 Hello everybody, Hooded Cobra Commander 788 here, and I'm back with another comic book Wednesday. Before we get started, don't forget to smash that subscribe button, and if you end up liking this video, go ahead and give it a thumbs up, or if you don't like it, go ahead and give it a thumbs down, either way is fine with me. If you're watching this video from some website other than YouTube, I would greatly appreciate it if you take a little trip over to the Hooded Cobra Commander 788 YouTube channel, and go ahead and subscribe. I've got a lot of great G.I. Joe comic book and toy reviews coming up, and you don't want to miss it, you will definitely want to subscribe. So let's go ahead with the latest comic book Wednesday, and we are looking at G.I. Joe Number 3. That's the third in the G.I. Joe A Real American Hero, originally published by Marvel Comics, starting in 1982. The copy that I'm reading from is actually from a trade paperback, classic G.I. Joe Volume 1. This is released by IDW Publications. And if you watched my reviews of G.I. Joe Number 1 and Number 2, you know I really liked both of those issues. Well, we've got a different story here with G.I. Joe Number 2. This is not going to be quite as fun as the first two, but we've got to do it, so let's go ahead and give it the old college try. Starting with the cover, we have, oh dear, a giant robot. This is really not very G.I. Joe-like. This cover, this is not promising. As you may know, I'm not a huge fan of the excessive science fiction in G.I. Joe. I feel like G.I. Joe should be a balance of realistic military theme and with some science fiction elements in it, but if it goes too far overboard on the science fiction side, I don't like it too much. And I'm afraid with a giant robot, it looks like we're going to jump over the deep end of science fiction. This cover, it's not really a very impressive cover. The Joes in this cover almost look like just generic army men. I'm not sure exactly which characters these pictures are supposed to represent. And we've got a guy here holding his, well, kind of deformed M16 by the magazine, but whatever. Let's move forward and see how we like the story. Starting with the splash page, we have a title, The Trojan Gambit, scripted by Larry Hama and pencils by Herb Trimp. And the art style here really seems reminiscent of Jack Kirby. It does seem kind of like that's a style that Herb Trimp here is trying to copy. I think that you can see a heavy Jack Kirby influence all throughout this story. On the splash page, we have our giant robot, which does not bode well for this story. It is being assembled, and it looks like it's inside some kind of cobra facility. We have cobra banners on the wall and a picture of cobra commander with the title Peace Through War. And I think that's, I don't know, kind of clever. I like it. But again, right in the middle there is that giant robot. I'm going to have a hard time getting over the giant robot in G.I. Joe. Joe's have defeated Cobra at whatever this cobra facility is, and their plan is to disassemble the robot and take it back to the pit, which is their secret underground base. They're going to take it to the pit for preliminary scans, and then a tech team from Aberdeen is going to come by the next day and really examine it thoroughly. On the next couple pages, we get a closer look at the layout of the pit, which is always really cool. I kind of liked it when the comic books showed us the G.I. Joe's secret base, because it almost kind of felt like something that you might draw as a kid, you know, on your notebook paper in school, your super secret top secret club headquarters or something like that. The pit is supposed to be like a really high-tech, sophisticated military facility. But these kind of diagrams that we get, it really does kind of bring me back to grade school and the doodles that you would draw on your notepad. For several pages, the G.I. Joe characters are drawn really small. It seems like the emphasis is more on the background than it is on the individuals, and we don't really get a lot of close-ups of the Joe team. They're drawn so small that sometimes it's hard to tell which character we're looking at. If it weren't for the dialogue explaining who everybody is, you wouldn't be able to tell exactly who it is that you're looking at. So Hawk and Scarlet, they take a little break and go up to the chaplain's assistant's social tea, and they're in their army dress greens, and it's a nice contrast to the hard-fighting G.I. Joe missions. It shows them kind of at a moment of leisure. Along that same vein, we see the Joe's making breakfast, and it's more of a look in the personal lives of the Joe's, and I like this. I like it when the comic books take a moment to show the G.I. Joe team members when they're not fighting. You know, just show them as regular people, and that does humanize them, and I really do appreciate that. So the Cobra giant robot is in pieces. It's been dismantled, and it's lying on a table in the G.I. Joe headquarters, and the Cobra plan is revealed. We have a really oddly drawn Cobra commander. This is like one of the worst drawings of Cobra commander I think that I've seen in the comic book, but I guess the robot is supposed to first seal the G.I. Joe