GIJoe

[RoIIo Tomassi]

The kid in 155 isn't Billy. That's the kid who eventually becomes Kamakura in the Devil's Due comics. He's the adopted son of the Fred series Crimson Guard who was in the same LRRP unit in Vietnam as Snake Eyes, Stormshadow, and Stalker.

[anarky]

You're also dealing with two different continuities. #0 and Cobra #1 are the IDW-verse.

[Ran]

So what you are saying is that this stuff I just read is someone's way of screwing with me.

[anarky]

Not exactly. They had three titles (G.I. Joe, Cobra, and Origins) that were set in a new universe. Then, after about a year or two, they brought Hama on to do a continuation of the original series, picking up at #156. (Well, technically 155.5.)

[anarky]

Read up through #150 in Classic 15.

I wonder what became of Phil Gosier, who does most of the art in this volume (maybe all aside from the fill-in issues). He's very hit-and-miss. Mostly, he's got a cool, sort of gritty/cartoony style that usually works in this book, and is damned good at faces (knowing when to make them abstract and when to make them almost hyper-realistic by the standards of the day). But his anatomy suffers pretty badly at times; there's one panel at the beginning of #151 especially where Baroness has legs that must be eight feet long.

Darklon's death did not go down as I recalled. I thought it was more conclusive, with it being quite clear the rocket exploded directly on him. This is a "death," in retrospect, that I would've expected almost any Joe character to walk away from. And it isn't too farfetched that Darklonia fell into chaos while Cobra used it as a base to attack Wolkekukukukukukukukukukukukukuland; dead or not, Darklon would be hurting and take a while to make it out. The cover story in the new volume makes more sense now; it was Destro who launched the rocket and assumed Darklon dead.

Even if it's not explained, I've got to assume that Mindbender's "improvements" to the brainwave scanner made it REALLY powerful; it can easily override the basic morals of three of the strongest-willed characters in the series. (Keep in mind that two are ninjas, and the other shook off the effects of brainwashing just a couple of years prior.) Which makes me wonder if Mindbender unknowingly gave the Dr. Venom program the power it needed to take over Billy's body later on.

The space story isn't too bad, actually. I wonder if Hama will ever pick up on the "long story" that Red Star alludes to, about how he looks just like Brekhov.

[anarky]

And, well, I didn't intend to read the rest, as I have important stuff I should be doing, but I couldn't help it.

First, issues #153-154 are bad. Fucking awful. Even with some bomb fill-ins earlier, and the mediocre second Transformers crossover, these are probably the worst issues in the entire run. The dialogue is pathetic, the characterization way off base, and the art pretty awful. Why is Scarlett on leave in Salt Lake City, wearing her full Ninja Force costume but no weapons? How did Dr. Knox know where to send the prototype BAT (IV?)? How did the fucking BAT get knocked off a skyscraper and have a shit-ton of girders drop on it with no effect, but die instantly in a standard garbage truck compactor? Was anyone over five surprised at the whole "mistaken identity" thing? How did Roadblock get booted from a major carrier and wind up on a charter flight without thinking something was screwy? Why did he feel no compunction whatsoever about killing multiple Cobra agents when it wasn't necessary? (He's the baddest of the bad--well, top five, I guess--but no Joe relishes killing, especially what borders on cold-blooded murder several times here.) Then to fucking blow up a plane above American soil, when all he had to do was report it? Never mind that there's the big question of why the hell Cobra needs a fake charter airline. Oh, and a standard 747 carries a HISS Tank in the baggage compartment. Yeah, right.

The ending is a LOT more abrupt than I recall, with a lot more loose threads, many of them still unresolved. Where are Slice and Dice, who were pretty high up in the chain of command at the end? Cobra is in the process of taking over eastern Europe--did they just decide to stop? Wolfgang was just elected (sorta) the president of Borovia--this is fucking huge; we have an opportunistic weasel in charge of a Cobra-allied state after he seemingly killed the president. Plus, what was Zartan and CC's reason for killing his predecessor and laying blame on him, and how would things play out with a W-lander in nominal charge of a Cobra satellite nation whose army has just declared war on W-land, itself practically a Cobra satellite at this point? Joe Colton is brought back to active duty to do literally nothing at all (unless he's in charge of dismantling the team behind the scenes).

There's no explanation at all for the shutdown--budget constraints or not, in the Joe-verse, they're needed more than ever. Cobra is on a serious warpath, and has (more demented versions of) some of its old command structure back in place.

