G.I. Joe fangirling post
I’ve been wanting to write a post about my old flame, G.I. Joe since last year, but what I was thinking was, “Hmmm - will it be interesting to anyone?” But now I think I have enough reason to write one, since:
1) I’ve just finished watching Who Wants to be a Superhero - and seeing Feedback trying to explain how Stan Lee had meant so much to him, I also remembered that Stan Lee has also filled my child- and teenhood with G.I. Joe. I watched G.I. Joe on every channel that I could watch airing the series - RCTI, Malaysia’s TV3, and Hongkong’s StarTV.
2) amamiyarin has made a post about a forthcoming live action G.I. Joe, and though so happy I am, I think it’s a good thing to make a kind of tribute to the original series. (There will be a lot of alteration in the film, I bet.)
What I meant ‘the original series’ here is the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero of the 1980’s. New series have been published, but somehow I am put off by the ‘standard’ digital colouring and the drawing style (although some of the covers are truly incredible). But maybe I’ll try and buy some volumes of the latest series.
For a series that originated as toys and figures, you might think of the series as a kind of campy, cheap comic merely to serve a capitalistic end - but it was far from that. True, the first artists weren’t exactly first class - but Larry Hama’s script was witty, funny, intriguing, emotional and adrenaline-pumping. G.I. Joe’s world was a strange one, filled with Vietnam veterans, young, eccentric soldiers, ninjas, clones called Freds, Dreadnoks and terrorists, but somehow it all went convincingly. And it was not a ‘children’ comic - there was much violence in it. For a start, in the first volume, Cobra wiped out the residents of a village to prevent them from helping G.I. Joe. And the Joes were, well, soldiers, not Peter Parker - they would shoot and kill if needed.
The series was written when the shadow of Vietnam was still well shading the US. To me it is one of the strongest points of the original stories. Many of the characters had known each other in Vietnam, and their lives were intertwined ever since. (I wonder whether the new G.I. Joes will be veterans of, say, Gulf War or some other war?) Now some of them serve the Armed Forces as members of G.I. Joe, lead by a charismatic brigadier general with the codename Hawk, who had turned down another general star to stay with his team. Hawk was at first designed as a crew-cut blonde, but later artists like the wonderful Rod Whigham (whose art I still admire until now) gave him a longer hairdo and turned him into a gentler-looking person. Later in the animation, his hair was changed into black (I always suspect that it was intended to distinguish him more than another blonde in the team, Duke. BTW, it seems like Duke is one of the main characters now, since Hawk has been paralyzed in the current continuity.)
The original members of G.I. Joe like Breakers, Roadblock, Stalker, Clutch, Steeler &c were designed like real soldiers with some modification. You know, the uniform, the equipment; although the looks of some of them were far from the standard looks of soldiers. (And excuse me, I don’t like Scarlett. I like Snake Eyes, but somehow I feel disgusted to see how he and Scarlett were always hanging out together like hell. I'd rather see Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow... errr, I'm sorry.) Some designs were hard to comprehend, though - what was a man like Torpedo doing with his diving suit everywhere?
As the series went on (and more toys were issued), the designs of the character became more various and interesting. So when TNMT were all bald and green, Joes came with a wide range of different characters and looks available for anyone to pick his/her favourite. Well, although outlandish their fighting outfit might be, each of them actually owned a normal soldier uniform. They had to, since when they’re not on a mission (or when they’re detained), they must appear as any other soldier, positioned in a chaplaincy.
The shortcoming was that not many characters could get a detailed attention in the comic. Many were just fleeting by, but in the animation, it meant we could get the story of a different character every week. And these characters would get silly, fight with each other, make fun of each other, sacrifice themselves for their buddies - truly a lively array of characters.
In later seasons, the original characters were subsided by new characters like Sergeant Slaughter (my brother’s favourite), Shipwreck, the ever-fighting ‘couple’ Leatherneck and Wetsuit, Cross Country, Lifeline &c.
