G.I. Joe Reviews: G. I. Joe 9, G. I. Joe 10

G. I. Joe #9 (March 1983) – “The Diplomat” – Steven Grant/Mike Vosburg/Chic Stone

This one starts with a team of Joes raiding a secret Cobra facility in Nebraska and capturing part of a computer hard drive. A lot of the data has been erased, but there’s enough to make Hawk worry. Cobra is very interested in a diplomat named Brian Hassell, who is involved in delicate talks with the (fictional) Middle East country of Al-Alawi. Since Al-Alawi would be a valuable ally in the Middle East, the talks are very important and Cobra would just love to screw things up. Hawk assigns Scarlett and Clutch to escort Hassell to the talks in case Cobra tries to kill him, and sends Stalker and Snake Eyes to dig up what Cobra’s plans might be. When Cobra Commander finds out the Joes are guarding Hassell he’s actually happy about it. Scarlett and Clutch make contact with Hassell, who’s vacationing on the French Riviera. He’s skeptical about being in danger, until a team of Cobra frogmen attack and his hotel room is blown up. Meanwhile, Stalker and Snake Eyes go to London to see an arms dealer named Derek Sutherland, who’s rumoured to be one of Cobra’s main suppliers. Sutherland gives them a clue, but after they leave he reports to Cobra Commander, so I assume the “clue” is either a set-up or a false trail. (Cobra Commander rewards Sutherland by remotely electrocuting him.) In France, Clutch and Scarlett get Hassell to the plane, but the pilot turns out to be a Cobra mole. They crash land in the mountains and take off by car again. In Amsterdam, Sutherland’s tip does turn out to be a trap and Cobra Commander—or a hologram of him—does the usual stupid villain move of explaining his plan to his opponents before killing them. Apparently, Hassell is a Cobra spy, planted in the State Department years ago, and he plans to assassinate the Al-Alawi representative and fuck things up good. Naturally, Stalker and Snake Eyes get out of the trap and have to find Scarlett and Clutch to warn them about Hassell. But Scarlett is already getting suspicious about Cobra’s half-hearted attempts to kill Hassel, and her suspicions are confirmed when Hassell pulls a gun and forces them to take him to the conference in Montreux. Scarlett and Clutch are tied up in anticipation of implicating them in the assassination, but they quickly escape and go after Hassell. Scarlett busts in (on skis!) just as Hassell is about to shoot the Al-Alawi diplomat. Hassell does shoot him, but he turns out to be wearing a bulletproof vest, since assassinations are a fact of life in the Middle East. Hassell is arrested and Cobra Commander is strangely fatalistic when he finds out his plan failed. This issue has a less military, almost James Bond feel to it, with all the international intrigue. It’s nice to see the Joes working undercover, showing that their skills are broader than we might have suspected, but the tone is a bit off from Larry Hama’s issues. It’s close, but the humour is a bit broader and it seems like Grant was aiming at a younger audience, whereas Larry Hama (even though he keeps things strictly PG) doesn’t write down to the readers. I do like Vosburg’s art and I’m glad that he becomes a regular on the title.

G. I. Joe #10 (April 1983) – “A Nice Little Town Like Ours” – Larry Hama/Mike Vosburg/Chic Stone

This one starts with the Joes preparing to assault a building in New York that’s a front for Cobra activity. Unfortunately, Cobra knows they’re there and Baroness activates several traps, capturing Scarlett, Zap, and Snake Eyes. Baroness takes off in a plane with the three prisoners and Scarlett wakes up in a cell with Zap and some kid. Scarlett is hallucinating thanks to the prisoners’ water being drugged by a guy called Dr. Venom. Not far away, Dr. Venom has Snake Eyes hooked up to a machine that can map his thought patterns and use that information to read his mind, giving Cobra the location of Joe headquarters. In the cell, Scarlett and Zap are still out of it, but the kid tells them the water is drugged and uses the heat from the light bulb to purify it. In Dr. Venom’s lab, Snake Eyes avoids having the location of Joe headquarters plucked from his mind by dredging up painful memories to block the one Venom wants. But that causes him tremendous emotional and physical pain, so Venom figures he can’t keep it up forever. In the cell, the kid helps lure some guards in so Scarlett and Zap can take them down. They don the Cobra guards’ uniforms to get out of the prison, but have to change into civilian clothes to go outside. Apparently, they’re in Springfield, an ordinary Middle American town … that’s secretly run by Cobra. The kid tells them how some people came in running a pyramid scheme and basically took over the whole town, indoctrinating the citizens and planting Cobra munitions everywhere. He leads them to a video arcade which conceals Dr. Venom’s lab, but the kids inside make them as intruders immediately (and recognize the kid as a troublemaker). In the lab below, Snake Eyes fakes his death (by slowing his vital signs using some kind of ninja skills) and escapes, getting to the arcade just in time to save Scarlett and Zap. They take off and the kid directs them to the airfield, but refuses to leave with them. He says his family is part of an anti-Cobra resistance and is in hiding, so he can’t leave them. Scarlett, Snake Eyes, and Zap grab a plane and a Cobra pilot, but he tries to kill them and Snake Eyes shoots him. Since they have no idea where they are (and are caught in the middle of a huge storm with the navigation knocked out during the fight), they have no choice but to keep on course and hope for the best. They eventually come out of the storm and bail out, landing at a mall opening in Bayonne, New Jersey. This is a really important issue for several reasons: it’s the first appearance of Springfield, Cobra’s small town with a big secret; it’s also the first appearance of Dr. Venom, whose brain-draining machine will feature in future issues; and although he doesn’t look like it, the kid who helps the Joes is actually Billy (which explains how he knows so much about Springfield), who’ll have a very prominent role in future issues, and will turn out to have some major secrets of his own. I get the feeling Larry Hama had a lot of future plans already laid out by this point. Not only is he showing us Springfield (and Billy), but when Snake Eyes is being interrogated we see a lot of flashbacks from his life, including his ninja training, the accident that fucked up his face, and the death of his family in a car crash. That means Hama had probably already worked out most of Snake Eyes’ background, although I’m not sure if he knew about the connection to Cobra Commander yet, or if that came later.