 Hello everybody, hooded Cobra Commander 788 here and it's time for another comic book Wednesday. We're back with another review of the G.I. Joe comic book, that's G.I. Joe A Real American Hero published by Marvel Comics in the early 80s. And we're going to look at G.I. Joe Number 5, the fifth issue in the series. Before we get started, I want to remind everybody to go ahead and smash that subscribe button and give this video a thumbs up if you like it. And if you're watching this video from any website other than YouTube, I would greatly appreciate it if you would take a little trip over to the hooded Cobra Commander 788 YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button. I've got a lot of great new reviews coming up and you don't want to miss any of them. So let's look at G.I. Joe Number 5, starting with the cover. Right on the cover we see the MOBAT tank attacking some Cobra soldiers. At last we get to see a vehicle. I've been waiting for this ever since the first issue. We haven't seen any of the G.I. Joe vehicles in action. The blurb on the cover says, featuring blazing combat in Central Park. Well as we read the comic book we will find out that the combat isn't quite so blazing, but we'll get to that. On the splash page, which isn't really a splash page, we get a small panel with another cross section of the pit, the G.I. Joe underground base. And at the vehicle level, we have one vehicle, the MOBAT tank. I don't know what they did with the rest of them, but we have only the MOBAT tank at the base right now. In the larger panel we have a title, Tanks for the Memories, and it's a pun based on the song popularized by Bob Hope. Larry Hammer I guess is kind of known for his puns. So this will not be the only pun that we get in this comic book series. We have a creative team of Larry Hammer, the scripter, and Don Perlin on pencils. Don Perlin was the artist for G.I. Joe number two, which I liked very much. We open up with Steeler, Clutch, and Breaker cleaning the tank. And they are showing off the attributes of the tank to Scarlet. And of course Scarlet is unimpressed. She sees tanks as nothing more than big, useful tools. But the guys, of course, are all fascinated by the electronics. We learned some features of the MOBAT tank, such as the fact that it can submerge underwater for a short time. And it has for some reason a loudspeaker. Scarlet does not care. And really nor do I. And nor should you if you're a collector of the toys, because the MOBAT tank toy that Hasbro put out had absolutely none of those features. It really is a lot of techno babble on features of this tank, most of which we've never heard of before and we will never hear of again. General Flag has a plan to have the Joe's drive the MOBAT tank in a parade to prove to the upper brass that it is indistinguishable from any other tank. Before doing this, he sends a memo to General Austin via Courier. And the Courier goes to the airport and his briefcase is scanned. And somehow from that X-ray scan, Cobra is able to read the message inside the briefcase. What this scene is intended to do, I think, is show a little bit of cloak and dagger. It shows that Cobra has secret operatives everywhere, just waiting to opportunistically pick up some secret information. So now Cobra knows that the MOBAT will be in a parade, and so General Flag's plan has already failed. We cut to the parade, where General Flag and other top brass are in the parade stand watching the parade go by. And they're with this really weird bald guy who cuts in with a non sequitur about the Heimlich maneuver. I think this is supposed to be Ed Koch, who was the mayor of New York City between 1978 and 1989. That's kind of random, but I think that's who that's supposed to be. So the MOBAT tank is behind the Springfield marching band. This is kind of important. This is the first time that Springfield is mentioned. And as we will later learn, Springfield is very important to the Cobra organization. Behind the MOBAT tank is a float commemorating the USS Nautilus. The Nautilus was the first nuclear powered submarine, and the first submarine to do a submerged transit to the North Pole. We also learned that the MOBAT tank is not carrying any live ammunition. So if anything goes wrong, they have nothing to fight back with. However, Steeler is using the technology in the tank that's very expensive and paid for by the government to check out the girls in the high school marching band. It's a high school marching band. High school Steeler, you pedo? No, not that pedo. The comic book had some moments when it was a bit less than classy. And this is not a shining moment in the comic book's history, nor in Steeler's character development. So the parade stops, and the marching band surrounds the tank with banners. I guess to do a magic trick to make the tank disappear. And then a trap door opens up in the Nautilus float, and it moves forward to swallow up the tank, and oh my god, it's a trap! It's a really stupid trap. It's a trap that couldn't possibly work. There's nothing about this trap that could prevent the Joes from doing exactly what they did, which is floor it and drive the tank right out of there. Seriously, how did Cobra expect this plan to work? It had no chance. So the tank speeds off, and Clutch is driving. Clutch is driving. He is the driver of the vamp, and Steeler is the tank commander. I always just assumed that Steeler could drive the tank himself. I didn't think the tank needed another driver, other than Steeler up there in the top gun. But if it did need another driver, it would have been nice if the toy, Mobat, had accommodated another action figure. But it doesn't. It only accommodates one, and the one that it came with was Steeler. So the band, of course, is a bunch of Cobra agents, and they all pull assault rifles and submachine guns, and they give chase to the tank. The Mobat is stuck in traffic, and other drivers will not move for them to get by. And with that, I'd like to make a note of something that G.I. Joe seems to hate. G.I. Joe hates drivers. This isn't the only instance. As we go forward, we'll see other instances where the G.I. Joe comic book seems to hate any drivers who are not driving G.I. Joe vehicles. So Clutch comes up with a brilliant plan to get around this. He just pops up on the sidewalk and drives on the sidewalk. And of course all the people on the