 Hello everybody hooded Cobra Commander 788 here and we are getting back to GI Joe comic book reviews on this channel as Promised the first Wednesday of June. We are doing a comic book review I will sincerely try to do a comic book review every month We're in an era of the GI Joe comic book series that I really enjoy This was an era in which I fell in love with the comic book series And I'm excited to look at these issues for this review We are looking at issue number 26 part 1 of the two-part origin of snake eyes a lot of GI Joe history and lore was established in this issue and the following issue number 27 It would be hard to find two issues of the comic book series more important than number 26 and 27 a brief recap of the previous issue in issue number 25 a small squad of Joe's was inserted in the Florida swamp to spy on Zartan's lair and Storm Shadow escaped imprisonment at Alcatraz the Cobra operatives firefly and wild weasel were captured and The issue ends with junkyard the dog showing up at Zartan's front door Looking at the cover of issue 26. We are promised the strangest secret of all I don't know if it's that strange, but it definitely is intriguing We have some items from snake eyes top secret file. We see an arrowhead We see a photograph of stalker storm shadow and snake eyes in their Vietnam era uniforms there's a photograph of a woman and There's a newspaper clipping with the headline family wiped out in flaming wreck We will learn the significance of many of these items in this issue on the opening splash page We have a title snake eye is the origin, but we don't see snake eyes right away We see Zartan with his skin a darker color. Presumably. This is his color-changing ability And we see Destro kneeling with junkyard Zartan was going to shoot the dog, but Destro won't let him I knew an Eskimo once who said that a man who whips a dog will pull his own sled one day This is presumably a reference to Quinn who died in issue number 19 We have a creative team of Larry Hama script and breakdowns Steve Lealoha finishes Rick Parker lettering and George Rousseau's coloring This is an issue that was primarily drawn by Larry Hama himself And we can see a style difference from the previous issue the artwork is still loose It's not excessively detailed, but the figure drawing is much better The art is just much more solid everything seems to have weight and the page layouts are just better Junkyard seems to be pointing the Cobra's directly at the Joe squad who is hiding in the trees near the cabin Much to mutts chagrin The Joe's need to find out who's in the cabin and the Baroness and Cobra commander obliged by stepping into plane view You have Zartan, Destro, the Baroness and Cobra commander all in the same place with the door wide open You know who needed to be on this mission? Zap One anti-tank round through that open door and you take out all of Cobra's command hierarchy We cut to Spanish Harlem where we follow a kid going into a restaurant I apologize if I mispronounced his name Comidas Chinas He pulls a gun on the little old Asian man who's behind the counter Sitting at the counter. There is a mysterious figure reading a newspaper on the next page with panels in quick succession We see the little old man disarm the kid where he quickly ejects the bullet from the chamber And then ejects the magazine from the grip the old guy then gives the kid 50 bucks for the empty pistol Oh, and the guy behind the newspaper, he has an Uzi. Here's where comic book timing gets a little funny This scene is supposed to happen very quickly like at most in a couple seconds But there's a lot of dialogue here really not enough time for the old guy to say as much as he does The old guy tosses the empty pistol into a crate of empty pistols He has under the counter apparently this is a regular occurrence And the old guy takes a lot of pistols from kids trying to rob his restaurant The mysterious guy behind the counter is snake eyes and the little old Asian dude is the soft master There's a bit of a political statement made here and I'm not gonna get into that other than to say that the analogy Isn't necessarily the best one. However, I will say if someone is holding a gun to you I would not recommend trying what the soft master did here He has ninja reflexes you do not and this is a good way to get shot in the face Back at GI Joe headquarters Hawk and Scarlett are using whatever the 1984 equivalent of Google was to look up the symbol that's tattooed on both storm shadow and snake eyes Stalker walks in and tells them he's seen that tattoo once before in Vietnam We get a flashback to Vietnam where stalker is with two of his war buddies Tommy and snake eyes They seem to have called him snake eyes back then apparently the codename snake eyes was a nickname that stuck with him Tommy was a Japanese American kid with an unpronounceable last name and Tommy demonstrates his Silent weapons skills when he takes out a vietcong scout with an arrow We get a nice character moment here with a glimpse into the friendship between snake eyes and Tommy Tommy talks to snake eyes about the family business. It's a little bit vague He doesn't say what the family business is but it seems he'd like snake eyes to come and join the business after the war Snake eyes is focused on a photograph of his twin sister, which is supposed to bring him good luck Unfortunately, there's no such thing as good luck for snake eyes as the extraction chopper sets down It comes under fire and snake eyes is hit Tommy runs out to rescue him The helicopter crew lays down covering fire and Tommy demonstrates