GI Joe Vol VIII By Larry Hama

 GI Joe Vol VIII

By Larry Hama

So I was asked recently why GI Joe keeps popping up in this review series. There are three reasons, first, our ever-wise patrons keep voting for it, and what they vote for they get (Yay Democracy!  Unlike us, who vote for stuff like minimum wage increases and healthcare that we don’t get!  Vote Frigid for Senate!  He has a proven track record of listening to voters!  If we’re gonna have Bourgeois Democracy, we might as well have someone in office who gives a shit.  No he isn’t running, but he should!). Second, I've been a fan of GI Joe since I was eight years old, and frankly, my appreciation for what Larry Hama has done: taking something envisioned as an extra-large toy commercial and turning it into a complex and compelling story with real breathing characters and a willingness to explore some complicated ideas has only gotten deeper with age. Third, I feel the series is intensely underestimated, along with Mr. Hama. This is a comic series that in the 1980s built a fan base that ranged from single-digit brats like myself to housewives in their late 20s and early 30s and solid male professionals as old as their late 40s. It crosses generational gaps, along with race, gender, and class, and every group had their reason for liking the series but everyone agreed on the quality. You don't do that if you are not writing something worth reading and I'm gonna stack fallen opponents on this hill until I'm buried on it. If you don't believe me, I dare you to read the series, that simple. I hope that clears it up. Anyways, Volume VIII covers Marvel issues 71 published May of 1988 to issue 80 published November of ‘88 so let's see what 1988 brings us (Other than cocaine and more AIDS {Always with the cocaine, is Air America giving you a sponsorship?}! Spoilers to follow folks.

Volume VIII first focuses on closing up the story arc in the ever-melting-down nation of Sierro Gordo, which was invented to serve as a stand-in for the Central and South American countries that were often victims of American foreign policy. I will now pause to allow my editor to scream and rant (You know the term Banana Republic?  Yeah.  That term exists because the US government subjected any country that didn’t subjugate itself to American fruit barons who kept their population in feudal servitude to “regime change in the name of democracy”.) At this point, they're on their third revolutionary government (military dictatorship) with the GI Joe-backed and trained counter-revolutionaries grimly holding in the jungle hills attempting to create a non-military government. Cobra has been chased out of the country, however, this only left an opening for an American banana corporation to swoop in and plant their own general in charge. Out maneuvering the Departments of Defense and State much to the disgust of the Joes and the Ambassador they've been ordered to evacuate (Wow, this is revisionist as fuck.{Eh, I can point to some equivalent events in Iraq and Afghanistan} Sure, but not within the context of our historical operations in Latin America. {Fruit companies actually did the Marines dirty a few times in the 1930s so Ehhh}). When the Dreadnoughts decide to hijack their way out of the country and steal the Joes' ride home, they're forced to flee to those same jungle hills that the counter-revolutionaries hold with the military hot on their heels. It's here that a fifth force shows up. Destro, who for various reasons I'll get into later in the review, has decided he needs to operate more independently from Cobra to the point of expanding his ancestral men-at-arms into an outright mercenary company so he can have his own armed force. While he sells anti-armor and anti-aircraft missiles to the military, which is a stupid purchase given most of their enemies are light infantry fighting in rough terrain, Destro makes contact with the Joes and the counter-revolutionaries. His deal is simple, he'll get them out of the country and help the C.Rs win in exchange for them nationalizing the banana company holdings and handing them over to him (What the actual fuck?{Destro is a CEO and with this, he grabs economic assets and locks out the US and Cobra}I get that, it’s just fucking bizzare.). Meanwhile, the Joes on the hijacked plane get hijacked and crashed by the Dreadnoughts and have to work together with them to protect a group of refugees and each other to escape the country. It's a good story that shows just how stupid the average Dreadnought is and how good their leadership is at adjusting for that and pointing them in the right direction. This storyline shows us just how good Destro is at achieving his objectives when he's not tied down by Cobra or Cobra's leadership. The biggest difference between Destro and Cobra is that you can count on Destro to fulfill his contractual obligations to the letter and in full. This doesn't make him a good guy because he'll have no hesitation in throwing you under the bus for bigger and better deals afterward; but it does set him up as something of a Magnificent Bastard, which we'll see in the new plotline and the one that dominates the Volume.

