Hey everybody.

I've had a lot of conversations with people over the years about what the Joe v. Cobra situation is symbolic or metaphoric of.

Halloween a few years ago I was dressed as Cobra Commander and a guy said, "Oh, so you're Communism, huh?" which led to a long discussion about what was really under the hood of the Commander, so to speak. Then there was the recent arc where Larry wrote Cobra as a parallel with private mercenary corporations. He also wrote them as parallel to privately funded citizen violence. Someone has told me that he came around to seeing the Joes as state's rights protectors and Cobra as federal interest enforcers, as a metaphor.

Are there any events or characters in Joe who you see in any sort of a light beyond their filecard (such as Cesspool being a recklessly polluting CEO) or any beliefs about what, on the grand scale, the "struggle" between JvC has come to mean?

I don't aim to argue the merits of people's views here, I would like to know what it means to them, what keeps them coming back besides nostalgia. I've taken to discussing politics a LOT and while that's not what I want to do here, I do like to know what motivates people, and why this whole pop culture thing is appealing.

Personally I'd say I've stuck with GI Joe over the years is due to how Larry Hama wrote the book. It's primarily military fantasy, yes, but there always another element that you didn't necessarily pick up on if you were reading it as a kid (which I guess applies to most of us here). Which is why I still enjoy reading his old stories now, because I finally get a lot of the references and side jokes.

Since I'm not well-versed in American politics, any related metaphors would be over my head. But one scenario that's intrigued me for a while is that of the disillusioned Joe. I find it quite likely that amongst 100+ members, some of them would eventually not only want to stop serving, but would also give up any notions of patriotism.

I feel it was something DDP could have explored. When they started their run, they had aged the Joes and shown what some of them were up to after the team disbanded. When the team's reinstated and they get in touch with the old members to get them back into the fold, one memorable scene is of Bazooka who's become a fat, balding security guard, and thus unfit to return to duty despite his eagerness.

It was a designed scene for cheap laughs, but it got me thinking. What if there were Joes who hadn't found themselves decent lives in normal society after the team broke up? Stalker became a family man, Flint became a successful author. But what about the others who gave up everything for GI Joe and had nothing left to keep them going? The ones who finally succumbed to the tolls inflicted by years of classified warfare? Or even worse, what if a former Joe went rogue? We've seen this scenario explored to a certain degree through Wade Collins and Thomas Stall, but neither were full-fledged Joes. So the question is: if you've been amongst the best the country has to offer, does that mean you fall even further and harder?

Nice points all around.
Regarding the Joe's who'd fall hard and fast, you'd have to wager that the Joe's with "specialties" -Doc, Mainframe, etc. would excel in the real world.
The "infantry" types like Leatherneck, Grunt, Footloose and Bazooka, since the are "the best of the best" would most likely be offered lucrative positions in organizations like Blackwater. There is real the real test of their character would come into play...."do I sacrifice my morals for big bucks and help execute the agenda of the military industrial complex?"

Exactly what I was getting at. The IDW universe shows a GI Joe that people give a lot up to join (being declared dead, as we saw when Hawk recruited Duke in Origins) and have a hard time walking away from (see Mainframe going underground), if at all. That has to have some messed-up psychological effects, but the average reader might not necessarily be able to relate.

The ARAH universe, on the other hand, is more suitable to showing "post-Joe" lives. We saw Grunt quit to go to school, Mutt visited his uncle who got brainwashed. Actually that's one dangling plot I wish got resolved, back in the day: when Mutt's uncle's town of Millville got brainwashed by Cobra, Mutt and Spirit led a resistance and ended up arrested when they couldn't prove the town had been taken over because Cobra turned off the brainwashing, and we didn't hear about them again. Next thing we know, Spirit is back on guard duty above the Pit when Cobra come invading, about 30 issues later. Maybe dedicating an entire storyline to how the Joes convinced the court to let Mutt and Spirit go would be a bit much, but still, I can't help wondering how it must have sucked for them to take the fall even though the entire Joe team went through something similar when they invaded Springfield.

I think when a bunch of extraterrestrial mechanical sentient beings bring their intergalactic civil war to your small town, it would be reasonable to empty out your jails.