team in by activating the emergency doors, and then the robot reassembles itself using only one hand that activated itself and it's, you know, taking the other parts and reattaching them. As we learn as the story goes on, the robot is supposed to fight its way to the surface and get out of the pit base, and then signal Cobra as to the location of the pit base, and the Cobra has helicopters waiting to attack as soon as it finds out the exact location of the G.I. Joe secret headquarters. I don't really care for this Cobra plan. It really seems very implausible. I mean, the whole Cobra plan depends on G.I. Joe taking the robot to the pit, but what if they had just taken it somewhere else? You know, the pit isn't necessarily the best place to take this robot apart and examine it. I mean, the military surely has other tech facilities that they could have taken the robot to, and if they had taken the robot elsewhere, the whole Cobra plan just would have been out the window. So because the Joes have been sealed into separate rooms by the emergency doors that the robot has activated, they now must escape, and they're divided into two teams. In one room is Clutch, Steeler, and Breaker, and the other room is Flash, Snake Eyes, and Stalker. Now the team with Steeler, they managed to escape within minutes, using really just muscle and willpower. They just power that door open. On the other hand, the team with Flash, Snake Eyes, and Stalker takes a long time to escape. They come up with this plan that uses Flash's laser rifle on low power, but they're concerned that the laser rifle will eat up the oxygen in the airtight room. So Stalker and Snake Eyes, they decide to go to sleep. They are going to sleep while Flash uses the laser to cut through the lock. Honestly, this is a pretty lame plan. This is supposed to be an adventure comic, and it's not exciting when the plan requires two team members to go to sleep. What is this? Tactical sleeping? Do they teach that in G.I. Joe's school, three, two, one, you're asleep? Basically they tell Flash to, hey, wake us up when you're done. I don't know. That's just seem ridiculous to me. So the robot attacks. It attacks clutch, stealer, and breaker. And in the meantime, Hawk and Scarlet are upstairs, still having tea with the chaplain's assistants, and they just ignore all of the signs that there is a fight going on down below them. They ignore the smell of an electrical fire, and they just go on enjoying having their tea. In the course of the fight, the robot gets set on fire, which is pretty cool, but the robot actually figures out a way to put out the fire. It jumps into the pool in the G.I. Joe training room. It strikes me that this is an amazing robot. If you think about it, this robot can do a lot of really sophisticated things. I mean, for one thing, it can walk on two legs, which is something that robotics engineers had a heck of a time actually getting robots to do. In addition, it's able to reassemble itself, it's capable of self-preservation, and it can solve complex problems using creative thinking. This is an awesome robot, and Cobra built this thing. They don't need to take over the world using terrorist tactics, they just need to market this robot. This is an incredible breakthrough in robotics. They market this robot, they make all the money in the world, and they can just buy the world rather than take it over using his tanks. So the Joes have to keep fighting the robot after it manages to put out the fire, and they have the robot trapped in an elevator shaft. The Joes, they're at the level of the pit that has their vehicles, and they have this really huge laser. They have the HAL laser cannon, and instead of shooting the robot with it, they throw the cannon at the robot. They basically chuck it down the elevator shaft to land on the robot's head, and guess what? It doesn't work. I just don't get it. They have a laser gun, just shoot it. I mean, if you have a laser gun, it's the first thing that comes to your mind, throw it, throw it at the robot, throw it down the shaft, you know, if you missed, oh well, you're out one laser cannon, shoot the laser cannon. Eventually they set a trap for the robot, and the robot eventually does fall to its demise. It falls to the bottom of a shaft, and it breaks into pieces. In the meantime, Hawk and Scarlet are still having tea with the chaplain's assistance, and they can hear the sounds of a battle. I mean, they know that there's something going on downstairs under their feet, and they still choose to ignore it. No, we can't do that. We can't go help or anything. We have to keep up appearances here and continue sipping tea. Honestly, it's a lead special forces team that can fight Cobra, but they can't figure out a way to excuse themselves from chaplain's tea, so that they can go save the rest of their team from a giant robot. Okay, so the robot is destroyed again, but the head. The head of the robot sprouts little tentacles, and it tries to run off, but they zap it, and so it looks dead once again, but then a compartment opens up in the robot's head, and these tiny little robot insects crawl out, and they start trying to make their way up to the surface. And if any of these little tiny robot bugs get to the surface, they will transmit