Anybody growing up in the 1980′s will recognize the title of this article as one of Hasbro’s most popular toy lines. A slew of action figures and vehicles filled the closets and rooms of countless kids in those days. For most of us, these toys represent a nostalgic period of pure imagination and a culture of consumerism custom built for a 10 year old. However, looking back on the G.I. Joe phenomenon, I’ve come to realize that it represents one of the most cunning and brilliant franchises to ever grace the market.

It all started with one man who goes by the name of Larry Hama. Granted, the original idea for G.I.Joe had been around since the 60′s, but it was Larry Hama who turned it from a new version of the classic Army Man into a special forces extravaganza filled with eccentric bad guys and colorful heroes. For years, Hama’s G.I.Joe comic book series not only created a whole universe of fantastic stories and outrageous characters but designed his creations right from the start to go from comic page to toy shelves. Hence the genius of the Hasbro/Marvel alliance that forged the G.I.Joe name into a money making force. Not only could you read the comic on a monthly basis but you could bet that your favorite new vehicle, headquarters or character was waiting at the local retail store, ready for you to re-enact the stories at home. I have loads of memories, as do many of you I’m sure, of getting that new figure and being amazed at how close it resembled what I saw in the comic.

Sadly, like the fate of so many of it’s 80′s brethren, the kids grew up and the toys stopped flowing off the shelves in great numbers. The comic audience shrank and despite their best efforts to keep readers with shocking stories, G.I.Joe-A Real American Hero finished it’s run with issue 155 in 1994. There have been a few attempts over the years to resurrect the G.I.Joe line, most notably in 2001 when Devil’s Due Publishing rebooted the series. With IDW’s acquisition of the G.I.Joe comic property in 2009, the Joe’s were once again rebooted with a new comic series simply titled G.I.Joe. While being a fantastic book in it’s own right, I’ve always felt that something was missing. Some magic was lost from this world that I always attributed to not being 10 anymore. However, after perusing my extensive collection of 80′s classic G.I.Joe comics, I still felt that special connection to those characters and world. Larry Hama, the father of modern G.I.Joe was the heart and soul of the comic and without him, the series just wasn’t the G.I.Joe I remembered. You can imagine my surprise and glee when it was revealed earlier this year that Larry Hama would be returning to the G.I.Joe franchise.

Better yet, he’s picking up right where he left off over fifteen years ago.
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Captain America #607

What looks to be one of my favorite Captain America story arcs continues this week with the evil Baron Zemo targeting Bucky/Cap. Last issue we saw Cap dealing with the aftermath of the Steve Rodgers resurrection and Zemo’s new interest in him. This issue continues that plot with the mechanics of Zemo’s plan swinging into action. It’s a pretty action oriented book this month and not a whole lot of plot development. But what we do get to see is one of my favorite old school Cap resurrections, the awesome Iron Hand Hauptmann, fight Captain America in a hospital. As Brubaker does so well, he once again makes this fight ring with the old while being completely modern at the same time. Seeing Iron Hand swinging into action again is one thing, having him battle Cap in a hospital makes it feel old school Marvel. I’m not sure why that is but it just seems like a plot line stolen out of the brain of Stan Lee in the 60’s.

The whole issue reveals that Zemo is planning something big and is intent on digging up as much as he can on Bucky and his days as the Winter Soldier. As I said last week, only good things can come from Brubaker writing Zemo and so far these have been some of the most solid and exciting Captain America issues we’ve had in some time. With the way this book has been going over the last five years, that’s saying something. If you’re not reading this series, you’re being foolish. Go get it.
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In the opening song on Neil Young’s Greendale album, a tune called “Falling from Above”, Grandpa says to Cousin Jed, “Seems like that guy singin’ this song ‘been doin’ it a long time. Is there anything he knows that he ain’t said?”