That of course is the long-awaited Cobra Civil War. As a quick run-up, Cobra Commander is being impersonated by a Crimson Guardsmen known as Fred VII (because they get plastic surgery to look like a set of guys to make them more interchangeable as agents) who shot the real CC and left him in a shallow grave when CC decided to quit Cobra to try and make amends with his son. Fred is backed by the Baroness and Zartan but opposed by Serpentor, the super-soldier project who thinks he's a dozen different mighty warlords reborn via dark science. Between being the first attempt at this, being a mix of random DNA from a dozen donors with no real quality control (I mean some of these guys have been dead for millennia!), and having a very unstable life, Serpentor is unstable. I'm sure you're shocked (I am completely shocked.). He is however still a better tactical commander and more caring of the lives under his command, if only marginally, than Cobra Commander. Serpentor is backed by Dr. Mindbender and the twins Xantos and Tomax. Now, Cobra command has always been a snake pit of plots and double-dealings but now it's worse than ever and everyone knows this can't last.

The war sparks off when an experimental trooper called a Star Viper is sent by Dr. Mindbender to the new Pit - the GI Joe secret base - breaks in, steals a bunch of top-secret intel, and escapes. When the Star Viper arrives, Serpentor is so insufferable that a fistfight breaks out between him and Cobra Commander and the war breaks out before anyone can even say good job to the Star Viper. I feel bad for the guy.  Imagine letting Dr. Mindbender hack your nervous system, taking on the best the US has to offer, winning, and when you get home literally no one gives a shit. I don't think it's an accident that we never see the character again (Yeah, I’d just go… Probably to start a real revolution in Latin America to be honest.).  I can only hope he chose desertion over other more permanent methods of exiting Cobra. The initial exchanges go poorly for Serpentor because Cobra Commander, or rather the Fred pretending to be him, was smart enough to bug all the android soldiers that Serpentor has been using as a personal guard (Infosec, people!). However fake CC isn't good enough to use this intel to stop him. This is where Dr. Mindbender gets the idea of grabbing the stolen US intel that's been just sitting there and trading it back to the US days after stealing it in exchange for US military aid, with the idea of handing it over and selling Serpentor as a constitutional monarch looking to overthrow the fascist dictatorship that is Cobra Commander (What the actual fuck?  That… isn’t how monarchies work? {Cobra isn’t a real country}No it isn’t, which makes it even weirder!). Thus making Star Viper's humiliation complete, I really feel bad for the guy. That said I will note that CC is a fascist dictator so there's some truth here.

Now the Joes weren't sitting on their hands when all of this happened. Needing to do something to avenge the loss of classified data, they had sent a Recon unit to Cobra Island and were gearing up for an operation to crash into the island and get it back. This is when they’re been informed that the State Department has cut a deal with Mindbender, instead of crashing in, wrecking up the joint, and grabbing the data, they are to crash in, link up with Serpentor and plant his clone ass on the throne of Cobra Island (What!? Monarchies don’t work that way?   Though I guess it is totally on point for the US government to just install a completely illegitimate government anywhere it wants.  I don’t like monarchies, I would unalive the Romanovs in a heartbeat, but at least there is usually some historical sense of legitimacy to them.  This is just… no. {Serpentor has a better claim as a monarch than anything else given that he claims to be an Emperor, also monarchies work a lot of different ways, including election by the army (Yes they do, but not typically “By the way, country that has no history of monarchy, you have a King now, because we’ve decided things that way, and he isn’t even OUR king.”{Monarchy has to start somewhere, Cobra at this point has less than 10 years of history behind it!}). Plus remember you’re the State employee who has to sell this to Congress and the people at some point.  What would you rather say?  “We backed this guy because he gave us back the stuff that he stole from us a bribe”?  Or “By doing this we turn Cobra from a fascist barely a state military to a Constitutional Monarchy and get rid of noted terrorist Cobra Commander, a man wanted by the West and East blocks for crimes against humanity”? (Probably the latter but it is still fucking bizzare)  Plus, Cobra isn’t a real country!  While the UN and the US legal complex has decided to treat them like one (Which they should not have done.), they’re a terrorist organization holding onto an artificial island in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico claiming sovereignty!  In a sane world, General Hawk would have been handed 1st and 2nd MarDiv along with the Joe Team and told to make the problem go away, but CC has subverted that much of the civilian world that it isn’t happening!} ). This is about as popular as smallpox but they salute and get ready to do it. Things get even more bizarre when Destro shows up, smuggling an armored battalion via cruise ship in the middle of the battle, and proceeds to dig in on the beach and just watch everyone else kick the ever-loving shit out of each other. Destro even orders his junior officers to make sure they're taking notes of the tactics and equipment on display when he stands down his men for a hot meal after entrenchment (Okay, that is legitimately funny.  That’s like a Prussian military officer hanging around watching the US civil war, only more; because he brought his entire staff and the infantry. {complete with formal tea set under an umbrella on a fancy table set up on the beach, I gotta admit Destro is styling hard in this volume}). Hama does a good job of making this a brutal fight and showing us Joes going down with injuries and taking losses even when being the most effective unit on the battlefield. Showing that even if you're a super badass, war is not gonna be super fun for you. Meanwhile, most of Cobra's problems are one of command.  When Serpentor sorts himself out, he's able to simply wreck CC forces, especially with the Joe’s support. However, when Zartan decides to take matters into his own hands and remind us just how good of an archer he is, it all falls apart. Without the evil Captain America that is Serpentor, his faction simply falls apart on the very cusp of victory, and Cobra Commander is left with his trembling boot back on everyone's neck. This is where Destro rolls in and informs everyone that unless someone hands over Baroness (who spent half the battle tied to Serpentor's tank because she was the only one on CC’s side willing to lead from the front), he'll bury their exhausted and out of position troops with his well-rested and positioned troops. This means Destro is the only one who got everything he wanted and at a low price. As the Joes are sent home in failure, CC has control of Cobra but one that is brutalized and full of people still reaching for their sidearms when no one is looking, and Serpentor is dead.