Even later seasons introduced characters like Big Ben, but they were not as deep and fascinating as the previous seasons, so I didn’t really pay attention to them.
All great heroes need great enemies, and for G.I. Joe, the archenemy was the terrorist group, Cobra, lead by Cobra Commander, who was directly in charge of the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and some other regions. Nevertheless, Cobra’s strongest hold was in the US, in a small town named Springfield.
Some members of the organisation were Baroness, Dr Mindbender, Destro, Major Sebastian Bludd, the twins Tomax and Xamot, Firefly (who is somehow my favourite), Scarface, Storm Shadow (who was a ninja of the same clan with Snake Eyes) &c. They were not always on good terms with each other. Many of them were not exactly ‘black’ character and they too were tangled in relationships of love, hate and jealousy. Things got even messed up when an experiment brought forth Serpentor, a supersoldier made of genes of great warriors in the past and Storm Shadow. Serpentor quickly gained support from members and supporters of Cobra, leaving Cobra Commander betrayed and frustrated.
Hand-in-hand with Cobra were the Dreadnoks, a motorgang who loved nothing else other than chaos.
Some of the stories/events/scenes that I love the most in the original series:
- When Tunnel Rat pulled out his G.I. Joe credit card. OMG! Reminds you of Clooney’s Batman, doesn’t it. And it's because his credit card Cobra managed to track down the Joes!
- When Cross Country (MY FAVOURITE JOE EVAH) and Sergeant Slaughter, on HAVOC, fought the Dreadnoks in swamps. Cross Country shouted one of the most hilarious sentences ever in the series: “I’m not a hillbilly! I’m a redneck, and proud of it!” as if that made things better. (He was the character that shouted “Hallelujah!” in the animation…)
- When the Joes launched a full-scale attack on Springfield. Very full of drama, emotion and action.
- When Cobra, in turn, attacked PIT (G.I. Joe’s secret HQ). They managed to destroy PIT completely, forcing the Joes to live on the move. Several generals sacrificed themselves heroically in the rampage. The scene of Hawk looking down at the burning PIT saying that the cost we must pay (in a battle) is always higher than its worth is just unforgettable.
Well, have I managed to make you interested even a little bit in G.I. Joe? I hope I have. Because when the film’s on theater, I would love to have friends to watch it with me!
The following are the Joes I remember:
Let's play 'Find Your Joe'
Ace
Airborne
Airtight (crazy, silly, and funny)
Alpine
Barbecue
Bazooka
Beach Head
Blizzard
Blowtorch
Breaker
Chuckles
Clutch
Covergirl (a tank-driving lady, how sexy is that?)
Crank Case
Cross Country
Deep Six
Dial Tone
Doc
Duke
Dusty
Falcon
Fastdraw
Flash
Flint (the stupid, nevertheless handsome womanizer)
Footloose
Grand Slam
Grunt
Gung Ho
Hawk
Heavy Metal
Iceberg
Lady Jaye
Law and Order
Leatherneck
Lifeline
Lift Ticket
Low Light
Mainframe
Mutt and Junkyard
Outback
Quick Kick
Recondo
Ripcord
Roadblock
Rock ‘n Roll
Scarlett
Sergeant Slaughter
Shipwreck
Shooter
Short Fuse
Slipstream
Snake Eyes (probably the most popular character ever… oh well… )
Snow Job
Spirit
Steeler
Toolbooth
Torpedo
Tripwire
Wetsuit
Wild Bill
Zap
And see, there are more here! One of the writers must have been a big fan of Cutter >___<
WTF I just know now that Cross Country's real name is Robert M. Blaise and his rank is a sergeant. LOL. I like Toolbooth real name: 'Chuck X. Goren' - X means 'nothing'. And Flint's name is DASHIEL R. FAIREBORN.... what, where was he born? I'm glad to know that later he married Lady Jaye - but am horrified to know that Lady Jaye was then killed! :(
And this is a very usable Gi Joe character guide.