Indeed, Neil Young’s been doing his thing for around forty-five years now, and in a world of disposable pop stars, that sort of career is almost unheard of. What keeps Neil Young vital and, more importantly, what keeps him relevant is something that I think we could all learn from. The guy does what he wants to do how he wants to do it, not giving a good God damn about what anybody else thinks. And, okay, it helps that he’s damn good at just about every thing he does. But rather than following a trend or trying to earn the maximum payout, Neil Young just keeps doing his thing (sponsored by no one), going where his mind takes him. And people keep following along.

I bought the Greendale album the day it was released in 2003, not knowing exactly what to expect. I had read that it was a “concept” album, which gave me flashbacks to Trans, the oddity in his catalog that involved using a vocoder on his vocals so his son, who has cerebral palsy, could hear him better. But no, Greendale, as it turned out, was an album telling a story of a multigenerational family called the Greens, who lived in the small town of Greendale, CA. At the center of the story is the young daughter Sun Green and her cousin, Jed Green, two kids who are around the same age and whose lives are going in very different directions. Grandpa figures prominently, as does the side story of Officer Carmichael. While there’s a fairly clear narrative present in the music alone, the accompanying DVD and booklet (complete with notes from Young himself), really flesh out the goings on.

But Greendale isn’t just a simple tale of an American family whose lives are overturned. The story is also infused with what more cynical folks might refer to as “idealistic, hippy, tree-hugging propaganda”; a sentiment that I do not share, but can easily see. And remember, the album was made at the outset of the Iraq war (of which we’re celebrating the seventh anniversary. Go America!), so there’s a strong anti-War message in there as well. But really, would you expect anything else from the guy who wrote Ohio? So if you have strong feelings on the “other” side of the issues, you may want to pick up this album instead.

Okay, so now you’re up to speed and you know what the album’s all about. What about the graphic novel? As you’d guess, this book includes all sorts of details and fills in the story much more than did the album, which is a scary proposition is you’re a big fan of Young’s original work. Fortunately, he collaborated with the folks at Vertigo/DC, giving his approval and insights along the way. And thanks to the medium, you’re able to more clearly discover out what drove Jed to his pivotal moment and the learn the mystery behind Sun’s “gift”. In addition, you get the complete Green family tree and the history of nearly all the family members. Cliff Chiang (the guy behind Human Target, Green Arrow & Black Canary, and various Batman titles) draws the world of Greendale wonderfully (and almost exactly as I pictured it), and Joshua Dysart takes Young’s story and fills in the blanks in a tasteful way, including many lines straight out of the album.

Young already turned Greendale in to a feature film, and Hilden and I saw the live Greendale show when Young brought it to town. But, to me, this book is almost an essential companion piece to the album and is definitely worth owning. Again, the artwork is beautiful, the storytelling is mysterious, and the book itself is a nicely-crafted hardcover, which sells for $19.99, though Amazon’s got it for around $14.

It’s been a good couple weeks in comics and I thought I’d talk about a few of the more interesting issues. A couple of awesome Ed Brubaker books have hit that deserve some mention so we’ll start with those.

Secret Avengers #1
First on the docket is the brand new (and much hyped) Secret Avengers #1. While I haven’t been keeping real close tabs on the whole Secret Invasion or it’s Siege-based aftermath, I have noticed that the Avengers sure have been getting some love from Marvel as of late. With a new movie in the works, the team being the centerpiece of both the Civil War and Secret Invasion story lines, and now a bunch of new books, it seems that the Avengers are once again the team of choice at Marvel.

The most interesting thing of this convoluted mess of a universe shake up is how Ed Brubaker has managed to make part of it cool by working in a few of his own storylines. When he killed off Steve Rogers in 2005, we all wondered how he was going to be brought back. While we all knew it was going to happen we can at least thank the comic gods that he held off a good 4 years before bringing him back. While the method in which Steve Rogers was returned to the Marvel Universe was typically cheesy and far-fetched, what I can’t complain about is how they’ve positioned him in the post-Siege world. Deciding to leave the shield and Captain America persona in the hands of his old parter Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers is simply being himself and leading the charge of rebuilding the mess that has been left in the wake of recent Bendis inspired events.

