 Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here and I'm back with another comic book Wednesday. And this time we are looking at GI Joe number 8. And let's start by looking at the cover. The cover we have stalker on the Jump Jetpack and Scarlet and Clutch on the vamp and they are being attacked by something. It's really hard to tell what this machine thing is. Now in the story we do find out what it is but as it appears on the cover it just looks really weird and I'm going to go ahead and say it. This cover is badly drawn. I do not like it. Looking at the splash page, the splash page seems to be a little bit more promising. We have a pretty cool drawing of a boat with a sea plane tied to the back of it. We see Cobra symbols so we know that Cobra is back and that's always a good thing. We have a title code name Seastrike and we have a creative team of, uh oh, Herb Triumph Script and Art. We have no Larry Hama in this issue and that will probably not turn out to be a good thing. Cobra Commander is observing the space shuttle from the boat but the boat is spotted so the boat dives underwater so I guess it is also a submarine, who knew. Elsewhere we have the Joe's training in an Arctic environment which actually turns it out to be an enclosure of some kind. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be in the pit or somewhere else. I do like these training scenes. It gives us a chance to see the Joe's when they are not in combat and it allows their personalities to come out a little bit. The training is interrupted when Hawk brings them a mission. They are going to the Kennedy Space Center to provide security for the space shuttle. The space shuttle is going to launch a satellite into orbit that will locate and destroy the Cobra sea bases. Let's take a moment to look at whether or not this would even be legal. They're talking about putting weapons into orbit. There is a treaty that governs such actions, the so-called Outer Space Treaty of 1967, and it prohibits weapons of mass destruction in space, but it really only addresses weapons of mass destruction so if the satellite uses conventional weapons it probably would not violate the treaty. The United States did sign and ratify this treaty so this treaty is US law. So if the Joe's were putting weapons of mass destruction into orbit they would be violating the treaty and American law. The comic book doesn't say specifically what type of weapon the satellite would have so we don't exactly know if the Joe's are doing something illegal here, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Somewhere under the sea is a giant Cobra sea base and Cobra Commander's submarine is docking at the base. Now is this Cobra sea base realistic? Probably not. But what the heck, I'll go with it and see where it leads. My suspension of disbelief has not been broken at this point. Cobra Commander has a meeting with his officers in which he announces that these sea bases will launch missiles and the missiles will put satellites into orbit and these satellites will have warheads that will threaten the earth and that will be the means by which they take over the world. The Baroness is there and she mentions capitalist lackeys so I guess Cobra is communist? I thought Cobra were Nazis. What it boils down to is Cobra is anything that is anti-American. At the Kennedy Space Center we are brought into the planning phase of the mission and once again I do like these planning scenes, it gives us another look at a different side of GI Joe and it makes the stories seem a little bit more intelligent. The Joe's security plan involves setting up two rings around the space shuttle, two security perimeters that separate GI Joe squads will occupy to prevent any Cobra attacks. We have what might be a dialogue error. It says that Clutch and Ranger will be in the vamp but Stalker is in the next panel and he's correctly named so I can't really say exactly why that is. I will take this opportunity though to plug my position that Ranger would be a good alternate codename for Stalker since the word Stalker now has such negative connotations. Flash and Breaker are assigned to be on the space shuttle including during its orbital mission. That's right, Breaker and Flash are going to be on the space shuttle in space. Now this is crazy, this is just a dumb idea. You need a lot of specialized training to go on space missions and Breaker and Flash do not have that. The astronauts on the space shuttle do not need these soldiers up there puking while the astronauts are trying to do their jobs. The defensive perimeters are set up and Breaker and Flash aboard the space shuttle and Cobra attacks. Cobra attacks with these machines that they call sea legs and they look ridiculous. You have to keep in mind that this is the pre-destro era, Destro later was the Cobra weapons supplier and at the time Cobra did not have any toy vehicles that they could use in the comic books so what you got was a bunch of standard comic book technology. You wouldn't be