1) I’ve just finished watching Who Wants to be a Superhero - and seeing Feedback trying to explain how Stan Lee had meant so much to him, I also remembered that Stan Lee has also filled my child- and teenhood with G.I. Joe. I watched G.I. Joe on every channel that I could watch airing the series - RCTI, Malaysia’s TV3, and Hongkong’s StarTV.
2) amamiyarin has made a post about a forthcoming live action G.I. Joe, and though so happy I am, I think it’s a good thing to make a kind of tribute to the original series. (There will be a lot of alteration in the film, I bet.)
What I meant ‘the original series’ here is the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero of the 1980’s. New series have been published, but somehow I am put off by the ‘standard’ digital colouring and the drawing style (although some of the covers are truly incredible). But maybe I’ll try and buy some volumes of the latest series.
For a series that originated as toys and figures, you might think of the series as a kind of campy, cheap comic merely to serve a capitalistic end - but it was far from that. True, the first artists weren’t exactly first class - but Larry Hama’s script was witty, funny, intriguing, emotional and adrenaline-pumping. G.I. Joe’s world was a strange one, filled with Vietnam veterans, young, eccentric soldiers, ninjas, clones called Freds, Dreadnoks and terrorists, but somehow it all went convincingly. And it was not a ‘children’ comic - there was much violence in it. For a start, in the first volume, Cobra wiped out the residents of a village to prevent them from helping G.I. Joe. And the Joes were, well, soldiers, not Peter Parker - they would shoot and kill if needed.
The series was written when the shadow of Vietnam was still well shading the US. To me it is one of the strongest points of the original stories. Many of the characters had known each other in Vietnam, and their lives were intertwined ever since. (I wonder whether the new G.I. Joes will be veterans of, say, Gulf War or some other war?) Now some of them serve the Armed Forces as members of G.I. Joe, lead by a charismatic brigadier general with the codename Hawk, who had turned down another general star to stay with his team. Hawk was at first designed as a crew-cut blonde, but later artists like the wonderful Rod Whigham (whose art I still admire until now) gave him a longer hairdo and turned him into a gentler-looking person. Later in the animation, his hair was changed into black (I always suspect that it was intended to distinguish him more than another blonde in the team, Duke. BTW, it seems like Duke is one of the main characters now, since Hawk has been paralyzed in the current continuity.)
The original members of G.I. Joe like Breakers, Roadblock, Stalker, Clutch, Steeler &c were designed like real soldiers with some modification. You know, the uniform, the equipment; although the looks of some of them were far from the standard looks of soldiers. (And excuse me, I don’t like Scarlett. I like Snake Eyes, but somehow I feel disgusted to see how he and Scarlett were always hanging out together like hell. I'd rather see Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow... errr, I'm sorry.) Some designs were hard to comprehend, though - what was a man like Torpedo doing with his diving suit everywhere?
As the series went on (and more toys were issued), the designs of the character became more various and interesting. So when TNMT were all bald and green, Joes came with a wide range of different characters and looks available for anyone to pick his/her favourite. Well, although outlandish their fighting outfit might be, each of them actually owned a normal soldier uniform. They had to, since when they’re not on a mission (or when they’re detained), they must appear as any other soldier, positioned in a chaplaincy.
The shortcoming was that not many characters could get a detailed attention in the comic. Many were just fleeting by, but in the animation, it meant we could get the story of a different character every week. And these characters would get silly, fight with each other, make fun of each other, sacrifice themselves for their buddies - truly a lively array of characters.
In later seasons, the original characters were subsided by new characters like Sergeant Slaughter (my brother’s favourite), Shipwreck, the ever-fighting ‘couple’ Leatherneck and Wetsuit, Cross Country, Lifeline &c.