sidewalk, they have to scurry out of the way. Which brings us to another thing that G.I. Joe hates. G.I. Joe hates pedestrians, apparently. So whether you are legally driving a car on the road, or standing on the sidewalk, if G.I. Joe is around, you better watch out. You know, jump out of the way, because here they come. They use that loud speaker feature, which did not come on the toy, to warn everybody to get out of the way. And stealer comments that the speaker is louder than their cannon. Well, that's something odd to say. Maybe that'll come up again. Cobra Commander, who is hiding in an undisclosed location, orders his marching band soldiers to hurry up and get that tank and eliminate anybody in the way, because the longer they take, the more it jeopardizes the mission. Of course, I mean, somebody's gonna notice a marching band running around town carrying, you know, automatic weapons. In the meantime, Breaker, Steeler and Clutch have found a pretty good hiding spot for the MOBAT, and it seems like all they have to do is just hang loose there and they'll be fine. But Clutch says he overheard something. The Cobra Radio man was talking directly to Cobra Commander, which means that Cobra Commander must be nearby. Clutch figures this out and not Breaker, even though Breaker is the communications officer. How exactly did Clutch figure this out? His main distinguishing quality seems to be his sexism, so he must have figured it out through sexism powers. So the team decides that they want to lure the Cobra Troopers out into the open, and they decide to do that in Central Park. In the meantime, the parade goes on, and the top brass, who is standing there waiting to see tanks, is like, where the hell are the tanks? The marching band tracks the tanks to Central Park, but when they make it to Central Park, it's nowhere to be found. We see some high school jocks who get their comeuppance for making fun of the marching band and calling them nerds. When the tank emerges from the lake, it had been submerged down there, it knocks their boat over, and the cannon fires with a great blam! But how did the tank fire its cannon when it wasn't carrying any live ammunition? Maybe that question is answered by one of the crazy features that was explained to us earlier in that long, long exposition. The Mobat, with our three heroes, rejoins the parade, and now they have prisoners. The marching band is marching with their hands in the air. As the tank is going by the viewing stand, with General Flag and the top brass looking on, the sensors detect electrical activity nearby. And again, it's clutch and not breaker that detects this. So I guess that brings us to the third thing that G.I. Joe hates. G.I. Joe hates breaker. They won't even just let him do his job, it's clutch that takes over. Reasoning that the electrical activity must be coming from Cobra Commander's secret hiding location, clutch does the only thing that he could reasonably do with only a few pages left to go in the comic. He turns the tank and rams the viewing stand. That's right, he turns the tank in the direction of a viewing stand that is holding U.S. Army generals, and he rams it. General Flag is the only general that doesn't run for it, he pulls his pistol, and I guess he's going to shoot the tank, I'm not sure. But clutch turns out to be right, Cobra Commander is hiding under the viewing stand. Fortunately, it wasn't some kid's radio giving off the electrical signal. So he rams the viewing stand and Cobra Commander is flushed out. General Flag leaps from the stand just in time. Let's pause for a moment to make note of this. Clutch nearly killed his commanding general. General Flag faces off against Cobra Commander, with Cobra Commander using some Girl Scouts as human shields. Yes, he is the bad guy in case you hadn't noticed. Cobra Commander shoots General Flag and only grazes his temple. You know, there's a mistake that I think people make about the marksmanship of Cobra. It's not that they're really bad shots, they're really excellent shots at grazing people's temples. Later back at the pit, Scarlet is dressing Flag's wound, because that's women's work, I guess. And Clutch explains how it is that they got the Cobra soldiers to surrender at Central Park when they had no live ammunition. They simulated cannon fire by using the loudspeaker to amplify Breaker popping a bubble. It's a good thing that earlier Steeler mentioned that the loudspeaker was as loud as their cannon, otherwise we just wouldn't buy that. So I guess all that techno babble at the beginning of the issue was important after all. What was good about this issue? First, we get to see a vehicle, which we have not seen since the first issue of the comic book series. And this is a great view of the MOBAT. And Cobra is back. We get to actually see Cobra in action again, and not just talked about like in the previous issue. Also, Springfield is mentioned, and that's very important to the entire G.I. Joe story. We get a little bit of character development. We find out that Steeler is a pedo. But we also get to see General Flag face down Cobra Commander. What's bad about this issue? Well, once again, we don't see the whole team in action. And we get a look at a vehicle, but we only see one vehicle. The whole story seems rather contrived and implausible. I mean, you have an army tank and an armed marching band running around Manhattan, and apparently there is no New York police department, and nobody reports it. Maybe New Yorkers really are as jaded as they're reputed to be. Also, General Flag's plan is dumb. Is there really no other way to show top brass that the MOBAT looks like any ordinary tank? I don't know, maybe send them some pictures or something? My final judgment is that this issue is just so-so. It has some good points and it has some bad points. It's mostly forgettable, except for a few high points. I mean, we do get a better look at the MOBAT tank, and we get some hints at things that will be important later on. But as far as recommending this issue, I could take it or leave it. That is my review of G.I. Joe number five. Thank you for watching, and don't forget to give this video a thumbs up if you liked it, and if you hated it, give it a thumbs down. And once again, don't forget to hit that subscribe button, because I've got more coming up, and you don't want to miss it. Thanks for watching, and bye-bye.