35 years ago today, this issue hit spinner racks. It quickly became a touchstone in my GI Joe collecting, and was one of the first issues that sold me on a ton of toys all at once. The issue featured the first full exposure to Zartan and his Dreadnoks, as well as Firefly and Wild Weasel. On the Joe side,
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Star Brigade! GI Joe and space travel have a long history, and even though the 90s flirtation with the final frontier was more based in sci-fi than fact, I appreciate the branching out of Joe into new themes. Unfortunately the end of the era came much too quickly, and the team was back solidly on Earth for its 2002 reboot.
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Part Sgt. Rock, part Challengers of the Unknown, Charlton Comics’ Fightin’ 5 debuted the same year as our favorite Movable Fighting Man, and presaged the kind of unique unit that would later grace toy aisles as Real American Heroes. Festooned in brightly colored uniforms and made up of operatives of various backgrounds including American, French-American, Israeli and even a professional
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This issue dates back to 2013, well before the current action figure covers became a big deal in the variant cover game. While not photo real like the toy package covers of John Tyler Christopher, the cover is no less interesting and is certainly unique. What’s going on in the issue? I have no idea.
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I have no idea what this book is about, but if I’m judging a book by its cover, I think I need to find out. How can it not be amazing if Cobra encounters a Yeti? Maybe one of our UK readers can shed light on it. I know the Ladybird licensed offerings like Masters of the Universe were storybook
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Cobra gets the spotlight in the third issue of the Order of Battle mini-series. If you haven’t heard of it, the comic ran four issues, and was set up in much the same style as the 1980s Handbook of the Marvel Universe. Since Joe had readymade filecard info, this was I’m sure a no-brainer for the House of Ideas. I
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It’s not another April Fool’s Day prank, but a real incentive variant cover for the IDW/Dynamite crossover you didn’t know you needed. Now, in all honesty I would have preferred a mid-70s Adventure Team or Super Joe for this concept, but ARAH is the most well-known, so I understand the choice. But man, could you imagine Steve Austin going up
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Before the days of the Local Comic Shop, my purchases were irregular in terms of titles as well as individual issues. As a kid with limited funds, I was picking up whatever looked interesting on the cover. Being a Marvel Zombie, I was mostly into Spider-Man, the Avengers and X-Men. Of course, GI Joe made the cut as well, and
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Ready for an understatement? The Sigma 6 cartoon series is not well regarded. Part of the 4KidsTV block, it was a good-looking show, but weak plots and mediocre voice acting killed any excitement I might have had for it. That’s right, I actually looked forward to the show. I realize it wasn’t aimed at my generation (or age for that
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The Order of Battle series’ most famous addition to GI Joe lore is perhaps the short-lived addition of Rocky Balboa to the team. The very next issue retracted the character, as alas Rocky was not available to become part of the toy line. But hey, at least we got The Fridge! The back cover of the wraparound art by Herb
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