GI Joe Volume VI By Larry Hama

 GI Joe Volume VI

By Larry Hama

“The Real Stealing is done on Paper” Cobra Commander 

(This is true.  Especially with wage labor!  Seriously, wage theft by the people who are already stealing your labor value is worth more than all other theft combined!  And it isn’t even an actual crime!  Steal $100 from the register?  You’re going to jail.  Boss steals $2000 of your wages? If you’re lucky you’ll settle for $500.)

Welcome to Part two of the glorious double header! Volume VI covers issues 51 to 60 of GI Joe, running from September 1986 to June 1987. Let's get back to the story, shall we?

Springfield is a burning field of rubble but the Joes are finding their victory to be more trouble than it's worth as the unit has been provisionally stood down and its members confined to barracks pending an independent investigation (Hehehehehehehehehe.). Worse before those orders arrive Zartan's siblings show up and break him out of the Pitt, whose location he promptly reports. This actually heads off a Cobra Civil War that starts brewing the moment that Serpentor sets foot on Cobra Island. Here's the issue, Cobra Commander is a genius, he was capable of launching a movement based on mass grievance that inspired fanatical loyalty, then converting it to a secret society and arranging infiltration into American society beyond the Soviet's wildest dreams He then created a paramilitary force as an outgrowth of that secret society that was able to operate across the globe with enough resources to field armored battalions and air wings. That he was able to do this and secure funding and backing at all levels of society without getting arrested or anyone realizing what was going on until masked troopers were screaming Cobra and launching attacks is the kind of administrative and logistical feat that is frankly superhuman. However, Cobra Commander frankly sucks donkey balls as a battlefield leader (Kinda needs division of labor like… well the vampire cabal in Castlevania.). His grasp of tactics is grade school at best, his ability to listen to subordinates is non-existent, he has a pathological inability to share credit or glory, and his level of personal courage isn't at the level of cowardice displayed in the cartoon but is still rather questionable at best (So what you are saying is that I would do a better job than him? {I’m saying our 7-year-old nephew has a good shot of out doing him}). Compare this to Serpentor who on his first day of life saved wounded troopers while under fire, got shot and sealed the wound with a hot knife and jumped right back into the battle and won his brawl with the Joes and you tell me who the average grunt Viper trooper is going to prefer for leadership? Ideally, everyone would realize that Cobra Commander is the best man to administer Cobra and oversee logistics, while Serpentor should lead from the sharp end of the spear.  Serpentor isn't gonna be willing to restrain his ambition to that however and Cobra Commander would never share the glory anyways (Wait, you mean to tell me that if you distill the essences of people like Ghengis Khan and Saladin, they won’t restrain their ambition?  Noooo! {I thought you told me that the result would be an average dude and not some mystical combination of all their qualities?} Yes, that is true.  But I am suspending disbelief.). So Good Old CC knows when his position is in danger and he knows someone like Serpentor is going to be ambitious but all of that is going to have to wait as there is a chance to burn the Pitt to ashes and kill all the Joes.

Too bad none of the Joes are home and this attack is going to run right into the independent investigation and convince the survivors that the threat is real and they need the Joes (You’d think Cobra Island would have done that, but okay! {There are… Other factors at play}). Assuming there are any survivors of course. The investigation itself being carried out by a committee of top brass is kind of hilarious. I mean Hawk shows them a video of the Joes being shelled by Cobra vipers in the streets of Springfield and loads of captured Cobra tanks and artillery only to be told it's circumstantial evidence! (What the hell do they want?) I mean I know the police have militarized to an absurd degree in this country but frankly, if 1st MarDiv got into a shootout in Reno and there were heaps of Soviet tanks being used by men claiming to be Reno PD, I WOULD HAVE QUESTIONS! SO MANY QUESTIONS! (And I would be laughing in Communist.  So Hard.  But yes, there would be questions.  Questions like “How did you get that many T-72s through customs!?  Where did the MiG-29s come from!?  Where are you servicing these vehicles!?) I mean what do you need at this point? A signed confession from Cobra Commander? Of course, Serpentor manages to play on Cobra Commander's vanity to get him to lead the assault into the Pitt and as a result, CC and Destro are lost in action. The two men who were best able to stop him from taking over Cobra. So as a result the Joes are left as a nomadic unit, and Serpentor is able to claim two victories in two engagements and takes over Cobra. He promptly turns to selling weapons to every dictator who can scrape up a spare million or five (How dastardly!  Moving in on America’s [and the USSRs] racket! {Don’t forget the UK, France, Italy and increasingly the PRC racket.  I mean India would be a huge exporter but they’re stunningly incompentent}). His biggest product? A combination of anti-air artillery and command complex he dubs the Terrordome. This was a Hasbro playset that Larry Hama turns into the center of a story of skullduggery and battlefield espionage (Wait, so… is this like one of the massive flak towers/air raid shelters used by Nazi Germany? {With a computer and communications capabilities to overlook an entire theater of deployment}). I'm honestly impressed at his ability to take what is honestly kind of ridiculous children's toys and have me take them seriously by creating political and industrial storylines around them. While the Joes conduct a series of missions across the world to get technical information on the Terrordomes and figure out just why Cobra wants them everywhere; we find out Cobra Commander and Destro aren't dead and while they're trucking across the US, they come across Billy. The young Ninja was severely injured when he decided to come to Springfield to confront his father and got involved in a battle between the Softmaster and Cobra security forces. At first, it seems that Cobra Commander is going to abandon his terrorist lifestyle and just try to be a decent Father to Billy but that doesn't last two issues and he's soon back in the saddle hunting Joes.

