GI Joe, as most know, began as a 12'' posable action figure (it was for the GI Joe line of toys that the term "action figure" was coined, conventional wisdom being that boys would not play with dolls) made by Hasbro in 1964, with different models made to represent the four branches of the US armed forces. In 1982 Hasbro sought to rebrand the franchise, using smaller figurines that utilized the Microman technology they had bought from Japanese toymaker Takara, and so contracted with the Griffen-Bacall advertising agency to concoct a marketing strategy. Prior to this, comics pro Larry Hama had pitched an idea to the editors at Marvel Comics called "Fury Force," in which the son of Nick Fury (of Howling Commandos and S.H.E.I.L.D. fame,) leads a team of military specialists against the Neo-Nazi depradations of Hydra. Marvel passed on the idea, but when Griffen-Bacall enlisted Marvel to partner with them on the development of GI Joe, Hama, a Vietnam combat veteren and expert in all things military, was tapped to create characters and scenarios and thus did Fury Force become GI Joe; all of the characters in the first wave of GI Joe toys were to have been members of Fury Force, with Fury Jr. replaced by Hawk as leader of the team (I would personally have loved to've seen Dum Dum Dugan as a GI Joe). Hama himself wrote the character file cards included with each figure (and would continue to do so for the next decade) as well as nearly every issue of Marvel's 155-issue GI Joe comic (to which I had a subscription!). Let me say that it was an excellent comic, a natural decendent of the great war comics of the 50's and 60's, and issue 21, "Silent Interlude," in which Snake-Eyes rescues Scarlet from a Cobra stronghold, is considered by many to be a modern classic in that it is completely silent, with no dialogue or sound effects, demonstrating the comic book's power as a visual story-telling device (it also introduced Storm-Shadow and gave us the first hints about the mysterious Snake-Eyes past, which was just too cool!).
To advertise the GI Joe toys (and the comic as well, the first time I'd ever seen a comic book advertised on TV), Griffen-Bacall had their in-house animation studio Sunbow partner with Marvel Productions (formerly De Patie-Freleng, who, aside from creating the Pink Panther, had animated a number of Marvel properties already, like the Fantastic Four) to create a number of fully animated commercials (with character designs by the likes of Gerry Chiniquy, a veteren Warner Bros. animator, and the great Russ Heath, a legendary cartoonist known for war and western comics--and whose work was extensively ripped off by pop-artist Roy Lichtenstein). These commercials proved so popular that Hasbro decided to produce an animated GI Joe mini-series, and so GI Joe: A Real American Hero (also known as GI Joe: The Mass Device) was born, in 1983. It was followed by GI Joe: The Revenge of Cobra in 1984, and GI Joe: the Pyramid of Darkness in 1985, which led directly into the reguar series.
Animation was provided by Marvel/Sunbow, and the mini-series was written, as were all the GI Joe mini series and the series bible (based on Larry Hama's notes), by veteren tv writer Ron Friedman (whose credits stretch back to Gilligan's Island and Get Smart, and who would also write both the GI Joe and Transformers animated movies). Friedman has stated he handled the large cast involved in GI Joe by thinking of both the Joes and the Cobras as large families and the individuals as various family archetypes; each side would have a "Big Daddy" and "Mother" figure (Duke and Scarlett, or later Flint and Lady Jaye --Friedman said he treated both pairs of characters as interchangeable--for the Joes, and Destro and the Baroness for the Cobras), a "Weird Uncle" (Shipwreck for the Joes, Dr.Mindbender for the Cobras) and various sibling-style relationships (he characterized Cobra Commander as "the Spoiled Brat") among the other characters. There are, as one might expect, numerous differences between the comic and cartoon iterations. For example, in the cartoon Duke is present from the beginning and is shown clearly to be the Joes' field commander, whereas in the comic Duke did not appear until issue 22; Larry Hama has stated that he had always considered Stalker to be the Joes' "first shirt," the non-comm under the officer Hawk (whose original design Duke bears quite a resemblance to, much to many fans' confusion) but for its own reasons, Hasbro wanted Duke to serve as the Joes first seargent, so he bowed to their wishes. Shipwreck plays a much larger role in the cartoon than he does in the comics, while the fan-favorite Snake-Eyes, while he does have some excellent moments (particularly in The Mass Device) and is usually present in group shots or group actions, has a much diminished role, likely due to the writers' uncertainty in handling a mute character. Cobra Commander is himself played much more for humor in the cartoon, with his ego, his temper and his posturing, whereas in the comic he is much more competant and dangerous.