a signal to Cobra and let Cobra know where the GI Joe base is. You know what? That's a really good plan. Actually that would have worked a whole lot better than the giant robot. So Cobra, if you ever think of trying this again, start with that move. That should be your opener. I mean really, if the giant robot had not attacked the Joes, if it hadn't done any of that, and it had just released the robot bugs, one of those bugs would have gotten to the surface and signaled Cobra because nobody would have known to look for them. The only way GI Joe knew to look for these little bugs and destroy them is because the robot had already attacked and failed. Just skip the giant robot and release the bugs. You could have won this one. But of course the robot bugs did not make it to the surface. The GI Joe team manages to destroy all of them. Scarlet actually smashes the last one as it is coming up through a grate in the motor pool right in the middle of the chaplain's assistance tee. So even though Hawk and Scarlet did absolutely nothing to help their comrades who were doing battle on the floors beneath them, they managed to do one little thing that actually prevents Cobra from finding their secret base. So hooray for the heroic Scarlet and Hawk. The Cobra helicopters that are waiting to attack, they run low on fuel so they have to give up and fly back, so Cobra loses. But honestly, Cobra, you made your plan too complicated. If you just made it a little bit simpler, you would have won easily. So what are the good and the bad points about this issue? Well, the good points are that we get to see more of the Joes when they're not in combat. And I do like that. I like when we get to see a little bit of their personal lives, when we get to have a little bit of character development, and there's really nothing wrong with that. That's not a bad thing. And even though it's not action, it is nice for kind of bringing the reader into the story and making the reader care about the characters. We also got a closer look at the pit, which again, I like. It's really just kind of fun. I like those little diagrams of the pit. It's just something that kind of makes me feel like a kid again, because I did. I used to draw little pictures of, this is what our secret base would look like. And the pit just reminds me of that. We also have the return of Cobra. We saw Cobra in issue number one, but Cobra did not appear in issue number two. So we have Cobra back as an enemy for G.I. Joe. And that's nice. I do like Cobra as G.I. Joe's adversary. I think Cobra is a worthy adversary, so it's nice to see them back. But the bad points of this comic book really outweigh the good points. I have to say, first of all, giant robot. Giant robot. I mean, it's 100% science fiction. And it really takes us out of the real world feel that we had been cultivating for the first two issues. You know, I mentioned in my review of issue number two, that placing the story in the Cold War, even though it does date the story, it also plants that story in the real world. And this issue just takes us right out of that. It says, okay, you know, screw the real world. We need to ramp up the action, so I guess we'll have a giant robot. I don't know. The art style was simple, and I think it was kind of anachronistic, even for the early 80s. Thinking back to the early 80s, of course, we did have a lot of, you know, more simple comic book art style. But even at the time, I think comic book art was headed in a more sophisticated direction. So it's kind of disappointing to see kind of simplistic artwork in the G.I. Joe comic book. The story itself seems really implausible, and it doesn't really have any impact on future G.I. Joe stories. Overall, the whole issue, the story, and the art just feels like it was phoned in. It just felt like, okay, we need an idea for issue number three, and we can't come up with anything. Just, you know, whatever, giant robot. Okay, here's a giant robot, and we need to draw it within a week. So just make the drawings really simple. Don't do anything too complicated. It just, it's a disappointing issue. I really loved the first and second issue of this series, but this is the first one I just don't think that I could recommend. It's not one of my favorite. In fact, it's got to be at the bottom of the list for me as far as favorite G.I. Joe issues. So yeah, that's G.I. Joe number three. If you liked this issue, absolutely, tell me why you liked it. I'm interested in knowing if this issue actually appealed to any readers, because it definitely did not appeal to me. So that's my review of G.I. Joe number three. Thanks for tuning in for another comic book Wednesday. Every Wednesday I will be reviewing another G.I. Joe comic book. I will be doing them in order. And every week I will be adding another G.I. Joe vintage toy review. So you don't want to miss any of that. Plus every now and again I'll throw in a little bit something special. Maybe some opinions on things related to G.I. Joe. Maybe just something for fun. So you're gonna enjoy what's coming up in this channel. So make sure you hit that subscribe button, hit that thumbs up if you like this video, hit the thumbs down if you hate this video. And I will catch you all later. Thanks for watching. Bye.