Comic Pants Podcast #43
This week, Dave Farabee, Nick Budd, David Martindale (D3), and Randy Lander are talking about one of their favorite subjects - G.I. Joe. We cover the latest movie rumors and news, our take on the current Devil’s Due comics, our appreciation for the G.I. Joe Micro Heroes of Ze Ballbreaker and Troy Corwin and present possibly our geekiest moment ever. That moment also represents a chance for our readers to geek out with us, and in doing so possibly win passes to the upcoming Wizard World Texas!
As always, commentary is welcomed and encouraged. Let us know what you thought of the podcast, and if you have suggestions for future podcast topics, leave us a comment or write in to the show! Please drop us a line to give us some questions or comments for the next show.
So you’ve listened to the podcast (or maybe you haven’t yet) and you want to win some Wizard World Texas passes? Well, the details on the contest are included in the podcast, but the basics are that you have to pick a team and its tactics to solve a G.I. Joe mission created by our own Dave Farabee. Confused? Well, check out these examples, all using Micro Heroes (some from Ze Ballbreaker, a few from Troy Corwin, including a couple he custom designed… sadly, Corwin’s site seems to be down) and images of vehicle boxes from seminal G.I. Joe site yojoe.com.
Operation: Chill Out
Randy’s Mission Team
Dave’s Mission Team
Operation: Clean Sweep
Dave’s Mission Team
Nick’s Mission Team
Randy’s Mission Team
Operation: Jewelry Box
Dave’s Mission Team
Nick’s Mission Team
Randy’s Mission Team
And now, the contest. Feel free to create teams for any or all of the above missions, but if you want to enter the contest, you’ll need to complete the mission below. Enter the contest by putting your mission in text format into the comments, and make sure and include your name and email so we can email you if you win. If you use Micro Heroes and vehicle box pictures, you get two entries! You can send your images to pants.randy@gmail.com and we’ll get them posted. If you’d like to write up a mission team, but aren’t close enough to attend Wizard World, just put “Don’t Enter Me Into the Contest” before your write-up.
Operation: Storm Front
More information on Wizard World Texas, being presented in Arlington, Texas from November 16-18, can be found at their website. Since the show takes place in about two weeks, we’ll be ending the contest this Friday, November 9th in order to make sure we can get the passes mailed out in time.
Use the podcast feed buttons on the sidebar to subscribe, listen via the flash player below, or directly download the MP3 here:
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Most awesome. Contest. Ever.
06 Nov 2007 at 7:37 am
QuoteWill we get bonus points for not only completing the mission, but also sending a Joe to location where Little Billy is thinking of plugging his father’s car keys into an electrical outlet?
Because I’ve got that part covered - Snake Eyes viciously, yet silently, shakes some sense into Little Billy, leaving Little Billy shaking and whimpering, “Now I know. And knowing is half the battle!”
06 Nov 2007 at 12:17 pm
QuoteYou know, I think you guys really look at those old Hama Joe comics through some rose-tinted nostalgia glasses. Upon re-reading it’s really not that good.
Maybe the first 50 issues weren’t that bad, but I stuck with G.I.Joe all the way to the end of the series. Let me tell you, there were a lot of BAD comics written by Larry Hama in that run
Have any of you Hama fans read any of his other work (e.g., Batman)? Not good.
06 Nov 2007 at 11:21 pm
QuoteI won’t disagree with you. I’ve read those comics too, and I know a lot of the crazy love these guys have for them is nostalgia-based. I like them too, but I’m not blind to the fact that there were a bunch of stinkers. There were also a number or great issues, though, which seem to stick out in my memory more than the crappy ones, so the run as a whole is remembered more fondly than it probably should be.
07 Nov 2007 at 12:18 am
QuoteIt’s probably an unspoken truism that most of us are talking about the first 50 issues when we talk about the Joes. I spot-read issues up through maybe the 80s, and I think Nick’s the exception in that he read some of the post-100 stuff, but mostly we’re talking about the first 50 (and maybe the Special Missions stuff, about 25 issues I think).