Cobra is itself probably one of the best concieved villianous organizations in comics OR cartoons. For a series aimed at grade-school children, they're a very realistically portrayed terrorist organization; in the comics, they had their own island which was a sovereign nation recognized by the UN and had clandestinely taken over several American towns (of which Springfield is perhaps the best known; it appeared in "There's No Place Like Springfield," a two-part episode of the cartoon that I'll discuss below). They had numerous corporate fronts, a belief system and group philosophy, and even ambassadors; in the comic, they were most analagous to Nazi Germany, while the cartoon portrayed them more as a slightly more-sophisticated-than-average super-villianous organization. Interestingly, Cobra was entirely Larry Hama's idea; Hasbro had made no provision for providing the Joes with an enemy (which seems silly from both narrative an marketing standpoints). He did an excellent job concocting a dangerous and believeable foe.
The cartoon was itself occasionally corny but also frequently dramatic. In The Mass Device, te first mini-series, there's a sequence where a captured Duke and Snake-Eyes are made to fight each other for Cobra Commander's amusement. Later, we're treated to Snake-Eyes wandering alone in the arctic, doing his damnedest to protect a radioactive component necessary to the titular device, the very image of stoic perseverence. The series took the time to develop emotional beats as well, things you usually didn't see in kids' adventure cartoons. In "World's Without End" a small team of Joes is transported to an alternate reality where Cobra has conquered the world. One of the Joes, Steeler, is bitten by a genetically engineered insect that makes him sick and delirious; his fevered reactions to this alternate world in which he and all his comrade have been defeated and killed is intense and genuinely heart-breaking (at least it was to me, when I was 10). In "There's No Place Like Springfield," Shipwreck and Lady Jaye are sent to an island to retrieve Professor Mulaney, a scientist who has developed a formula to turn water into a bomb. When they find him, he implants the formula in Shipwreck's brain, which can only be accessed with a codeword he gives to Lady Jaye. Shipwreck is knocked unconscious while tryinh to escape a Cobra assault on the island and wakes up six years later with a wife and daughter in Springfield, a town to which all the Joes retired after their final defeat of Cobra. This episode was my second experience with the "36 Hours" plotline, wherein a character with important information is placed in a controlled "safe" reality where his information is irrelevant in the hopes he will remember and reveal all he knows (my first, which I actually didn't remember until I saw this episode, was from an episode of Battle of the Planets). Shipwreck's anguish and anger when he discovers that Springfield is just a lie are quite effecting, and adds a tragic edge to his otherwise fairly goofy character.
GI Joe: A Real American Hero ran for 98 episodes in first run syndication, from 1985-87. It was capped off by GI Joe: The Movie (in which Duke, in the original script, was supposed to die; as it stands, he got better) in 1987. In 1989, DIC Entertainment produced a 44 episode series that utilized the characters and scenarios from the original series, but lacked much of the "magic." Other series include GI Joe: Extreme in 1996 from Gunther-Wahl productions (no connection to the original; I never saw this one, so I can't comment), and the anime-styled GI Joe: Sigma 6 (which utilized many of the central characters -- Duke, Snake-Eyes, Scarlet-but otherwise didn't have much to do with the original; still, not bad overall) in 2005. In 2009, to tie in with the live-action film GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Warner Bros. Animation produced GI Joe: Resolute as an 11-part animated web series (broadcast in it's entirety on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim in April of 2009). It was written by comics scribe Warren Ellis and directed by Joaquin (Avatar: The Last Airbender) Dos Santos. This is as close to an update of the original series as anyone is likely to get, and it is quite good; it's a great deal of fun hearing a barking mad Cobra Commander cussing out his subordinates. Currently a new series, GI Joe: Renegades, which has been described as "GI Joe meets the A-Team," airs on The Hub network.
Next time: Thundercats!
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