Enter Secret Avengers. The premise of this book has Steve Rogers leading a team of covert heroes that only band together when needed on a mission. The idea is to stay off the grid, in the shadows and take care of business in a more clandestine and old school manner. This type of team really draws from the old days when Steve Rogers ran the Invaders and super heroes did secret government work. I’ve always thought he idea of a small team turning the tide of war in the background was always a cool idea and one that is very “Marvel-esque”. It’s also a premise that Brubaker has explored numerous times in his Captain America books and more recently in the Marvels Project mini-series. To have him create a brand new team with a covert and old school emphasis is a breath of fresh air for the Avengers canon. With pencils by Mike Deodato, this first issue is a very strong start to the series and I can’t wait to see where it goes in the future.
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Hello again, dearest Robot Panic readers. I have returned from my far too long hiatus that may or may not have involved secret ninja training, world domination planning or seeing how many bags of Goldfish brand crackers I could ingest before my stomach ruptured. During my awesome and very hush hush ninja training, I have discovered something that I felt I need to share with all of you. It is a book, nay, a tome of collected literature/art hybrids. I shall call them…”comics”.

This particular collection is dubbed “Wednesday Comics”. A little backstory, if I may. About one year ago, a bunch of DC wiseguys put their artsy fartsy heads together and came up with an idea that would harken back to the early 1920′s and 1930′s, when a reader of the daily or in those days, weekend, newspaper would be entertained by pages of adventure comics featuring superheroes and other various kinds of heroes. This concept proved to be hugely successful, that is until it stopped being successful and became unsuccessful. So like many people before them that have fallen victim to the old addage of “History repeats itself”, DC has decided to bring back a form of entertainment that has been the way of Gary Coleman (too soon?) for decades. So DC decided to bring some of their most popular characters, with a few less popular, give each a team of great writers and artists, print each issue on shitty classic newsprint paper and ship em out every Wednesday for 12 weeks straight. It was a huge success and as of this day no word on whether or not another series will happen again. (I guess that DC doesn’t like money.)

Enclosed in this HUGE hardcover book, are the originally released 15 character based stories, plus 2 unreleased stories. And who might these characters be? Well, has anyone ever heard of Metamorpho? Or the Metal Men? Or Kamandi? Yes! These DC flagship characters are all in this collection, featuring new stories and collaborations from the top writers and artists that DC keeps locked inside a small, poorly lit basement surrounded by a chicken wire fence at an undisclosed location. Oh, and some jerks like Bat-something, Superbro and the Green…um…Giant are also in there, but no one cares about them. They suck and will probably never be heard from again after this. (more…)

Welcome to another edition of TF Flashback, where we revisit some old content from our early years on the web. In this series, we’re reposting issues of an old webcomic we used to do that “chronicled” John, Moe and Hilden’s year of living together in college.

1125 Fremont #9-Turtle Shell Disdain

If you caught our live show a few weeks ago and managed to stick it out through the After Hours episode we did, you heard us talk about this story. There was a moment where Moe was up in John’s room playing video games a ton. I remember walking up there to watch him play Mario Kart and as I did so, I could feel the hooks starting to grab me again. At this point in my college years, I had left videogames behind me to concentrate on music and my future career. This was the start of that slide back into playing them.

The actual events happened much faster. I think it was just a few days from watching Moe play to me going out and buying a PlayStation. In the comic, however, this would be the start of an arc that would last for many, many episodes.

What I remember about this comic from a creative standpoint is that #9 represents when I started to get serious about doing these. I was a really inconsistent comic creator and I wanted to get better but knew I had to buckle down. So I committed to doing a comic a week starting with #9 and I lasted almost a full year before I finally wound it down. Starting with this comic, the style of the characters really start to develop and the look of the comic begins to form.

Welcome to another edition of TF Flashback, where we revisit some old content from our early years on the web. In this series, we’re reposting issues of an old webcomic we used to do that “chronicled” John, Moe and Hilden’s year of living together in college.

