Captivating Cover: Keeping the Peace

It’s another cover focused entry today. This time, we’ve got a coloring/activity book from 2003. The relaunch era provided some of the most extensive ancillary product since the heyday of the 1980s, and the first couple of years really seem to be a feeling out period for just what this new GI Joe would become. Scholastic published a series of these books, which also included bonus items like stickers and temporary tattoos.

Heavy Duty and Scarlett appear to be the ones keeping the peace, as they’re moving in on a Cobra HISS IV tank on the streets of Anywhere, USA. You’ll also notice that they are doing so without the benefit of weapons of any kind. I guess the Joe team was involved in PC peackeeping at the time.

The art style is odd and exaggerated, much like the GI Joe action figures of the day. You just don’t encounter too many coloring book covers composed from a worm’s eye view perspective. Maybe it’s meant to make the HISS appear more menacing, or maybe the artist really had a thing about drawing the sole of Scarlett’s left boot. Heavy Duty appears to be a little concerned about us watching him. He might also be hailing a cab that’s approaching from behind camera.