The Best of GI Joe


By Larry Hama & various (Panini Books UK)
ISBN: 9787-1-84653-425-6

The torrent of material tying in to the blockbuster move (see GI Joe: the Rise of Cobra Official Movie Prequel and GI Joe: Snake in the Grass) continues with this very welcome compendium collecting some of the most impressive highlights of Marvel’s output: a hugely successful mini-franchise that encompassed three regular titles plus many specials at one stage.

I’ve no real interest in the film, but the toy, cartoon and comics phenomenon reached way more impressionable minds that most modern comics could even imagine and many of the strip adventures (both US and Marvel UK’s) were highpoints of sequential narrative at a time when innovation and imagination were highly regarded – and rewarded – so it’s great to see some of them finding a fresh audience.

In case you came in late: GI Joe is the operating name for an American covert, multi-disciplinary espionage and military intervention force that draws its members from all branches of the services. At the time of these tales the Joes and terrorist secret society Cobra are well known to each other and engaged in a full-on clandestine global war…

The collection begins with the ultimate “classic Joe” story; a magnificent example of disciplined storytelling from Larry Hama who wrote all the tales in this volume, and laid out this sharp tale of Yankee ninja Snake-Eyes rescuing operative Scarlett from Cobra captivity. Originally published in GI Joe #21, ‘Silent Interlude’ was embellished by Steve Leialoha, and tells a riveting action-packed yarn without ever using dialogue or captions.

This is followed by a more traditional, but no less impressive yarn from issue #24. Illustrated by the legendary Russ Heath, ‘The Commander Escapes!’ sees a small team of Joes attempting to keep Cobra’s leader captive, with all their enemy’s vast resources arrayed against them, and in #26 Leialoha returned for ‘Snake-Eyes: the Origin’, a complex Vietnam saga that barely scratches the surface of a long-running mystery…

‘Shakedown!’ (GI Joe #34), with art from Rod Whigham and Andy Mushynsky, is a cracking tale of ultra-modern jet dogfighter that would make Hans von Hammer proud whilst ‘Going Under’ from #63, (by Ron Wagner and Mushynsky) finds a select team undercover and facing the Soviet analogues of Borovia in an attempt to rescue Joes held in an infamous Gulag. Regrettably it’s the middle of a much longer epic and impressive though it is, there’s no resolution to be had for new readers.

Hama successfully reprised Silent Interlude in #85’s ‘SFX’, with Paul Ryan illustrating a classy, high body-count ninja tale featuring Snake-Eyes’ polar opposite Storm Shadow, and issue #86 celebrated the 25th anniversary of the original toy’s release (we called him Action Man in the UK) with the excellent Marshall Rogers and Randy Emberlin depicting ‘…Not Fade Away!’ – where the team meet the original “Real American Hero” when Cobra commandos seize New York landmark…

The superb Tony Salmons pencilled ‘No Simple Solutions’ (#91) with Emberlin inks, a engrossing yarn detailing a duel between genius of disguise Zartan and the martial arts marvel Blind Master; a cracking fight issue, but as a component of the hugely extended Snake-Eyes origin, the unresolved sub-plots are a little confusing in places…

‘Hero of the People!’ from #104 (with art from Mark Bright and Emberlin) finds Snake-Eyes in Borovia as the country reels under an anti-communist revolution: another epic with no conclusion in this volume, but at least the book ends on a classy mote with the complete story ‘All in a Night’s Work’ (art by Herb Trimpe and Mushynsky) from GI Joe Special Missions #17 as Stalker leads a covert team on a simple rescue mission against terrorists only to discover he’s been set up to take a fall by elements of his own government…

I’m never sure of the social value of stories where secret government operatives act beyond the law or the constraints of Due Process but the kid in me adores the pure satisfying simplicity of seeing a wrong and righting it: so on those terms this book of clever, witty action-packed adventures of honourable warriors doing their job is a delight worth sharing. Won’t you have some…?

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