G.I. Joe: Special Missions #2 - Video Review by 80s Comics

Is everyone ready for some more G.I. Joe’s Special Missions issue number two. Before I talk about the inside of this comic book, let’s take a moment to admire the outside. That’s one of the best covers in the entire series. You gotta love that. Roadblock looks insane. That’s Breaker. Looks pretty badass. And I forget that guy’s name. What did he do? It’s Recondo.

Back to my previous question, what did Recondo do? I’m a little rusty on some of the characters. We all know the staples like Roadblock and Breaker, Scarlett, Snake Eyes and Duke. Beachhead’s pretty awesome. Everyone loves Dusty Shepard, but I’m going to have to get back into the series from the beginning to learn a little bit more about Recondo, though he does play a prominent part in the end of this. Packs of fun for everyone.

Words of Honor from December 1986. It’s generally a mistake to confuse G.I. Joe the cartoon show with G.I. Joe the comic books. The cartoons were goofy, silly, good fun, a great 80s cartoon, and a glorified commercial, although Galaxy Rangers was much better. The comic books, on the other hand, are awesome. The cartoons were good. The comics are great and often covered some mature subject matters like this one. We’ve got a Nazi bomber emerging from a glacier and this thing is filled with nerve gas. Of course, Cobra wants this stuff, and G.I. Joe is going to try to stop them by striking a deal with a Nazi living in Brazil.

So half the Joe team goes to Brazil to deal with this Nazi, and the other half flies out to a glacier on the Joe Tomahawk. Love that thing. You could pack so many Joes into there. And then you could land it on top of Cobra soldiers. You could also turn it upside down and cut them up with the blades. It’s like a secret special move that the Joes had. Most people didn’t know about this. Maybe only I did. The only one that had the Tomahawk flip upside down. Run away you stupid Cobras.

All right, back to the storyline. So either half of the Joe team, Alpine and Airtight I think, rappelled down the side of the glacier. Airtight’s job. See, he’s the one I forget. I had him. I thought they always had the same outfits. Like they never change outfits. So Alpine and Airtight rappel down the side of the glacier to board the bomber, and of course who shows up. Cobra. Because they’re a bunch of assholes like that. There’s Firefly. Firefly is great because the other ones all seem to have this demented vibe like we’re just evil because we’re evil, whereas Firefly seemed to have a purpose. He was a businessman. He was a mercenary.

Skip past the Brazil stuff and go back to the glacier stuff. It’s really cool. We’ve got Breaker basically tossing grenades at a HISS tank. Everybody loves HISS tanks. If you ever had a HISS tank as a kid, you know they were totally top heavy. So front heavy. You’re trying to crush things and then the thing just goes. They’re the most stupid design ever, but they look cool in the cartoons.

This is pretty serious here because the HISS tank driver grabs onto the side of the glacier. Got some stupid ads. More of the Nazi stuff. And here’s Airtight doing his stuff with the nerve gas. Millions of people could die if the Joes don’t do their job. But check this out. This one lone Cobra soldier hanging on the side of the cliff knows he’s going to die. He loses his grip and on his way out he’s just trying to take out as many people as possible. In the cartoon they would have ejected and everybody would have been fine. In the comic book they die while shooting at nerve gas. That’s why the comic books are awesome.

Anyway, here we’ve got Roadblock blowing the shit out of Nazis. You’ve got the Joes battling Firefly on the glacier. And while I don’t think this is one of the silliest, most entertaining reads in the series, it shows that G.I. Joe, at least the writers Larry Hama and the rest of the team, could put together a competent, serious adventure.

Where if the Joes didn’t do their job, serious consequences would have occurred. It’s hard sometimes to think about G.I. Joe in a serious way, but I like this book. And the cover’s great. G.I. Joe Special Missions issue number two. If you think the Joes are all just fun and games, you would be mistaken. Sometimes they actually do fight for freedom over land and air and on the glacier. Snowjob’s in this too.

Snowjob. Like, what was going through his head when they were handing out the rest of the code names? Roadblock, Rock and Roll, Stalker, Snake Eyes. Snowjob. Don’t accidentally misspell that one. I mean really, come on, if they’re going to go that route, go all the way. Mom, Dad, I want, nevermind, sorry. Am I the only one that thought that? Surely I’m not.