Lenten Blogging 2022: Day 24

What a week!  I was so pooped last night that I couldn't watch the Duke/Texas Tech game (GO DUKE!).  Your friend and humble narrator has transported four clients, made five drug runs (what I call getting medication to patients) and did all kinds of other stuff in the past several days.  Now it's the weekend.  Time for lots of playtime with Tammy and doing some minor tasks around the house.

But that's not much of an entry for "blogging during Lent".  I thought that since it's Friday, time for a little fun...

This spring is the fortieth (?!?) anniversary of G.I. Joe: that much beloved toy line from the Eighties.  Not just toys, but also the comic series (which was quite a serious read) and the animated series.  Lately Hasbro has been posting full episodes of G.I. Joe on YouTube and I've been relishing these little visits back to my childhood.

The other day they posted "The Invaders" and I thought this would be a good one to share.  Recall, that this episode premiered in 1985.  There was a LOT of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union in those days, and it was reflected in much of the media.  Including but not limited to children's animated series.  So in this episode the American G.I. Joe team crosses paths with their Soviet counterparts the Oktober Guard.  And if it wasn't for having a shared enemy the two teams would have totally been at each others' throats!

So lets revisit not just an animated classic but a longstanding mindset.  Here is "The Invaders":

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THE BALLAD OF G.I. JOE

Thanks to Phillip Arthur for finding this. And I have not seen the new G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra movie but I have heard that "The Ballad of G.I. Joe" is gads better than that... film. Here it is, starring a lot of famous faces!

And in case you're wondering who's who, here's the cast list:

Laz Alonso as Doc, Alexis Bledel as Lady Jaye, Billy Crudup as Zartan, Zach Galifianakis as Snow Job, Tony Hale as Dr. Mindbender, Frankie Kang as Storm Shadow, Geoff Mann as Buzzer, Andreas Owald as Snake Eyes, Daniel Strange as Torch, Kevin Umbricht as Ripper, Vinnie Jones as Destro, Joey Kern as Tomax, Joey Kern as Xamot, Chuck Liddell as Gung Ho, Julianne Moore as Scarlett, Henry Rollins as Duke, Alan Tudyk as Shipwreck, Olivia Wilde as The Baroness, Jamin Fite as Cobra Commander, Sgt. Slaughter as Himself

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G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA premieres in theaters today

I'm debating whether or not I want to see this movie.

So, I'm gonna do something that I can't recall ever doing with this blog before. If you've seen G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, feel free to post a comment with your thoughts about it and whether you recommend seeing it now or waiting to watch it when it comes out on DVD (or even never at all).

If there's enough good word about it, I'll try to catch it this weekend.

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"Silent Interlude": 25 years later, G.I. JOE comic still rattles the industry

Twenty-five years ago this month, in January of 1984, G.I. Joe #21 from Marvel Comics hit the newsstands. The cover promised "The Most Unusual G.I. Joe Story Ever!!"

What an understatement...

Marvel might as well have declared G.I. Joe #21, the now-legendary "Silent Interlude" issue, as being "The Most Unusual COMIC BOOK Story Ever!" and now, a full quarter-century later, there would be very few fans of graphic art literature who would disagree.

"Silent Interlude" was the issue that broke all the rules of what a comic book was supposed to be. And I think it could even be argued that it forever shattered conventional wisdom on what a licensed property tie-in was fully capable of achieving. From the day that G.I. Joe #1 came out in the spring of 1982 onward, the comic book was generally regarded as a glorified advertisement for the popular Hasbro line of action figures.

And then came Issue #21. Written and drawn by Larry Hama, "Silent Interlude" would become the most talked-about, the most widely praised, and at the time among the most controversial comic books ever published. It permanently elevated G.I. Joe away from its perception of being a "toy franchise" and into the realm of exceptionally mature narrative.

"Silent Interlude" also laid down the foundation for all the G.I. Joe continuity that was to follow for the next ten years and beyond. It established mysteries and connections that have come to be regarded as some of the finest storytelling that the medium has yet produced.

And "Silent Interlude" did it all... without a single word of dialogue or any other written exposition.

Hama's now-classic tale of Snake-Eyes infiltrating Destro's castle to rescue captured fellow G.I. Joe team member Scarlett, and his battle with the Cobra ninja Storm Shadow, was experimental theatre of the highest form. The absence of text proved that it could not stop a well-executed, high-stakes tale loaded with action and enigma. If anything, having no written words escalated the intensity of "Silent Interlude".

Two and a half decades later, G.I. Joe #21 is widely hailed by many of the recent generation of comic artists and writers as the single issue that most inspired them to enter the industry. And as if it needed further testament to its impact, "Silent Interlude" has consequently become one of the most parodied graphic stories in history (including one especially memorable cover for an issue of Deadpool).

But there is one more praise that I am obligated to give "Silent Interlude". I can say now that G.I. Joe #21, and how its story continued to play out over the next few issues after that, was what began turning my very young mind toward what became a life-long interest in modern history. And I think that many people of my age bracket will also readily admit that Larry Hama's work on G.I. Joe made us very curious, for the first time, about what happened in Southeast Asia. Until Issue #26 a few months later, "Vietnam" was just a word that I didn't care to understand. The G.I. Joe comic book first opened my mind about the conflict... and a quarter century later, I'm still trying to grasp it all. A lot of us are.

