Forever War: GI Joe 152

[knight_moves]

Cobra is making major advances in W-land and has brainwashed Baroness, Billy, Storm Shadow, and Destro to their cause--time for a character spotlight flashback!



A surprisingly youthful general and Vietnam Vet is called back into action.





We get some war movie stuff and man, if Gosier's beanmouth pencils are ill-suited to an action figure tie-in about Quick Kick and Darklon, they're absolutely WRONG for a gritty, pathos-ridden 'Nam flashback. It plays like Glen Keane animating a concentration camp drama.

Comments

[bewareofgeek]

Are you going to do the non-Hama fill-ins or jump straight to the end?

[beyondthefringe]

I don't think anyone here would terribly miss the two fill-ins if they were skipped.

[super_fly]

A couple of cliff notes wouldn't be unwelcome "Cobra did a scheme, the Joes did a foil"

[beyondthefringe]

Issue 153: Scarlett fights a BAT that looks like a Terminator in an issue that feels like a Spider-Man story with the serial numbers scraped off.

Issue 154: Roadblock discovers why Cobra airplane tickets are so cheap. Hint: it's not the customer service.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Well, now I just want to see 154 more now.

And if we're so close to the end, why rush it?

[beyondthefringe]

Why did they recall Joe? We'll never know.
What happens to the brainwashed characters? We'll never know.
Does Cobra Commander get to keep kicking dogs? We'll never know.
Because we're almost to the end, my friends.

Now, if Joe Colton was assigned to head up a special unit in late 1963, and the modern team debuted officially in 1982, and we're to accept these dates as canon, that's roughly 20 years during which some version of the team existed.

The original G.I. Joe action figure was sold from 1963-1969. So let's assume the first iteration operated in that timeframe. Probably very low-key, probably utilized overseas in the Vietnam War. (Oh, and obviously the team's formation survived Kennedy's assassination almost immediately after this story, so I guess it just sort of moved along under subsequent Presidents. Interesting that the first version, presumably the idealized cadre, lasted until the end of the LBJ era.)

Then you have the Adventure Team from 1970-1976, and it's been accepted several times that their existence is canon to some degree or another, and we can probably assume Joe was involved there as well. Less special forces, more Challengers of the Unknown. (Covering the Nixon Presidency and most of Ford's...)

So... that leaves a period between 1976-1982 where the team was either disbanded/defunct or just undocumented. That's presumably the time in which Joe transferred into space lasers along with Jane. So, was there a team? Were they shuttered due to budget reasons? (Did Jimmy Carter shut down the team during his time in office?) Were they reconfigured into some sort of... impossible mission team? (Come to think of it, what WAS the IMF doing between 1973-1988?)

It's almost fitting that the team was reborn during the Reagan years, lasted through Bush, and, as we see, is decommissioned again under Clinton.

(Wait a minute, late breaking thought: The first, purest form of the team lasted under Democratic Presidents. It changed form and function during Republican tenures, vanished for the length of a Democrat, returned at the height of its size and scope under Republican control, and was shut down around the time when a Democrat returned to power. But it returns -again- in 2010, under Obama's time in office and has survived since (maybe they didn't even TELL the Orange Guy the G.I. Joe team existed, whaddya think?) Either way, there's at least a loose correlation between changeover in political parties and/or elections, and the team's various incarnations/periods of activity. Hmmmm.)

Given that Snake-Eyes, Hawk, Stalker, Storm Shadow, Firefly, Destro, Baroness, Zartan, and a few others were all definitely established as being active during/around the Vietnam War, one wonders if any of them ever had run-ins with, or were associated with, any of the pre-ARAH-era Joe teams. I know some were presumably busy prior to 1982 doing ninja things, but could a younger Hawk have been part of a proto-Joe team before ultimately being tapped to head a new version? Stalker? Did the Adventure Team ever run into Arishikage ninjas?

(Look, let's ignore IDW's version of continuity which saw Joe and Stalker working alongside Atomic Man, Bullet Man, and Miles Mayhem... let's work within the ARAH timeline.)

In other words, I'd love to see G.I. Joe: the Hidden Years focusing on the two earlier teams or the missing years from 1976-1982.

(Sorry, this got away from me again)

[bewareofgeek]

There have been two mutually-contradictory sequels to ARAH: Devil's Due & IDW. The latter (written by Larry himself) recently jumped ship to Image at issue 301.

[beyondthefringe]

I’ve read/been reading both runs, but for the sake of the current post, I’m looking at this from the “about to be cancelled original run” POV. The “now what?” is strong as we reach the end.

And obviously the Hama run at IDW is the “official” continuation of the ARAH saga (with some if not all of the Declassified mini done at DDP thrown in).

[bewareofgeek]

And the short Storm Shadow series Larry did, oddly enough.

Fair point about the POV thing. Although now that I think about it, the Colton thing isn't really followed up on at IDW. He just shows up in issue #167 asking Mainframe to recalibrate his "rapid pulse electron beam"

[tripodeca113]

Which member of Cobra would it be funniest to say was behind the Kennedy assassination?
(Firefly that damn Faceless Master strikes again)

[cainofdreaming]

JFK actually shot himself after Bludd had read him the whole of his poetic repertoire the night before.

[bewareofgeek]

Raptor, because JFK refused to sign into law a tax exemption for falcon training.