybe she was just that desperate to get rid of Rock'N'Roll, idk.

Regardless of Scarlett's feelings about things, Snake-Eyes turns out to have had sound reasoning for what he did. He and Rock'N'Roll had just gotten within sight of the town when the former turned back. He probably only failed to inform Rock of his own departure because he's mute (whether that's by choice or otherwise, whatever the hell Snake-Eyes' deal is). And, Rock'N'Roll likewise figures out a method of complying with the mission parameters as absolutely fast as he can before turning around to help recover Scarlett and/or Snake-Eyes.

Everyone in the bar things someone has thrown a grenade in the window at first, but nope. Rock'N'Roll even managed to bounce it off of the correct table before it lands on the floor where the others can grab it.

Is he the team's dedicated grenadier? He definitely has the skills for it, heh.

In much less time than it would have taken him to go inside and hand it to them, Rock'N'Roll has already jumped into one of their onsite backup vehicles and is on his way back across the dunes. He came close to slipping up there, but he did his job in the end, and he did it quite well.

The fact that Rock'N'Roll acted the way he did also serves to wordlessly communicate the situation to the three in the bar. They've got the hot potato now, but they probably don't need three people to run it back from here, so!

We cut to a frankly unnecessary scene of Colonel Sharif giving a speech to pump up his men. I guess it's nice to have a face to put on the bad guy, but still, don't think it really adds enough to merit the inclusion.

And yeah, another helping of cringey, slightly racist stuff shuffling around "desert," "paradise," "infidel," etc. It's not as bad as Kwinn, but it's not good either.

...

To be clear, I'm not saying that these militant cult fanatics should talk like normal people. They're not normal people. However, it's not hard to look up how militant cult fanatics actually talk to each other, and this isn't it.

I guess it was harder to look that up in 1981 than it is today, but not that hard.

...

Rock'N'Roll listens to Sharif monologue cringily as he rides over the dunes and arrives just as Snake-Eyes and Scarlett are running out of ammo again. Recurring motifs and suchlike. He didn't have time to grab a gun, but the vehicle he grabbed has a mounted weapon, so he's able to suppress the baddies and let the other two hop on. And, you guessed it, another GI Joe from the bar group - Hawk, a guy who I don't think has gotten to characterize himself much yet - arrives in yet another vehicle slightly later, just in time to shoot down a plane that Sharif sent after the retreating vehicle and also announced over the unsecured comms like a total moron.

To be fair, the semi-comedic nature of this sidestory is coming through pretty strongly at this point, so I can mostly roll with the whacky pacing.

That said...did they have all these armed vehicles just sitting around outside of the bar with no one guarding them? Seems awfully foolhardy to me. Maybe there was a seventh GI Joe standing guard outside who we just never saw.

The story ends with Stalker doing as Hawk hoped he was doing above, and bringing the objective back home via commercial airline. He bought himself a first class ticket under the name "Stalker," which is lol. He orders himself a literal hot potato to finish this off with a dad joke.

Heh.

Short. Silly. Gets the job done, while also having a cute little arc for that Rock'N'Roll guy managing to reconcile his (relative to the other GI Joe members) softness with his sense of duty. The durkadurkastan-flavored bad guys were unfortunate, but a relatively minor case of that as these things go (if this had come out during the War On Terror era it would have been much worse).

I also feel like this sidestory has some of the best art in the comic thus far. Really good background details and facial expressions in a lot of these panels, and the way the golden sand acts to balance all the other colors without hitting oversaturation is really well done.

Another half-dozen pages of splash art finishes off the volume. Two of them are fairly mundane, if well-executed, technical diagrams of GI Joe vehicles. Nothing as fantastical as the big laser cannon from before; just a tank and a jeep with then-futuristic fire control computers built in. The others are character centric, starting with a slightly off-model depiction of Scarlett doing, uh, this:

I started to raise my eyebrow at this, before realizing that they guy she's William Tell-ing is another GI Joe who we haven't seen in action yet named Clutch. So, not a very smart thing for the two of them to be doing, but at least it's not what it first looked like was happening. Anyway, Scarlett - true name Shana - was a martial artist before she was anything else. Makes sense from what we saw of her so far.

Her codename is apparently a play off of "Gone With the Wind" that she got on account of her last name and home state, which...well, it's not something most people would have found questionable back then.

Next up is Breaker, now named as Alvin Kibbey, being his usual cloudcuckooland self.

Now lookie here partner, I'm an engineer.​

Him being totally oblivious to the person desperately calling to him from offscreen as he talks up the importance of communication is a nice touch. I had to crop the end of his little info blurb, but apparently he speaks seven languages. Math/computer people do tend to be good at languages as well, so it tracks.

I do like how clearly some of the personalities have been able to come through in such short appearances. Breaker is probably the best example; I took one look at this page, and my immediate reaction was "yep, that's Breaker alright" just from seeing him in these last couple stories. It's unfortunate that I need to qualify that with the word "some," though. Breaker, Stalker, and Snake-Eyes are memorable. Scarlet and Flash, I can soooort of pin down. I couldn't tell you much at all about any of the others at this point, and I'm not just talking about the ones who haven't appeared yet. Still, it's a big cast with a rotating focus, so giving everyone a chance to be memorable was always going to be a challenge.

Next is Flash the snarky laser expert. There's some kind of visual gag going on here that I'm afraid is lost on me.

Is this somehow connected to the "hot potato" thing from before? A joke about potato batteries, since he's also the team electrician? Some longstanding army reference involving potatoes that I'm not familiar with? No clue. Anyway, that's Anthony "Flash" Gambello, he's being significantly less sharp-tongued than usual, and he's got potatoes.

The last GI Joe member to get the pin-up treatment in this volume is Stalker. It doesn't capture his personality like Breaker's, but it at least does a good job communicating his very unusual combat specialty.

I love the detailing of the farmland below, and the plne pilot looking up at Lonzo "Stalker" Wilkinson with that baffled expression.

Continuing on the "Gone With the Wind" theme on the other hand, I'm not loving that the only black GI Joe is a former street gang leader. Or, erm. "Warlord," apparently.

In retrospect, it also makes me less happy about him acting as one of the team's shoulder-devils in the "Lady Doomsday" story. Like his feelings about the hostage might not be meant to reflect the US military's potential for coldbloodedness so much as "lol street thug."

On the plus side, I like the bizarrely eclectic menu of languages he's fluent in. It continues the thing with him having all these idiosyncratic little quirks, like the wildlife photography and such.

So, that's the first two volumes of "GI Joe: a Real American Hero." Lots to like. Lots to dislike. On balance, I'd say it's pretty good aside from "Panic at the North Pole."