_________________
"The scriveners and scribblers are not the keepers of the canon, the audience is. If the public doesn't like it, they blot it out of the collective consciousness, and make it go away"

Larry Hama, Snake Eyes Deconstructed (March, 2006)

Ah yes, but we already saw Spirit back at the Pit before said intergalactic civil war paid a visit to Millville.

That was one of the very first story lines I ever read a martial law scenario in, Millville. That's weird, I forgot all about it, but I remember seeing Spirit in that hut, and being like, What? Was that when the Pit's front door was used as a field test for the new model BATs?

I'm reading Nth Man for the first time now (I only just finished completing the series and I'm about half way in) and I'm getting a lot of the crowd-labeling rhetoric, such as "Capitalist WarMonger Running Dog Lackey." (I just made that up because I don't have an issue in front of me right now but I CHALLENGE you to prove it's not in ARAH at least twice). Larry's soldiers seem to defy nationalities for the purposes of respect a lot in this book.

Yeah, that's the one. I mean, when the Joes (including Mutt, ironically enough) apprehended Dreadnoks, they'd show Cobra going to all the trouble to get them out of jail, either by lawyer or by Road Pig. Even if you weren't expecting a big rescue story like when the ninjas came to get Stalker, Quick Kick and Snow Job out of Borovia, you'd expect some sort of resolution before having Spirit and eventually Mutt show up as free men again, especially as their arrest was the climax to a major storyline.



We just saw that recurring theme again in 157, where Duke, Scarlett and Snake-Eyes help out that Cobra border guard, who in turn doesn't rat them out.

Hey, and the next time I saw that scene was this morning when I read the newest issue and Spirit is in the quonson hut again, defending against Bats once more when Cobra finds the same exact Pitt again.



Somehow it seems like it is also kind of carried over in spirit with Cobra Commander's "rickshaw" ride on Broca Beach. That's pretty classic Hama.

Larry Hama always did a pretty good job with legal stuff.

I figured that when Spirit and Mutt were arrested at Millville, the arrest was made by Law (Hawk says "Put the cuffs on them Law") and they were taken into custody by the GI Joe team.
When I saw them again, I figured they were out on bail, awaiting trial.

Who knows what they were charged with, but I found news articles where arson suspects had been relased on bail in New York. The most serious acts- squashing a BUGG driver with a safe full of scrap iron- would never come out because it would blow Cobra's cover in Millville.



The first time I heard about Habeas Corpus was in a GI Joe comic. I had no idea how it worked, but it did a great job getting Cobras out of jail.
20 or so years later, I read about it in the papers when Boumediene v. Bush was decided. I remember thinking "hey! That was in GI Joe!"

In #163 when Stalker asks where the Joe team stands on holding the Baroness prisoner, Hawk explains how the Baroness's rights are different today than they would have been if she was captured back in issue 15 or so and remarks, "Habeas Corpus is not what it used to be."

I thought it was neat this particular topic got a brief mention after using it so often during the Marvel run.

And to go back on topic with my second post:

Larry Hama said in a Marvel Age interview that the amazing friendships between the Joes were the central fantasy of the comic. The GI Joe team is who you wish your real life friends were: people with integrity and honor who will stick up for you. The GI Joes are loyal to their friends before everything else. Stalker giving Wade Collins a pass in issue 43, for example.

The rest of the world was depicted as containing a lot of people who were very individualistic and self-centered: the yuppie commuters getting inconvenienced when the Joe team goes to rescue clutch and rock and roll; the various elevator rides in Manhattan; Wolfgang; all the people Roadblock had to give heck to; Metz; Agent Bernstein-Barr who put "looking good" over doing his job properly; all the blame shifting that goes around.

Cobra feeds off of people's greed and selfishness. Cobra Commander says something to this effect when he comes back from the dead around issue 100. Some examples include: the Broca beach operation that is paid for with get-rich-quick scams; Cobra wins in Benzheen because the Emir is more concerned with his fortune than getting his country back.

Most of the symbolism that pops out to me seems to be deal with this dichotomy between loyal friendship and selfishness/greed; El Jefe's nine lives (the selfish never seem to suffer that much); the silent castle chaning to Castle Destro only to be changed back to the silent castle again (the greedy are never really wiped out); the WW2/Korea Ranger veteran suffering a heart attack right when he tried to save the Joes from a grenade (being a friend is hard and means sacrifice).

I'm sure there were tons of other themes too. Just my take.