G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #27

cover date: September 1984

     I was already big-time into the modern G.I. Joe toys when I finally discovered the Marvel comicbook. While I am told that I had one of the large G.I. Joe “dolls” when I was young, I don’t remember it. For me, the Joe team meant characters like Hawk, Breaker, Grunt, and—of course—Snake-Eyes. It didn’t take Snake-Eyes long to become a fan favorite as a toy and a comicbook character. Oddly, I don’t remember Snake-Eyes playing that big a role in the TV cartoon series. I guess the producers couldn’t imagine eleven year olds being interested in a character who couldn’t speak.

     I’m going to take a moment to issue an apology. There are an awful lot of characters, both Joes and Cobras, mentioned in this article. I’m going to presume (at the risk of making a “pres” out of “u” and “me”) that you know who they are. My apology is to those who don’t know.

     Snake-Eyes was cool in many ways. His official position on the Joe team was as “commando.” While he was trained as such by the Army and served in Vietnam, his role on the G.I. Joe team was as ninja-in-residence. Need something dirty & hard done quickly & cleanly? Assign it to Snake-Eyes. Snake-Eyes was the most secretive of the Joes. His real name, although known to a few of his teammates, was classified and he certainly wasn’t going to tell them. As a mute, he wasn’t telling anybody anything.

     As the issue begins, four Cobras are in quicksand. Cobra Commander, Destro, the Baroness, and Zartan were led there by Junkyard. They thought the black dog was leading them to the Joes but the crafty canine had no intention of betraying his master, Mutt. The shots they are firing at the fleeing dog are heard by Mutt, Torpedo, and Tripwire. The three Joes are running though the Everglades. Further up the trail they are on, Wild Weasel and Firefly are setting a trap for the fleeing heroes.

     A calmer head prevails in the quicksand trap. Rather than waste ammo firing at a dog who has already fled, Destro uses one of his wrist-rockets to fell a tree. The four Cobras use the now horizontal tree to escape the quicksand. Junkyard makes it to the Joes--and runs right by them. “Twang!” The trap set by Firefly and Wild Weasel is sprung. Must be time for a scene change.

     The story shifts to The Pit, headquarters of the Joe team. Scarlet, Stalker, and Hawk (all of whom know Snake-Eyes’ secret identity) are piecing together his history. Their discussion goes to the formation of the G.I. Joe team. It was six years after Snake-Eyes returned from Vietnam and the loss of his family. Although no longer in the service, Stalker had convinced Hawk that they needed Snake-Eyes on the team. He wasn’t an easy man to find. The discovered that he’d spent three years in Japan. Finally, they found where his disability checks were being delivered. The locals there didn’t know much about him but were able to direct Hawk and Stalker to Snake-Eyes’ cabin. He snuck up behind them carrying dinner—two rabbits that he'd caught bare-handed. Hawk & Stalker convinced Snake-Eyes to return with them to civilization.

     This brings Scarlet into the story. Her first time meeting him was during a close-combat refresher course she was teaching. While she fought him, it became obvious to her that he was letting her win but had the skills of a high-ranking black belt. They soon became friends but he still didn’t reveal much about himself. He had studied martial arts in Japan. He was also “…a small-town boy who missed his home and was very, very lonely.” 

     He did open up to her about something very important to him. During both his tours of duty in ‘Nam, he carried a photograph of his twin sister. He believed that as long as the photo was safe, they would be safe. The photo was damaged, though, and his sister & parents died on their way to pick him up from his return flight to the States.

     Several months later, on one of the team’s earliest missions, Snake-Eyes, Scarlet, and a couple more Joes were on a chopper in the desert. The two Hueys in the air were on a rescue mission when the engines of the lead helicopter went out. Rock ‘n Roll and Grunt were able to bail out before their helicopter went into a spin but one of the doors slammed closed on Scarlet’s gear and trapped her. Rather than bailing out of the other door, Snake-Eyes worked on rescuing her. That’s when the other helicopter hit them. As Scarlet put it: “The aviation gas lit up immediately and a plume of burning vapor punched right through that plexiglass door window and hit Snake-Eyes square in the face like a boxcar of Roman candles.” When Snake-Eyes carried an unconscious Scarlet from the wreck, his face was ruined and his voice gone. After six months of physical therapy and plastic surgery, he still had no voice and his face was still a wreck. With no other place to go, he stayed with the team.