And, yeah, there were some weaker bits, but I’ve re-read those issues in recent years and, honestly, I’m surprised at how well they hold up. I know I’m not wholly blinded by nostalgia. I’ve looked at plenty of books I dug as a kid and they fall down, but Hama’s Joe stuff, for a good five or six years (practically a lifetime in modern times), was pretty consistantly awesome. I always joke that it’s the ultimate “guy’s soap opera”, but it’s true for me. I’m genuinely impressed that Hama could create endearing character interplay amongst an ever-increasing cast of military commandos and their terrorist counterparts. I still think his action’s superb and imaginative. He did a great job juggling multiple plotlines. And there were many, many memorable high points (Snake-Eyes and Kwinn hustling the craps players, the honor-among-pilots salute between Ace and Wild Weasel, Duke and Roadblock gunning down the rattler, Destro marching his troops to near-death to save the Baroness, the Dreadnoks and their ridiculously cool fondness for grape soda and chocolate donuts, etc, etc.)
Is it a comic for the ages? Nah. But I’d honestly measure Hama’s first five years against any of the better superhero contemporaries of the era. Barring the highest peaks (Miller’s Elektra stuff, Simonson’s Beta Ray Bill saga in Thor, etc), I think G.I. Joe matches up quite nicely. After all, G.I. Joe really was a superhero comic.
Only bits and pieces. And I’d agree, a lot of it’s just mediocre or even kinda weak, so I don’t particularly consider myself a Hama fan. I’d say I’m a fan of Hama’s G.I. Joe.
07 Nov 2007 at 2:14 am
QuoteDan’s mistaken.
07 Nov 2007 at 2:15 am
QuoteWell, first of all, my statement was based on the premise that we were and always have been talking about the entire run. I didn’t know how much or how little you or Randy had read of it, we always just spoke of it as ‘Hama’s GI Joe’ or ‘the 80’s GI Joe’. It goes sharply downhill later. I honestly think someone who thinks the entire run is great is blinded by nostalgia.
Second of all, I shouldn’t make statements about what other people think for them. That’s my bad.
07 Nov 2007 at 8:56 am
QuoteI’ve said it many times before, but this is what got me started on comics. And while a *lot* of the run is bad, there are some extraordinarily good stories. Along with the ones Dave mentioned, the ’silent’ issue is incredible (natch). The issue where Cobra raids Snake-Eyes mountain cabin also stands out for me.
07 Nov 2007 at 10:47 am
QuoteI had a fondness for both the comic and the cartoon, but I think I liked the cartoon more. Despite the watered down violence and corny aspects, it seemed to me like the cartoon versions of the characters were more developed and the plots had more free reign as far as where they could go. While the original comic had plenty of good issues early on, a lot of time it suffered from “let’s introduce the new toys of the month” syndrome IMHO.
I tried the Devil’s Due stuff when it first came out, and I wasn’t really impressed at all. The writing and the art seemed very amateurish. I’m sure it has improved in the intervening years, but I have no desire to jump in and figure out the current continuity.
As far as weird favorite characters, I’d go with Shipwreck and the Baroness. Probably for the goofy cartoon versions more than the comic versions. BTW, I think the series that you guys were blanking on was called G.I. Joe: Frontline.
07 Nov 2007 at 5:36 pm
QuoteI have a soft spot for his Wolverine issues. I really can’t say if they were that good but that was around the time I started reading comics so it’s a bit of nostalgia for me.
I never read the comic. At the time I started reading, it was most likely past it’s prime, and I was too much of an X universe freak to really care about much else Marvel was publishing. I freaking loved the cartoon and the action figures though, and I still lament that now it doesn’t seem like children have any toys like that. I can honestly say that those action figures did more to foster my imagination and creativity than anything else at that time.
As far as dream-teams for the comic, I think I may be coming at it from the wrong angle. I am thinking more war comic than it probably is, but here goes.