surprised to see some of this stuff used by Dr. Doom. People often comment that the comic book only existed to sell toys but I'm kind of glad that there were toys for the comic book to sell because the toys provided better vehicles than this kind of made up stuff in the comic books. The shuttle is going to launch in one hour and the process cannot be sped up so the Joes are just going to have to hold off Cobra until the shuttle launches. Grand Slam takes out one of the sea legs with the laser cannon but then the laser cannon gets taken out. Stalker on the jet pack and Clutch in the van decide to fall back and link up with the MOBAT tank. In the meantime Cobra Commander and the Baroness enter the fray in the Cobra copter which looks absolutely nothing like the toy that we eventually got. Again, 1983 cannot come soon enough. We need better vehicles for both the Joes and Cobra. The MMS makes a very brief appearance when it gets blown up. You know the MMS was never used very well in the comic book. In fact I think every time that it was used it ended up getting destroyed so you can kind of guarantee that if you see the MMS in the comic book it's going to get blown up. It's kind of weird. I wonder what they had against it. Let's go ahead and add that to the list of things that G.I. Joe hates. G.I. Joe hates the MMS. At this point we have seen some G.I. Joe equipment get blown up and this destruction of equipment allows the writer to add some tension into the story where we know that the Joes cannot be killed but the destruction of their equipment and weaponry at least gives the illusion that Cobra is making some headway. Rock and Roll shows up on the ram motorcycle to take out one of the sea legs even though I still think that that motorcycle should belong to Breaker. Rock and Roll does not need a motorcycle. He already has a great big machine gun. Breaker did not have any guns so they should give him the motorcycle. Give the motorcycle to Breaker even though I understand that Breaker is on the space shuttle in this issue but he still shouldn't be. There's no way that any G.I. Joe personnel should be on the space shuttle in space. I'm going to have a tough time getting past that one. The Cobra sea legs are destroyed so Cobra's second wave is spearheaded by what they're calling amphibious assault guns which are very silly looking tanks. You know what they look like? They look like those little ball syringes that you use to get snot out of baby's noses. They have fixed guns on the front end which cannot rotate so these tanks can only fire in the direction that they're facing. That makes them inferior to essentially every conventional tank. Hawk orders the rest of the Joe's from the inner perimeter to go assist the other Joe's as they're repelling the Cobra assault. In the meantime, the MOBAT's tank treads are taken out with a land torpedo. Alright, whatever, I'm just not even going to comment on that one. Although the tank is immobilized by the land torpedo, it still has the use of its cannon so it's taking out these amphibious tanks. Zap and short fuse also take out some tanks. Scarlet takes out one of them with a satchel charge and Snake Eyes drops in and kills one of the tank drivers just as he's within range of the space shuttle. But this is all useless because Cobra Commander and the helicopter fires a missile at the space shuttle. It looks like the space shuttle is doomed but Hawk is there and he takes out the missile by shooting it. That's right, he shoots it with a bullet. He shoots a missile that is heading directly at him with a rifle and I am calling bullshit. There is no way. That is not possible. This has stepped over the line from improbable to impossible. The space shuttle launches and Hawk avoids being cooked by diving into an emergency blast shelter, which is very convenient. And while we're talking about impossible things, the Cobra helicopter transforms into a submarine and then dives under water so Cobra Commander and the Baroness can escape. The Joes are aboard an aquatic helicopter and they find the Cobra sea base, which for now for some reason is floating on the surface of the water. They land on the top of the sea base and they suspect it's a trap and Hawk says that if it's a trap, they've got to play it out. Really? Is that actually what you do with a trap? I think what you do with a trap is not play it out. You don't go into it. This is the second issue in a row where the Joes have knowingly walked into traps. Suddenly Cobra launches a missile with the intent of destroying the Joes satellite and Cobra Commander announces this intention over the loudspeaker. He just apparently loves to hear himself talk because he just tells the Joes whatever his plans are. Meanwhile, the space shuttle is placing the satellite in orbit and they get a message from Houston letting them know that the missile is headed for them. In fact, the missile is close enough that they can see it. Where our breaker and flash while this is happening, they're on a spacewalk