     Remember where the issue started? Florida? Wild Weasel and Firefly are eager to see who they killed with their trap. Nobody. Junkyard the dog tripped the trap but was too low to the ground for the trap to even touch him. The disappointed Cobras are ambushed by the three Joes following Junkyard. The two Cobras and three Joes are then fired upon by the other four Cobras in the swamp. This is, of course, a great time to change scenes--and it does.

     In New York City, Snake-Eyes is visiting the proprietor of a Cuban-Chinese restaurant. This old, overweight man is the Soft Master, one of the ninjas that Snake-Eyes trained with in Japan. His current cover is so he can track down Storm Shadow, the apparent killer of the Hard Master. With his dying breath, the Hard Master—the Soft Master’s brother—had denied that Storm Shadow was the killer. All other evidence points towards Storm Shadow, though. The Soft Master is also sure that Storm Shadow is standing outside behind him. He ducks and Snake-Eyes sprays the window with bullets from his machine gun.

     While Snake-Eyes reloads, Storm Shadow bursts through the window and grabs the arrow that killed the Hard Master. He jumps behind the counter and escapes down into the cellar. The police soon arrive but Snake-Eyes has already followed Storm Shadow out the cellar. Snake-Eyes attacks Storm Shadow with a flying tackle through a fruit stand and into the path of a street-sweeper. (At this point, the Pit receive the police report about the fight between the two.) Snake-Eyes’ gun is trapped by the street-sweeper. He continues his pursuit up onto an elevated train platform. Storm Shadow takes to the tracks to board a moving train.

     In the sky above, the Dragonfly is carrying the VAMP (the Joe team’s specialized Jeep). Wild Bill & Scarlet are in the Dragonfly. Hawk, Stalker, and Clutch are in the VAMP. The VAMP is soon bogged down in traffic. 

     The battle between the two ninjas takes place on top of the moving commuter train. Storm Shadow now knows that his opponent is his friend from Vietnam and the man he fought at Destro’s castle (in the classic G.I. Joe #21, “Silent Interlude”). Strangely, Storm Shadow doesn’t want to kill Snake-Eyes. Despite everything, he still cares for his friend. The sound of the Dragonfly helicopter overhead reminds them of Vietnam, when Storm Shadows saved his friend’s life and got him to an evac chopper. 

      What Storm Shadow doesn’t realize is that they are quickly approaching a tunnel with no clearance. Snake-Eyes tosses his own knife away and Storm Shadow misinterprets this as an invitation to attack. They fall between cars just in time to avoid being killed by the tunnel entrance. At first furious, Storm Shadow soon realizes that Snake-Eyes just saved his life and throws his own knife away.

     Storm Shadow tells Snake-Eyes that the arrow that killed his uncle, the Hard Master, was his but that he didn’t fire the shot. The Hard Master was killed by a masked assassin who escaped using a Cobra FANG helicopter. Storm Shadow has spent all the intervening time working his way up the Cobra hierarchy so that he may one day learn who killed his uncle.

     Scarlet and Wild Bill are waiting, guns drawn, when the train pulls into the next station. They find Snake-Eyes—just Snake-Eyes—waiting for them. Even if he could speak, he wouldn’t tell them where Storm Shadow went.

     In the final panel, the three Joes in the Everglades have escaped the five Cobras. Zartan declares that it is time to call in the Drednoks.

     Snake-Eyes would continue to be one of the most intriguing characters for years. More of his origin and his face were revealed many years later. I actually own a page of the original art from one of those regular issues (page 13 of issue 96, purchased from series inker and Portland resident Randy Emberlin). 

     I was hooked from the cover. Already a fan of the toys, it didn’t take much to addict me to the comic. Unlike the cartoon, the comicbook stories didn’t “talk down” to its readers. It didn’t hurt that the plots and characterizations were good. Darn good.

     One thing in particular that I want to praise the art team of Springer and Mushynsky for is including people in panels who aren't important to the story. Where there should be other people--background characters--there are. A lot of artists back then and even now didn't do that.

      This was particular comic was important to me in another way. While Star Wars was the first comicbook I ever collected, G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero was the title that led me into becoming a full-blown comicbook collector. G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero led me to Transformers which led me to the X-titles and Captain America. I stopped counting how many comics I own after passing 100,000 and that was a long time ago.