his courage by putting his friend on his back and Carrying him to safety. That's where stalker first saw the tattoo on Tommy's arm as he was putting bandages on snake eyes Stalker also did some checking and discovered that Tommy's unpronounceable last name Translates to English as storm shadow So by now if you haven't figured out that Tommy is storm shadow Then you really haven't been paying attention back in Florida junkyard is leading Cobra commander Destro the Baroness and Zartan Directly to the Joes so torpedo mutt and tripwire have to fall back Also Firefly and wild weasel have escaped back in Spanish Harlem We catch up with the soft master and snake eyes the soft master has a box of snake eyes's possessions Including his silver star and the photograph of his twin sister that has a bullet hole right through it at GI Joe Headquarters Hawk tells of the first time he met snake eyes And we learn what happened to snake eyes's sister in this panel Hawk is drawn to look really old And I always thought that looked weird, but now I think this image of Hawk fits how I think of the character I think he should be older than the rest of the team There are some legitimate complaints that Hawk looks too much like Duke Well one way to make them different is to have Hawk visibly older in a flashback We see snake eyes returning to the United States and arriving at the airport and while other soldiers are greeted by their families There is nobody there to meet snake eyes Hawk shows up at the airport and he has to deliver the bad news On their way to the airport all of snake eyes's family was killed in a car accident Snake eyes is now utterly alone for the first two panels of the next page We were back in Spanish Harlem the story may seem to be skipping around a lot, but that's just the framing device Different people are telling different parts of the story But the history of snake eyes is being told more or less chronologically After the loss of his family snake eyes decides to take up Tommy on his offer and enjoined the family business He travels to Japan there He meets the soft master the hard master and at that time Tommy was called the young master They were of course all ninjas in this panel We see ninjas in blue uniforms in later issues We see a lot of ninjas from this clan in red uniforms that convention had not been established yet What follows is a brief training montage as snake eyes receives his ninja training It's not clear exactly what the family business is other than being ninjas Presumably they would use their ninja skills in profitable ways. Perhaps they are assassins But it's not made clear as the years progress and a snake eyes continues his training He impresses the leader of the family the hard master both with his skill and his character For example in a sword battle with storm shadow snake eyes despite his superior skills Allows storm shadow to win so he won't lose face snake eyes progresses to the point that he's allowed to have the tattoo That is the marking of that ninja family snake eyes may be the better swordsman, but storm shadow is the master archer He's even able to hit objects from behind walls The hard master is so impressed with snake eyes that he floats the idea of turning the family organization over to snake eyes Rather than the young master snake eyes wisely declines The young master is able to strike objects through walls because he has the ear that sees The hard master shows snake eyes how to defeat the ear that sees with a technique called Donning the chameleons mantle is a technique by which he disguises his heart rate and breathing so he sounds like someone else The hard master is demonstrating this technique by copying the heart and breathing pattern of snake eyes When he is suddenly struck down by an arrow the arrow belongs to the young master With his dying breath the hard master insists that the young master is not the assassin But the soft master doesn't believe it It is tommy's arrow and all of the evidence points to tommy having killed the hard master on the final page We finally see what junkyard was up to he has led cobra into quicksand clever dog This page promises in the next issue. We will find out why snake eyes doesn't speak Do I recommend this issue? Of course I recommend this issue. It is groundbreaking It tells an important part of the story It connects snake eyes to storm shadow and stalker and it places these characters in the context of their times It shows us snake eyes as a tragic figure. He was wounded in vietnam He lost his family and he lost his mentor with each tragedy that befalls snake eyes There is real emotional weight credit has to be given to larry hama. He both wrote and drew this story The writing and the art work hand in hand to convey the emotional message the snake eyes part of the story is very heavy there's a lot of loss and pain and trauma And it doesn't feel like it's written for children It doesn't hold very much back It shows you the impact and the emotion and the pain in contrast the story in florida is a little bit silly And it really doesn't progress very far. That was my review of gi joe a real american hero issue number 26 I hope you enjoyed it. I'm very much looking forward to a reviewing issue number 27 The second part of the snake eyes origin story And once we've done that when we can look back and see what we've learned about this character I'll be back not this coming sunday, but the following sunday with the vintage gi joe toy review. Thank you for watching Thank you for your support. I'll see you next time and until then remember only gi joe is gi joe