 Hello, everybody. Hooded Cobra Commander 788 here, and I'm starting a brand new feature on this channel. Every Wednesday I will review a G.I. Joe comic book. That's the G.I. Joe Real American Hero series, published by Marvel Comics, starting in 1982. And I know that other reviewers have done G.I. Joe comic books before, but hopefully I can bring something more to the table, something a little bit different with my background in political science and law. So hopefully this is something that will be worthwhile. And if you haven't read the G.I. Joe comic books, I hope this is something that will encourage you to do so. So let's get started with our first ever comic book Wednesday. We'll start our first comic book Wednesday with G.I. Joe number one. Of course, that's a good place to start. Let's start at the beginning. The copy of G.I. Joe number one that I'm reading from is in this trade paperback published by IDB Comics, called Classic G.I. Joe number one. It does not include a short story called Hot Potato, which was in the original G.I. Joe number one when it was published in 1982. So this review will not include that short story, just the main story. And let's start with the cover. The cover, of course, is a really nice design. It kind of has the G.I. Joe team, you know, leaping into action with the MOBAT tank in the background there. It's a nice action picture there. But what I really like about the cover is this little blurb here towards the right bottom of the cover that says the ultimate weapon of democracy. Now that may sound kind of cheesy to you. Maybe you think it's kind of corny to call your, you know, military team the ultimate weapon of democracy. It kind of harkens back to, I don't know, the arsenal of democracy or other things like that that we may remember from history class. But I really like it because, in a way, it kind of sets the tone for the whole series. I mean, this is not just a mindless action comic book. This is not Rambo. This is not violence for its own sake. There is, I think, some idealism represented in this series. And they put it right on the front cover. So let's go ahead and talk about G.I. Joe, our ultimate weapon of democracy. The story opens with Dr. Adele Burkhart on a train. She's being protected by some secret service agents. And the exposition tells us that she is the nation's top nuclear physicist. And she is going to testify before Congress about a Doomsday project. She said that she was deceived into working on this Doomsday project, deceived by the military. And she's going to tell the truth. She is a whistleblower. And honestly, though, if she's right, if she was essentially tricked into working on this Doomsday project, she has justification for being upset. The whole idea of a Doomsday weapon is a weapon that is so horrendous that you can't use it. And she even says that the purpose was to wipe out all life on Earth. It's really a horrendous project. And so she's justified in being upset about that. And so she's going to be a whistleblower. She's going to testify about what she knows about this. Now, the whole idea of the Doomsday weapon has been addressed in other media. A couple of good movies about the idea. There's one movie called Failsafe. It's a Henry Fonda movie. It's really good. If you haven't seen that, I suggest you take a look at it. And of course, Dr. Strangelove used that concept to more of a comedic effect. Still another really good movie, but very different from the Henry Fonda movie. I suggest that you see both. So anyway, Dr. Burkhardt, she's kidnapped by the Baroness. And one thing that is strikingly different between the comic book and the cartoon series that came later is here, right at the beginning of the story, we have real bullets, real guns. We even have a panel here where we have a secret service agent down. So this is a real firefight that has real consequences. So as a reader, I'm starting to get invested in this story. The excitement is starting to ramp up. And so we're ready to really go into the adventure. Before we really get going with the adventure, though, we've got some things to set up here. We've got to be introduced to our GI Joe team. We get a little bit of exposition in the Pentagon with some dialogue between a couple of generals, one of which is General Flag, who will become somewhat famous in this series, and General Austin. And they talk about the situation with Dr. Burkhardt, and it's suggested that, you know, they're really better off with her dead. So, you know, why not have a half-hearted rescue mission that fails? The doctor dies so she can't give her nuclear secrets to Cobra, and everybody's better off. But it's implied, though, that there is an executive decision that it needs to be a successful rescue mission. They can't leave her in the hands of Cobra because she might give up her secrets, which Cobra could use to build their own Doomsday weapon. But if she were to die during a rescue, that