And how exactly did Firefly wind up back in Cobra's employ in the new series... not to mention he's attacking Colton's laser, and Colton clearly isn't active duty anymore.

And where was the little Borovian girl in the Collins family? Not to mention, why did Sean start his letter assuming Snake Eyes wouldn't remember him?

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Picking up on a tangent from the TF topic; my first 'ongoing' issue was 77, which was fallout from the Cobra Civil war (it had a Lady Jaye/Zarana catfight on the cover).
My first two issues were 46 and 61, which I had read so many times at that point, they were falling apart. And I had picked up several '3 for a $1'-packs and had many of the issues between 50 and 75 at that point. But according to my little notebooks from the time, my notation says 77 was my first issue where I bought it and then went back the following month.

And, by doing a little research on cbdb, I see it had a cover date of Early October 1988. So that jogs my memory a bit, GIJoe, X-Men, and Amazing Spider-Man all went bi-weekly that summer and were advertised in house ads. So I started buying those series because waiting for TF wasn't doing it for me. TF 41-43 was June-August 1988, so that jives as well. I would've been going nuts two months later subsisting on only one monthly book.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

I don't often buy comics solely for their cover, but this might be an exception.

[anarky]

I got the latest two paperbacks (Cobra Command Aftermath Whatever, We Just Stopped Trying to Make Logical Sense With Our Numbering, and Disavowed 6: We Left Out All The Side Miniseries And One-Shots That Make This Series Make Sense). But that's not what I'm here to discuss (yet).

Read the preview of the latest Danger Girl crossover (the Scarlett cover). I was about to praise the artist for making Shipwreck look Hispanic, or at least not a full-on cracker. But everyone looks partly Hispanic. Also, for Joe to supposedly be this guy's big inspiration, he kinda sucks at writing it. I've never seen Deep-Six so mirthful and talkative. And everyone else, well, they're just generic bubbles pointing at characters who could be anyone. Switch the names and pictures, and it could be Lady Jaye, Ripcord, Wet Suit, and Cutter talking in the scene.

[anarky]

Hmmm.... I thought Krake was African for some reason. I know he was in Africa, but I could swear there was some reference to his actually being African.

The whole "no one knows my face" is pretty clear setup to bring him back from the dead at some point, should someone choose to do so.

I didn't think the reason behind Bludd hating Krake was explained well. At all, in fact. One minute, they're buddies. The next, Bludd and Baroness are bitching about him being a suckup. Also, some of the recent stories have Bludd doing some traveling that would've been difficult for a guy running a gulag (and it was confirmed when Krake took over that this was still his full-time job) and raising an unsuspecting family.

Rosada's artwork, I am not fond of this. Scarlett consistently looks flat-chested and chubby. It's not her choice of clothing. She's just pretty wide. Which would be fine if the character wasn't consistently shown everywhere else to be the opposite.

I'm nowhere near "drop this" territory, but it's mostly Dixon's name and the Joe brand that keep me coming back. I've been hoping Dixon could improve, but I'm starting to think he's like Claremont and will never come close to recapturing his former glory. Joe is uncharacteristically sloppy of him. I'm really concerned about him being the sole architect of the IDW-verse soon.

[RoIIo Tomassi]

The most recent arc was pretty limp, if you've been following my Twitter-sized reviews every month. I'm just saying, if you're giving it one more TPB to decide...don't bother.

[anarky]

I'm not quite to that point. If I read more comics and had to cut back, or if it wasn't one of the books that got me into comics, or if it wasn't the guy who did such amazing Robin and Punisher comics back in the day, though, it might be on the cusp.

I did cancel both Dreamwave's TF series and Devil's Due Joe series when they got ridiculous, so it's not like I hold either title so sacred as to keep buying it entirely out of obligation. (Now, if ReGeneration One or ARAH started sucking, I might get them out of obligation.)

[RoIIo Tomassi]

Dammit, J. Scott Campbell! Now I'm gonna have to buy issue 3 also!

[anarky]

http://www.hisstank.com/gi-joe-news/com ... ews-11609/

Is it just me, or does Hama throw in a pretty unsubtle jab at Devil's Due on page 5 of the previewed ARAH?

[RoIIo Tomassi]

I think that's more a reflection of Hama's documented personal disdain for the character than it is a criticism of DDP.