Even later seasons introduced characters like Big Ben, but they were not as deep and fascinating as the previous seasons, so I didn’t really pay attention to them.
All great heroes need great enemies, and for G.I. Joe, the archenemy was the terrorist group, Cobra, lead by Cobra Commander, who was directly in charge of the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and some other regions. Nevertheless, Cobra’s strongest hold was in the US, in a small town named Springfield.
Some members of the organisation were Baroness, Dr Mindbender, Destro, Major Sebastian Bludd, the twins Tomax and Xamot, Firefly (who is somehow my favourite), Scarface, Storm Shadow (who was a ninja of the same clan with Snake Eyes) &c. They were not always on good terms with each other. Many of them were not exactly ‘black’ character and they too were tangled in relationships of love, hate and jealousy. Things got even messed up when an experiment brought forth Serpentor, a supersoldier made of genes of great warriors in the past and Storm Shadow. Serpentor quickly gained support from members and supporters of Cobra, leaving Cobra Commander betrayed and frustrated.
Hand-in-hand with Cobra were the Dreadnoks, a motorgang who loved nothing else other than chaos.
Some of the stories/events/scenes that I love the most in the original series:
- When Tunnel Rat pulled out his G.I. Joe credit card. OMG! Reminds you of Clooney’s Batman, doesn’t it. And it's because his credit card Cobra managed to track down the Joes!
- When Cross Country (MY FAVOURITE JOE EVAH) and Sergeant Slaughter, on HAVOC, fought the Dreadnoks in swamps. Cross Country shouted one of the most hilarious sentences ever in the series: “I’m not a hillbilly! I’m a redneck, and proud of it!” as if that made things better. (He was the character that shouted “Hallelujah!” in the animation…)
- When the Joes launched a full-scale attack on Springfield. Very full of drama, emotion and action.
- When Cobra, in turn, attacked PIT (G.I. Joe’s secret HQ). They managed to destroy PIT completely, forcing the Joes to live on the move. Several generals sacrificed themselves heroically in the rampage. The scene of Hawk looking down at the burning PIT saying that the cost we must pay (in a battle) is always higher than its worth is just unforgettable.
Well, have I managed to make you interested even a little bit in G.I. Joe? I hope I have. Because when the film’s on theater, I would love to have friends to watch it with me!
The following are the Joes I remember:
Let's play 'Find Your Joe'
Ace
Airborne
Airtight (crazy, silly, and funny)
Alpine
Barbecue
Bazooka
Beach Head
Blizzard
Blowtorch
Breaker
Chuckles
Clutch
Covergirl (a tank-driving lady, how sexy is that?)
Crank Case
Cross Country
Deep Six
Dial Tone
Doc
Duke
Dusty
Falcon
Fastdraw
Flash
Flint (the stupid, nevertheless handsome womanizer)
Footloose
Grand Slam
Grunt
Gung Ho
Hawk
Heavy Metal
Iceberg
Lady Jaye
Law and Order
Leatherneck
Lifeline
Lift Ticket
Low Light
Mainframe
Mutt and Junkyard
Outback
Quick Kick
Recondo
Ripcord
Roadblock
Rock ‘n Roll
Scarlett
Sergeant Slaughter
Shipwreck
Shooter
Short Fuse
Slipstream
Snake Eyes (probably the most popular character ever… oh well… )
Snow Job
Spirit
Steeler
Toolbooth
Torpedo
Tripwire
Wetsuit
Wild Bill
Zap
And see, there are more here! One of the writers must have been a big fan of Cutter >___<
WTF I just know now that Cross Country's real name is Robert M. Blaise and his rank is a sergeant. LOL. I like Toolbooth real name: 'Chuck X. Goren' - X means 'nothing'. And Flint's name is DASHIEL R. FAIREBORN.... what, where was he born? I'm glad to know that later he married Lady Jaye - but am horrified to know that Lady Jaye was then killed! :(
And this is a very usable Gi Joe character guide.