would cause some embarrassment to the military and no doubt to the President's administration. So it's got to be a real rescue mission, and it really needs to be successful. And there's only one team that can do it, and that's the GI Joe team. From there we get to meet the GI Joe team themselves, and we've got a training montage that's worthy of James Bond. I love the training scenes because it shows again that this is a team with substance. It's not just an action team that just does battle. They just go out there and shoot their guns. This feels like a real elite military team. They train, they plan, and so we get to see that. The real brilliance of Larry Ham as approach to this is it brings the reader in to not just the battle, but the planning and the training as well. And I love that as a kid, and I still like it, like seeing it as an adult. We have a briefing on the mission. Again, we get brought into the planning phase and not just the battle. That helps us invest not only in the characters, but also the story. And one important part of this scene is when Hawk gives Shortfuse a civics lesson. Shortfuse kind of suggests that Adele Burkhart is a traitor, but Hawk reminds Shortfuse that the Constitution guarantees every American the right to disagree with the government. And of course, disagreeing with the government does not make you a traitor. That is a moment in the comic book that it didn't have to be there. It doesn't move the action forward. And probably it wouldn't have been noticed had it been left out. But I'm so glad that it's there. Because it reminds us that, you know, there is something, there's something larger that these people are fighting for. We're not just rooting for the green shirts versus the blue shirts. We're rooting for the good guys. And in order to do that, our team, our GI Joe team, needs to actually be the good guys. They need to be fighting for some kind of ideal that's greater than what, you know, Cobra is fighting for. Another interesting thing is that Snake Eyes, who uses sign language and communicates through Scarlet, suggest that why don't they just send in a bunch of B-52s, bomb the place, and then it'll solve all of their problems. This is a little bit surprising to hear from Snake Eyes. Snake Eyes is a very sympathetic character. As this series goes along, we really feel for Snake Eyes because we see that his life is accompanied by a lot of tragedy. So he's a very sympathetic character. It's a little bit jarring for him to suggest that the solution to the situation is to essentially just kill the hostage. However, if you think about what kind of person Snake Eyes would be behind that mask, and he's a stone-cold killer. He is a trained killer. He's a highly-skilled military man who's seen a lot of combat and violence is second nature to him. So maybe it's not so surprising for Snake Eyes to make such a suggestion, but it is strange for that suggestion to come from Snake Eyes, a character that we all kind of fall in love with and have a lot of sympathy for as the comic book series goes on. When the comic book gets back to Cobra, we get a better glimpse at Cobra Commander and the Baroness, and one thing that we notice right away is that we are dealing with a highly intelligent enemy. Cobra Commander is not the bungling idiot that he was sometimes in the cartoon. He's got a great mind for a strategy. He knows what the GI Joe team is going to do before they do it, and he has a plan. So I really like that. This is not just, you know, a cartoon enemy. This is a formidable enemy for the Joe team, and so it's going to be exciting to see what happens when, you know, they finally confront each other. There's a scene in which Cobra Commander looks out over his troops, and they are carrying banners with the Cobra symbol on them and their information, and the allusions to the Nazis is pretty evident. I mean, if you miss the parallels between Cobra and the Nazis, then, you know, they're really trying to drive it home here. Essentially, instead of carrying swastikas, they carry banners with Cobra symbols, but other than that, they're Nazis. So in case you missed it, Cobra's equal Nazis. So there's really no mistake on who the bad guys are. There's really no moral ambiguity there. As the first Joe team does their work on the island, we get to see Scarlet and Snake Eyes working together, and I really like that. They work so well as a team. They seem to approach these situations as equals. They are both highly skilled martial artists. They are experienced commandos, and this is something that I think was very progressive that was happening in the G.I. Joe comic book, because women in the military at that time, and to a large extent now, as a matter of policy, are not allowed in combat. They are not sent in combat situation. That is not evident at all in G.I. Joe. There are women in the G.I. Joe team, and they just send them out into combat situations like anyone else. And so