So let's pretend that Yo Joe Cola is a real drink, and hoist our glasses in raising a toast to "Silent Interlude": not just the greatest G.I. Joe story ever, but one of the greatest comic book issues of all time! :-)

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A "motivational poster" we can all appreciate

Although the depiction of Cobra Commander did not originate with him, Phillip Arthur spotted it and couldn't help but make it even better :-)

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No joke: THIS is what Storm Shadow and Baroness will look like in G.I. JOE

Words fail...

There are many more pics of the G.I. Joe actors in their costumes over at What Would Tyler Durden Do, including additional pics of Rachel Nichols as Scarlett, Ray Park as Snake-Eyes, and also Dennis Quaid as Hawk... who looks like a cross between Solid Snake and General Bernard Montgomery.

I haven't seen that many tight butts and rubber nipples in a movie since Batman and Robin: is Joel Schumacher an executive producer on this thing?

Seriously though, I look at these characters, and I feel no attachment to them. No empathy with them at all. The G.I. Joe characters from the Eighties franchise were well-grounded personalities: most of them (other than Snake-Eyes) we were given their names, where they were from, a bit of their history. Their individual costumes were not just a reflection of those characters, they helped to define them too. I see these "G.I. Joe" movie characters, and all I can think of is "They've become nothing more than toy soldiers."

And where is that big crimson Cobra sigil on the Baroness's outfit?

More at the above link.

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This is NOT Scarlett!

Somebody doing marketing/promotional work for the upcoming G.I. Joe movie has screwed-up bigtime. Because this cannot possibly be what Scarlett is going to look like...

That's so much black Spandex, how can there be any left over to use on the Baroness? She's got the cute ponytail and crossbow (which are iconic to the character) but this outfit is all wrong. I was really looking forward to the original, classic Scarlett getup: the tan and gray one, which would have been a great contrast to Snake-Eyes... which if you know anything about those two characters would have been very fitting.

I just don't like it. But I'll be willing to overlook this, if the designs for Destro and Zartan end up looking sweet.

Oh yeah, and Scarlett needs to speak with a Georgia accent in the movie.

Credit goes to JoBlo.com for the otherwise great find :-)

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First images of Snake-Eyes from the live-action G.I. JOE movie

I am not hopeful about this movie at all. So much of it screams wrong, like having the G.I. Joe team, an American counter-terrorist group, based in Belgium. And a far-too-young Cobra Commander.

But there have been a few things about G.I. Joe that have piqued my curiosity. Christopher Eccleston as Destro, f'rinstance. And Ray Park as Snake-Eyes. And the fact that Larry Hama, who pretty much defined the entire look and tone of the Eighties-era G.I. Joe mythology, is aboard the production team.

And then yesterday Ain't It Cool News, courtesy of Larry Hama himself, delivers the first officially released photos of Snake-Eyes from the film...

Here's the other pic, after I played around with it in Photoshop to bring out more detail...

That's Snake-Eyes alright. No question about it. The only thing I don't like is that he's got the Arishakage clan's hexagram emblazoned on his costume's shoulder, when I much prefer it tattooed on his arm and out of sight. But the fact that the hexagram is being used at all makes up a bit for that quibble.

I must admit, I really like how they've got Snake-Eyes looking here.

(By the way, I still have in my possession my almost-pristine copy of G.I. Joe issue #21: the legendary "Silent Interlude" story. Along with #25 and #26 of the same run. So if these pics can impress me, that's sayin' something :-)

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Stephen Sommers directing G.I. Joe movie (plus who might be writing the script)

No not a remake of The Story of G.I. Joe, the 1945 movie about Ernie Pyle, and it's not a movie about the foot-tall action figure that your daddy might have played with. Sommers is directing G.I. Joe, a big-screen flick of the extremely popular toy line from the 1980s.

From the story...

While G.I. Joe toys have been around for decades, the movie will be based on the toy line launched in the 1980s, which also was tied to a Saturday morning cartoon and comic book series.

Director Stephen Sommers' take was inspired by a trip to Hasbro's headquarters in Rhode Island, where he learned in depth about the world of G.I. Joe. Sommers then met with Paramount brass, who sparked to his ideas. The studio is eyeing a summer 2009 release.

The film will see soldiers from all branches of the military fighting a terrorist group called Cobra, led by the Cobra Commander and featuring such villains as the Baroness, metal-faced arms dealer Destro, master of disguise Zartan and biker gang Dreadnoks.

On the good guys' side were heroes such as the mute ninja Snake Eyes and the fetching heroine Scarlett, who were led by a Joe named Duke.

And then IESB.net has who might be writing the script: Stuart Beattie, who worked on the Pirates of the Caribbean movies for Disney.

There's more that I want to write about this, but not right now. Suffice it to say I've had some thoughts lately about a big-screen G.I. Joe movie (let us pretend that... thing... from 1987 never happened) and why it might not work as well as the Transformers did. But if Sommers is helming and Beattie is writing, I am inclined to have some confidence in this.

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