The Joes head home and find themselves set up to take the fall to protect the Senators, State officials, and generals who had made the deal with Dr. Mindbender by a conspiracy of Generals known as the Jugglers (This is totally on-point.  The Joes really need to start recording incriminating evidence for insurance purposes. {They really do, there have been a legit dozen times they could have ended Cobra only to be sideswiped by their own government}). So Roadblock has to put together a resistance to free his commanding officers so they can mount a defense. Of course he has to confront a hospital where everyone has been replaced with federal agents. He does this with the help of an anti-military activist that's appeared several times in the comic, Dr. Adele Burkhart. Dr. Burkhart is a character that shows how complex the GI Joe comic can be because while she's a critic of the Joes and the US government, she has aided them several times and has always tried to stand up for human rights as she understands them. In short, she's a pain in the ass but you can't help but respect her conviction and utter fearlessness in their pursuit. Dr. Burkhart and the Joes led a raid on the hospital in daylight on national news with Dr. Burkhart denouncing the government for sending the Joes off on an invasion and then throwing them under the bus, while being fired at by federal agents (Damn.). The whole thing is brought to a close by Destro who caught the News and was infuriated by such treatment of loyal soldiers. So he drops in on his private helicopter and presents evidence that not only were the Joes ordered to invade Cobra Island but the general leading the charge also contracted him to supply the invasion (Wow, yeah this guy was wasted in Cobra.  That having been said... were I the Joes, I’d fucking walk. Just leave.  They don’t have to be perpetrators and victims of US foreign policy and domestic shitfuckery {US troops don’t get to walk until the contract is done.  Plus if they quit, then what protection does the country have against an organization that can move armored battalions into striking distance of D.C at will?} Loyalty is a two-way street.  They might not be legally able to walk, but morally they have no obligation to stay.  If the government is that subverted, corrupt, and ineffectual, the United States is, realistically - and not in comic book logic, obviously - a walking corpse.  Best to set up a parallel power structure and challenge Cobra that way.  Otherwise, even if Cobra loses eventually, what the fuck are they propping up?  Did the guilty parties, for instance, actually pay for their crimes?{Yes, actually and the idea that the US government is a walking corpse is ridiculous, it’s nowhere near as bad as in the 1850s.  That said, you’re basically saying the only way to fight Cobra is to become Cobra by breaking away from the government and setting up a secret paramilitary organization that doesn’t answer to any outside authority.  Do you really think that’s gonna end well?}). Imagine being a news executive with that as your lead story.  How would you ever top that?  Honestly, guys, this is Destro's volume to show off his stuff and he does a fine job of it. The last story is a bit of a stand on its own issue of a group of Joes tasked to hold a small piece of newly emerging land in the Gulf of Mexico that could be used as a staging point against Cobra Island and their struggle against the Cobra forces that show up to take it. This leads to a seesaw battle that ends up not going anywhere because the island promptly sinks right back into the sea. Leaving Cobra and the Joes both nursing their wounds, neither of them able to get off a killing shot on the other. This sums up the whole conflict at this point.

I strongly recommend that anyone who has even a passing interest in GI Joe check out Vol VIII. This is honestly Larry Hama at his best, showing off his ability to write big epic plots turning on small personal details. It's brutal, but not gratuitous and unlike some people, Hama knows how to write an ending that leaves you satisfied if not entirely happy. GI Joe Vol VIII gets an A from me. Although I could have sworn there were maps in the original run of the whole battlefield that were left out here, if that's the case it was a bad decision. Still worth the read though.

Next week we finish the Praxis War with Conventions of War by Walter Jon Williams as voted for by our ever wise patrons. If you'd like a vote on upcoming reviews, theme months or other ideas, join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where for as little as a dollar a month you get a vote! Until then, stay safe and Keep Reading!