Diving Back Into GI Joe...

[Memento Mortis]

Title says most of it. Thanks to a few prolific posters *cough* Ryan *cough* who are good at relating everything to GI Joe, I'm looking to get back into the franchise. Honestly, the only familiarity with the series are memories of the animated movie back from childhood.

Can anyone suggest a good starting point? I just grabbed a copy of the GI Joe trade paperback by Chuck Dixon from my local used bookstore. Any others I should look into?

[R.C, Jr]

Let me think...

I think the best thing that came out for GI Joe in the last few years was GI Joe: Resolute. It plays a lot on the characters as they were in the Sunbow cartoon but matured (Sunbow being everything from the MASS Device miniseries to the "I wassssss onccccccce a man!" animated movie. Not to be mistaken for the DiC series that came later and was of lower quality. If there is a Cobra named Metal-Head screaming BANG! or if Storm Shadow is a Joe, it's DiC). Resolute is well acted with great animation and a fast pace.

After that, I recommend GI Joe Renegades (you will find most GI Joe related media has been GI Joe R... Rise of Cobra, Resolute, Renegades, Retaliation. Can't explain it). Renegades is the GI A-Team, but the story telling is excellent, and the acting is phenomenal. Tunnel Rat in particular is very well written, legitimately funny.

For comics, I enjoy Larry Hama's 80s run on A Real American Hero, but it's not perfect. There's a lot of repetition, inconsistent characterization, and very much a product of the 80s. However, he has followed that up with IDW's GI Joe: A Real American Hero series, which delivers the most authentic rendition of the 80s version of the characters out there.

On the flipside, IDW's GI Joe: Cobra is a shockingly well written dark story of an undercover agent (Chuckles) investigating the existence of Cobra. Tomax and Xamot are the main villains of this series and they are written as distinct characters, with Xamot in particular well fleshed out.

Sadly, the only IDW comic I wouldn't recommend is the stuff written by Chuck Dixon. I love Chuck Dixon's work on Batman, particularly Robin and Nightwing, but I can't read what he does with GI Joe. His stories are try to blend military realism with cartoon antics and it does not work. I hate how he writes Hawk as a manipulative puppet master. His plots drag and then suddenly rocket to resolutions, and just overall I don't recommend his stuff. Which is unfortunate, because he writes the main title and lead the massive crossover. I actually dropped all of my IDW pulls during the crossover specifically so I didn't have to read Chuck Dixon GI Joe.

Hope that helps! If you are looking for a good GI Joe news blog, there's none better than General's Joes. The webmaster, Justin Bell, is also one of the hosts of What's On Joe Mind, the best (and only) GI Joe news chat podcast.
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[Memento Mortis]

Thanks, Ryan!

Conveniently, GI Joe: Renegades is now on Netflix.

[C-Face]

Hey Ryan, I have some bad news for you.
GI Joe: Retaliation being held back
I do know you were looking forward to it.
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Ex. 31.3 "and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skill"

[R.C, Jr]

Oh that's all anyone in the GI Joe fandom has been able to talk about for the last 24 hours. I'm trying to stay positive.

The bigger issue is the toys at the moment. Last year Wal-Mart wouldn't even carry GI Joe and overall sales weren't great. They rushed to ship out the Retaliation tie-in toys, and the first wave figures are not movie accurate and in generic packaging. Now warehouses are stocked full of these subpar toys with no media tie-in to excite consumers and no time to make new, movie accurate figures for March.
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[Denim N Leather]

Pushing back the movie for 3D instead of doing a limited re-release is STUPID and is going to KILL this movie, in my opinion.
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3.5 Private Sanctuary's official fashionista. =P
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"I like to bring a loaded gun to the table. Then, if one of the PCs fall to neg HP, I shoot him."

[Matt]

They did the same for the clash of the titans when it came out. Now, granted, that movie was shitty but it still made decent coin. So, if they did it because it was bad, its a smart move to make extra cash. But, if the movie is good anyway, then having it come out later shouldn't effect things. The issue I have is putting it out in march when it had no competition during its opening weekend at the end of June. Hasbros name has taken a hit since battleship and they need to make up some ground with this one but march movies don't always do well. What's going against it for June was Brave the week before and spiderman the week after. But it could easily have made some decent money in that one weekend and then done just fine the week after. But they need to maximize what they can get from this and it can't make less than the first or they'd be in trouble with two bombs in one summer.

[R.C, Jr]

Clash was only moved a week, though. A situation like Retaliation has happened very few times.
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[Matt]