I admit I'm a little annoyed at this, I mean Cobra Commander does get a spiffy robot leg for his kid to replace the one that his own troops blew off but he's also willing to leave Billy behind alone to go chasing Joes when Billy is struggling with mental and physical trauma (Does this shock you?). What happened to being a better father CC? (Neglectful/abusive parents almost never actually change.  That’s what happened.) I mean, come on you could at least try to last a month in the lifestyle of a not-a-terrorist-leader! Seriously Billy would be better off with Darth Vader as his father at this point, at least Vader made his kids something of a priority when he became aware of their existence (He did prove he cared.  Literally offered Luke co-rule of the Galaxy, sacrificed himself, etc.  This shit is like… worse than Dr. Evil level parenting.). Cobra Commander doesn't make it to the end of this volume before deciding “Screw focusing on the son who I've crippled through my negligence and malice… The son who I outright lost at points in his childhood due to my focus on building a cult of personality to subvert and destroy my homeland and make war on the very concept of democracy!  I'm retaking my fascist terrorist organization back! Because that's fatherhood!”.  You know at least Vader offered to include Luke.  I’m just saying.  Involved in all of this is Fred VII, a member of the Crimson Guard who for right now plays enabler for Cobra Commander’s desire to get back into terrorism by providing equipment, a place to stay, and calling in local Cobra assets.  Like Raptor, an accountant who likes to dress up like a giant bird and attack government agents with large mutant hawks.  Look, it was the 80s, don’t ask questions. (Look, the cocaine flowed like the spice of Arrakis.  That is all the explanation anyone needs.  There was so much cocaine, that one didn’t even need to use cocaine to be affected by it.  It was everywhere, getting the culture itself high as balls.{It gave us the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Robocop, David Lynch’s Dune, and Transformers… I say we apologize for nothing!})

Meanwhile, the collection of missions to get intel on the Terrordome ends up embarking on a grand GI Joe tradition, Snake Eyes getting captured by Cobra and plugged into one of their Brain reading/scrambler machines. Only sort of on purpose this time by disguising Snake Eyes as another Joe, it takes Cobra hours to figure out that Snake Eyes isn't even really wearing his real face (I am getting Hannibal Lecter vibes here.). Which I have to admit is kind of hilarious to me. You’d think, knowing that one of their enemies is a mute ninja who has a collection of fake faces, they would be instantly suspicious of any prisoners who are on the quiet side and don't sweat while being tortured in the tropics, but noooo (Intel briefings:  Not their strong point.)! This graphic novel also has Serpentor getting increasingly cranky and given performances like these from his High Command, I can understand why. I mean, imagine you're a genetically engineered warlord whose dreams are filled with having subordinates on the level of Subutai, but instead you got people like Dr. Mindbender or the Twins. This confrontation takes place in the fictional country of Sierra Gordo as Cobra and the Joes use Revolutionary and Counter-Revolutionary Forces against each other in the pursuit of profit and intelligence The Joes are working as field advisers for the Counter Revolutionaries and Cobra working for the Revolutionaries, as well as selling them weapons. I can't call this a win for the Joes or a loss, as they get a lot of information but once again lose Snake Eyes. Seriously, I'm thinking this is going to give Scarlet a complex; she's spending a lot of time in this series watching the man she's in love with getting captured or injured right in front of her and not being able to do anything to stop it. She's not going to be able to send him out to buy milk without having a panic attack at this rate. Imagine being the VA psychologist who has to deal with this in about 10 years. Assuming we have a psychologist who has a security clearance high enough for this shit! (Come on now, that would require veterans actually getting decent psychiatric care.  What’s actually going to happen is that she’s gonna file all her paperwork for disability benefits due to crippling PTSD, wait three years for a decision, be declined on the spurious grounds that it’s not service-related, then spend another few years in appeals.  And that’s if she gets the right person’s discharge paperwork when she musters out.{I got the right paperwork… Eventually!})

Volume VI is tense and full of intrigue here but lacks the full-scale clash of arms that we saw in Volume V. Interestingly enough there are no real clear victories for anyone in Volume VI. The Joes gather intelligence and get vital information but don't score a decisive victory and Cobra takes out the Pitt but since the Joes weren't in it, it's not a knockout blow. So both groups are left circling each other with the stakes rising. That said I like this a lot better than Volume IV, which is comparable but left a lot more hanging threads and cliffhangers. Volume VI gives you the feeling of being a complete episode in a large story which is what it is. Still, it's not up to Volume V's level if you ask me. So I'm rating Volume VI by Larry Hama a B.

So our ever-wise patrons voted for GI Joe Volume V but I threw in Volume VI to celebrate Veterans Day and of course the Marine Corps Birthday. Our December polls are open for those who would like to join us, and get a vote for as little as a dollar a month. Patrons also discuss possible theme months and ideas for extra reviews. Next week we return to the world of the Dwarves series with Elves Vol II. Until then, stay safe and Keep Reading.

Red Text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your review Garvin Anders