1125 Fremont #8-This Is Uncomfortable

The entire house laying on John’s bed, watching Seinfeld, was a tradition of sorts at 1125 Fremont. Well, all five of us at the same time was pretty rare but there were always a good complement of us on there. I remember that we used to watch Seinfeld two or three times a day. The only other show that got as much attention was a public access show called “Ride the Planet with Philip T. Watchwell” which, sadly, never made it to the comic.

I thought it was necessary to document the gathering in comic form, if only to remember those days when you COULD waste an afternoon on another man’s bed watching a comedy show. That came out wrong.

Anyway, more gay humor not so cleverly disguised. My favorite part is Moe simply saying “Damn it!”. That always made me laugh. At any rate, I remember liking the way the last panel came out. That’s about all I have for you this week on this one.

Welcome to another edition of TF Flashback, where we revisit some old content from our early years on the web. In this series, we’re reposting issues of an old webcomic we used to do that “chronicled” John, Moe and Hilden’s year of living together in college.

1125 Fremont #7-Harry

I’m not sure why I felt the need to introduce another character at this point in the series, after just finishing the introductions to the mains ones. Harry was a friend of John’s who was also going to the same college and I remember him just…suddenly being there. One minute the house was empty and the next, Harry was there in John’s room playing Goldeneye like he’d been there all day. I’m sure it was just me not paying attention but he was like fucking Batman in my mind.

So, I decided to make Harry a running gag. I figured it might be amusing to have the Hilden character be tormented by Harry just showing up at random times. The joke only “ran” for about three issues however and now it just sort of comes off as an unecessary comic that breaks what little flow I had.

The classic nineties Disney hero, Darkwing Duck, is back! Well, at least in comic book form. News over at the website Inside the Magic.net reveals that Darkwing Duck will once again return to comics via Disney’s BOOM! Studios in a series called The Duck Knight Returns.

Darkwing Duck was always one of my favorite Disney characters. Mostly because of the not so clever take off on a bumbling Batman clone. However, I always thought the villains were extremely cool looking and the stories had a neat comic book spin. Of course, it’s been awhile since I’ve taken a look at them. Nevertheless, it’s cool to see Disney taking some time to revisit some of their classic cartoon franchises in this day an age of Hannah Montana and whatever other drek they happen to be peddling to kids these days.

It’s been almost 20 years, if you can believe that, since Darkwing Duck made any sort of appearance. Be that as it may, a quick scan of YouTube will net you a bunch of episodes from the half hour cartoon that used to run in the 1990′s. For those that don’t remember this character from the old Disney Afternoon days, here’s a look at the first part of Episode 1:

For those of you who do remember this classic character, you should be happy to know that you can check out a preview of the first five pages by clicking here. There is also an interview with the comic’s writer and cover artist here.

Thanks to Justin for the link!

The creative team of Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev holds a special place in my heart. Before he went and fucked it all up with the abysmal Secret Invasion storyline, which managed to skew the entire Marvel Universe for a year, Bendis was the man behind the resurgence of one of my all time favorite characters, Daredevil. With the aid of Alex Maleev’s gritty and washed out line work, the world of Hells Kitchen became the playground for one of the most gripping storylines to hit a Marvel character in ages.

When Bendis and Maleev announced they were leaving Daredevil in the hands of a new creative team, I not only mourned their departure but also became really curious as to what they would be doing next. Much to my dismay, it seemed the partnership would be splitting. Bendis, it was announced, was moving to the Avengers to sow the seeds for what would become the Secret Invasion arc. Maleev, it seemed, was simply dropping off the face of the planet, with only a guest shot here and there to satiate my thirst for his fantastic artwork.

Much to my surprise, I got wind a year or so ago that Bendis and Maleev were not split but simply working on a rather ambitious new project to be revealed at a later date. Earlier this year we were finally treated to the fruit of that secret labor in their newest partnership, Spider-Woman. More than just a comic book, this run also attempts to leap into the future of comic books with a motion comic on iTunes. Whether or not it succeeds or not is up to you but I found the results to be well worth the time, if not the cash.
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