Daily Comic Book Mission #049: G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #9

Welcome back to your daily comic book mission from ComicBook.Beer, where your required, suggested, mandatory reading for today is G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero issue number nine from March of 1983. A super fun issue titled The Diplomat that plays out more like a James Bond movie than a G.I. Joe adventure. It’s tons of fun.

This is back from the era when these comic books were really dense and packed with smaller, tighter panels and a lot of dialogue. It’s impressive how much ground they cover in this one issue. It totally feels like one of the bigger Bond films, where Bond is in five or six different countries fighting a variety of enemies. And there’s even a James Bond kind of bad guy in here. It’s Cobra Commander, but I’ll tell you about that in a moment.

It starts off like a Bond film where Stalker is kicking down the door and they shoot up this secret Cobra base, and then Breaker steals a hard drive before the building blows up. Cobra Commander’s on screen talking about how they’re going to kidnap this State Department agent named Hassle. They have a data tape from 1983 with all of Cobra’s plans on it. Of course they do.

Then we cut to the French Riviera where Scarlett is in a bikini and Clutch is relaxing in the sand while they’re supposed to be on guard duty. Cobra attacks from the ocean and Clutch pulls a machine gun out of a sandcastle and starts blasting Cobra troops, probably terrifying every tourist within a mile. They save the agent again in a hotel room while Stalker and Snake Eyes pursue a lead.

They end up in London where they’re interrogating this guy who turns out to be a Cobra goon, and he’s electrocuted by Cobra Commander after they leave. Then Clutch and Scarlett are fleeing from a car that’s shooting at them. They end up at an airport and of course the airplane pilot is a Cobra operative. He pulls a gun on Scarlett, she hits him in the face, and the plane is about to crash. Thankfully Clutch can fly airplanes as well as he drives jeeps, so he barely lands the thing.

There’s a great scene where Stalker ends up in a hotel looking for the next lead in his mission, and it turns out to be a hologram of Cobra Commander taunting him. He tries to gas Stalker, but Snake Eyes saves him. Then it’s back to the sports car chase scene where they’re fighting a helicopter and the car flies into the river.

One thing leads to another and Scarlett ends up grabbing onto the helicopter, climbing on board, and punching a Cobra soldier while she’s being tossed around. The cover of this issue depicts Scarlett punching a Cobra soldier out of the helicopter, and that’s exactly what happens. She throws the Cobra guy out and there’s even a ski chase scene at the end. Scarlett goes crashing through a window on her skis.

This is a fun issue. It plays out like a movie and I appreciate that. And I assume you do too or else you wouldn’t be listening to the Daily Comic Book Mission. Clearly you have good taste. The creative team on this one is Stephen Grant, not Larry Hama, so it does have a different feel than Hama’s writing. The pacing is way different. Mike Vosburg does the pencils with Chick Stone doing the inks. Maybe not my favorite Herb Trimpe era, but still pretty good.

And that’s why this is your daily comic book mission. And now you know, and knowing is half the battle. You can find the original copy of this for a couple bucks as a Marvel Classic Comics floppy, and it’s also been reprinted in numerous collections over the years of the first several G.I. Joe issues. So you shouldn’t have too much trouble locating a copy of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero issue number nine.

Are we sure that Clutch and James Bond aren’t the same person I’ve never seen them in the same room together. See you tomorrow on another Daily Comic Book Mission from ComicBook.Beer.