Writers:
Jason Aaron - I know he can write a kick-ass Vertigo book and I guess we’ll see about his all ages stuff with Wolverine and Ghost Rider (although both seem like pretty tough mountains to climb), but I think he could add a nice blend of characterization, action and plot development to the book.
Dwayne Mcduffie - He can handle a large cast of characters a give each their time in the sun and his character development doesn’t impede the action or progression of a storyline.
Christopher Priest - Because he needs to be on a book, any book. And he does political intrigue about as well as anyone in comics.
Christos Gage - Right now, Gage seems to be the poor man’s Brubaker and I think he handles a larger cast of characters better than Brubaker (I know this is heresy to say, but with his Xmen run I think Brubaker tops out on the characters at about 3-4 - any more than that and they are just background pieces).
Artists:
Igor Kordy - I always like his work on Cable and Xtreme Xmen. He can handle team books and hit his deadlines and I can only imagine that when he’s not trying to do the art for 5 different books a month his artwork would just look that much better.
Lee Garbett - The artist from Highwaymen. This one almost seems too probable to be on the list, but I thought he had a very interesting style and could handle action sequences pretty well. Don’t really know how he is on the deadlines.
Nocola Scott - She’s a hell of an artist and can actually draw mutiple characters and they don’t all look alike. Plus, I would be very interesting to see the reaction to a woman pencilling a comic like this (GI Joe - synonymous with boys) and knocking it out of the park.
08 Nov 2007 at 12:11 am
QuoteLove hamma’s Wolverine read the trade with the “GI joe meets the first GI joe story and just COULD not make myself belive ANYBODY would follow Cobra Commader.
08 Nov 2007 at 2:37 pm
Quotejust being exposed to micro heroes through this podcast is really awesome. something about them, they’re just cool. and ze ball breaker is probably the best name in the world.
10 Nov 2007 at 3:12 pm
QuoteI was a fan of the Hama run of GI Joe. Someone much smarter than me once said that Stan Lee didn’t write the way people talked, he wrote the way they wished he talked. I kind of think the same way about Hama’s GI Joe. It wasn’t the real military, but it felt the way I real GI Joe organization would work.
You could tell after issue #50 or so that he started getting slammed with new toys to introduce in the book and that made it harder to write. And, as the toys started getting more and more away from the real military (Strike Force 2000 or whatever it was, Serpentor and so on) the harder it got to do decent scripts.
I know that it wasn’t a Great Comic Book, like Watchmen or New Frontier or anything like that. But GI Joe was good stories well-executed, and sometimes that mix can feel like a home run.
10 Nov 2007 at 10:40 pm
QuoteGotta say that even though I have very little exposure to the Joe comics (tried Reloaded cause of 4thRail recommendations), I enjoyed the podcast. Very fun. And the levelator worked admirably.
I sometimes I had that level of enthusiasm for something goofy like that. I mean, I was exposed to all them properties as a youth, but didn’t follow them very far. Coming back to it now, it would be much eaiser if I had a group of friends who I could share it with. But those fools are all married or gamers. Cry for me, the lone comic book geek in a circle of geeks.
Strange tangent.
Geekiest podcast? Perhaps.. when taking into account the amount of Joe coverage you’ve done over 43 podcasts.
My favorite Joe? With as little exposure as I had, I guess I’ll just say Snake Eyes.
I don’t have the knowledge to submit my own Joe strike force.
I’d love a Diggle/Jock Joe comic.
12 Nov 2007 at 1:03 pm
QuoteBest. Podcast. Ever.
I want to see Larry Hama back on the book. No one else will do, though a Diggle/Jock Special Missions or even a Phil Hester written/draw Special Missions would be pretty awesome. I’d also be down with Rucka or Brubaker. I really don’t like him AT ALL but I suspect Bendis wouldn’t be terrible for GI Joe either. Thankfully he’s way to big a “star” to ever deign to do the book. But watch out if Marvel actually does manage to get the license back!
12 Nov 2007 at 2:25 pm
Quote