and okay, this is not possible. Not only do you need special training to go on a space shuttle mission, you need additional training to go on a spacewalk and they don't have any of that. This is just ridiculous. Look, my suspension of disbelief has already been shattered so we're just piling on the bullshit at this point. Flash has to come up with a plan to save the satellite and themselves. So he comes up alongside the missile and matches its speed. No, he doesn't. No, he doesn't. That is not possible. I looked it up and the average speed of an ICBM is seven kilometers per second. So that means in the time it took Flash to say this line, that missile would have traveled about 21 kilometers. Flash uses the jet on his backpack to change the direction of the missile. So the missile misses the satellite and the missile blows up and whatever. I just don't even care at this point. On the sea base, the Joes are pinned down by Cobra and short fuse takes out the tower in order to help break them out. The Joes rush Cobra and the Cobra soldiers fold. Cobra commander and the Baroness escape in the submarine before the Joes can capture them. Cobra commander announces that the sea base will blow up in five minutes. Why? Why does he tell them this? There's no reason to tell them this. If he says nothing, then in five minutes the Joes get blown up and even though he didn't succeed in knocking out the satellite, he would have succeeded in eliminating almost the entire GI Joesee team. So that's gotta be a win, right? And for that matter, why five minutes? Cobra commander and the Baroness have already escaped. Why not have the thing blow up immediately? The five minutes only exists to give the Joes a chance to escape, which of course they do. The Joes helicopter was destroyed so the Joes have to escape on rafts. They give their Cobra prisoners a chance to escape as well, but the Cobras reject this. They say that they're going to stay and meet their fate. One of the Joes, and it's hard to tell which one because he's drawn so small, says that this is mindless obedience. And you know what? This is right. This is a little bit of an insight on the fanatical devotion of Cobra soldiers. But the peril has not ended since Cobra commander has failed to blow up the Joes on the sea base, he is now trying to ram them with the submarine. Fortunately, Zaps Bazooka still works and he takes out the submarine. So it looks like Cobra commander and the Baroness are killed. But no, Cobra commander and the Baroness escape on the sea plane that was tied to the back of the submarine. Let's talk about the good and the bad starting with the good. First of all, there was a lot of great action. I mean, this issue was almost wall to wall action and that's a good thing. Also, we get to see the entire GIO team, which we don't typically get to see. Usually we see some detachment that is sent on a specific mission. We also get to see all of the vehicles and even some of the toad weapons. So it's kind of cool to see our GIO toys depicted in a comic book. I also like the way this issue showed the fanatical devotion of the Cobra soldiers. And I actually think that enhances the realism. Human beings are capable of having that kind of fanatical devotion to an ideology or an ideological leader. Now let's talk about the bad and there was a lot of bad. We have Hawk shooting a missile with a rifle which is absolutely impossible. We have Flash and Breaker on a space mission. I just say no to that, no, absolutely impossible. We have Flash redirecting a missile in space which again is impossible. Cobra commander fails to kill the GIO team because he announces his plans to them again. We're starting to see a pattern with these issues. They often start out with a briefing scene where we find out what the mission is going to be. And after that we have a succession of perils, each one increasing in danger until the end of the story. Now that in itself is not a bad formula. It allows the tension to ratchet up as the story goes along. But the problem with the way that it's executed into these comic books is that each of these perils still have to make sense. If the GIO comic book had stuck with this formula, I don't think it would have lasted as long as it did. Later on we get into story arcs and longer threads of stories that weave through the entire comic book series. And that really does help the series. But in the meantime, we've got to get through these early issues where they're still stuck on this formula, which again, as I said, it's not a bad idea, but often is poorly executed. It destroys your suspension of disbelief and it just leaves you shaking your head. That was my review of GIO number eight. I hope you liked it. If you did, go ahead and give this video a thumbs up. If you didn't, go ahead and give the video a thumbs down. But whatever you do, don't forget to subscribe. I've got a lot of great new GIO comic book and toy reviews coming up and you do not want to miss them. Thanks and I'll catch you all later.