G.I. Joe Special Missions #2 (1986)

[stolisomancer]

I met Larry Hama unexpectedly a few weeks ago, since he had a table at the Emerald City Comicon that I didn't know about before buying my ticket, and since then I've had his old '80s G.I. Joe comics on my mind. It doesn't hurt that Retaliation finally came out, either.

Special Missions was a relatively short-lived spin-off book that was a series of what were usually done-in-ones, involving particularly dicey or complicated missions by the team that did not necessarily involve Cobra.

This is a story from its second issue about refugee Nazis, Israeli Nazi hunters, and the Holocaust. This might be the kind of thing that mandates a trigger warning.


At the start of the issue, Hawk briefs the team. The wreckage of an old World War II German bomber has been discovered on an ice shelf near Greenland, and was apparently on a mission to attack New York City when it crashed. The wreckage contains enough nerve toxin to depopulate most of the eastern seaboard, and its discovery has brought Otto Totenschadel, an old Nazi war criminal, out of the woodwork. He's contacted the American government seeking asylum in exchange for his cooperation in safely disposing of the nerve toxin, since at the moment, he's hiding out in a well-guarded compound in Brazil due to Israeli Nazi hunters.

The mission involves two teams. One heads to Greenland to deal with the plane, hoping to keep it from falling into the ocean, while the other goes to the Brazilian jungle to negotiate with Otto.



I didn't quite appreciate what I was reading when this came out, since I was eight years old and made the mistake of thinking I was buying a comic book where people would ineffectually spray laser fire at each other. It wasn't until years later when I found the comic again in the attic and realized what "little blue numbers on her arm" meant.





Recondo snuck out, as it happens, so he could infiltrate the compound and deal with Otto.

Clutch cuts a deal with the Israelis; they'll help them break into the compound and get to Otto and they'll work out their differences afterward. What neither the Israelis or Otto know about is that the other team in Greenland has managed to deal with the nerve toxin without Otto's help, although they didn't mean to do so, and one of them has found and translated the plane's flight logs.

As it turns out, there were two planes on that mission, one of which had a secondary objective: bring a stash of gold bullion from the Germans' treasury to South America as seed money for a backup plan in case the Reich lost the war.





That thousand-yard stare on Clutch in the last few panels has stuck with me for quite a while now, and it's one of the reasons why Larry Hama, despite his mixed success as a superhero writer in the '90s, is always going to be in my good books. Somehow he got a reasonably complex story about the Holocaust into a licensed comic that ostensibly existed to sell toys.

Comments

[bj_l]

I've read very little by Hama that wasn't Wolverine (which was actually pretty good), as I've never had much interest in the Joe franchise. Might have to check this out, as it's pretty strong work.

[jmacq1]

"Special Missions" tended to be a bit "harder" than the regular ongoing series, but in both cases Larry Hama managed to infuse a surprising amount of depth, a bit of sly (and sometimes not so sly) political commentary, and about as much truth about the life of a soldier and the realities of the battlefield as you can get into a book based on a franchise aimed to sell toys to preteens.

There's certainly a reason that most G.I. Joe fans cite the comic as being the "true" incarnation of G.I. Joe. While I wouldn't say it's fantastic (it does get hampered significantly by the need to constantly include new characters and vehicles for the purpose of selling toys), it's far, far better than probably anyone expected.

The irony of a Vietnam veteran writing a book about a franchise that was supposed to be the pop-culture incarnation of Reagan-era jingoism has never been lost on me. To the credit of Marvel and Hasbro, they pretty much let him roll with it despite the ofttimes cynical tone it took in regard to politics.

[thanekos]

Totenschadel, for when Totenkopf's just too much.

[dr_zeus]

I always loved this issue, and that last row of panels of Clutch always stuck with me, too.

[damar148]

Otto was such a scumbag you almost feel glad for the Nazis to get their revenge, and the Isrealis and Joes by proxy.