it's really nice to see that. You know, growing up as a kid, I never would have guessed that, you know, women were not assigned to combat roles, because I saw women fighting bravely and courageously and effectively in the G.I. Joe comic book. That's just how I expected the world to be. The attack on the island gives us a lot of great action sequences when the infantry team attacks the airfield, and when the vehicle team with the tank and the vamp and the motorcycle all, you know, come in and storm the beach. That's, you know, a great action scene. But the comic book takes a really dark tone when it's revealed that Cobra has wiped out an entire island village. They've killed every man, woman, and child. It's really extremely dark. I mean, we knew that Cobra was evil, but we didn't know that they would send their troops out there to, you know, stab babies with bayonets. It's really exceptionally sick, even more so than you would expect from an admittedly evil organization like Cobra. I think that it's a really, a surprisingly dark scene to put in a comic book that is meant to sell toys to children. But I'm glad that it's there. One of the things that I loved about the comic book when I was a kid reading it is that it didn't treat me like a child. When I was reading the comic book, I felt very grown up, because it was showing me situations like this where, you know, this village is wiped out by Cobra. It was showing me, you know, how evil an evil terrorist group can be, as well as using like real military terms. It dealt with a lot of other situations that really made me feel like, more like an adult reading the comic book. I really felt like it wasn't dumbing things down for me. And it starts right there from the first issue with this really dark scene, a scene almost of genocide. Just an aside, we do have a famous panel in this issue on the page in my copy that's marked page 27 and it's in panel number three. It's this panel that also appears on one of the toys. It's a sticker on the 1983 GI Joe headquarters command center. It's kind of interesting that they chose that particular panel to, you know, slap on one of the toys. So when the Joes finally stormed this castle in which Dr. Burkhardt is being held, again she shows her courage when she essentially throws herself at Cobra commander who's holding a gun to her and she gets shot in the arm essentially sacrificing her own body to try to help the people who are there to rescue her. So of course she does escape and the GI Joe team gets out of the fortress just below before it blows up. Cobra commander, the Baroness, escape. And there's the resolution I guess as they're flying in a Cobra helicopter. The GI Joe team is flying in a Cobra helicopter away from the island in which Dr. Burkhardt says that she still believes that her political actions are justified but she says that, you know, somewhere it's nice to know that somewhere in the Pentagon there are people who care. Well Dr. Burkhardt, you are both right and wrong. You are completely justified in your political actions. I think that you are taking the ethical stance in that situation but at the same time, I'm sorry, the people in the Pentagon who sent the GI Joe team to rescue you, they don't care. They didn't do it because they care. They did it out of self-interest. They did it to avoid their own embarrassment if something bad actually happened to you. The main thing that I take away from this issue is my respect for Dr. Burkhardt. I'm actually really glad that we get to see Dr. Burkhardt again in a later issue. She does turn up again in the GI Joe storyline. But, I mean, a lot of the GI Joe team members don't like her. She's seen as almost a villain herself because she is opposed to the military. But you're allowed to be opposed to the military in America. This is a free country and so, yeah, of all the characters in this story, Dr. Burkhardt is actually my favorite. Overall, I think this comic book is very well constructed. It's a challenge to write something with this many characters in it and give everybody, you know, some, you know, time, some screen time basically and let them have some character development. That's a real challenge. But I think Larry Hama did a good job of this and continued to do well at this over the years as this comic book series went on. But I just think it's remarkable how complex the story was, how much emotional impact the story had, how dark it was in certain points. For a comic book that was just designed to sell toys. There is so much more in this comic book than had to be in the comic book in order to accomplish that. There is some real artistry in here. There is some real thought behind this story. And that's why I loved this as a kid and I still enjoy it going back and reading it now and I'm looking forward to continuing these reviews. So that's my review of GI Joe number one. Look for a review of GI Joe number two next week on our next comic book Wednesday.