Anyone who’s been following my posts and comments over the years knows that I’m a huge comic fan when it comes to G.I. Joe… much moreso than the Sunbow cartoon. I loved the more adult and realistic storylines told in the comic pages. Larry Hama had a way that he wrote these characters that gave them all personality and made them all so unique, yet not silly or dumb. The Sunbow cartoon did this stuff as well, but it seemed to go to such extremes sometimes (as with Bazooka or Spirit) that it almost made mockeries of the characters instead of making them real.
Not only that, but the situations were, of course, so outlandish and unrealistic to coordinate with a “kid’s cartoon” that it was real tough to take seriously, even when I was 10 years old.
But to just cast off the Sunbow cartoon is to ignore a significant chunk of G.I. Joe history. Many more people saw the cartoon than read the comic. Many more people identify with the characters in the cartoon much moreso than the comic…it seemed to reach more kids and reach more people, for better or worse. In some ways it’s worse, because COBRA was always labelled with such incompetence that it was hard to consider them a serious threat. But looking back, there was a lot to be taken seriously with the Sunbow show. The writing was crisp, and while the characters were outlandish, they were consciously so…the writers knew what they were doing when they wrote Shipwreck, Bazooka, and Gung Ho the way they did.
I discovered the Sunbow cartoon the week that the Mass Device mini-series first aired, but didn’t discover the comic until a couple of years later. So the cartoon made the first impact on me, before Larry Hama’s magic fingers wove his own story. I was introduced to Duke, Scarlett, Destro, COBRA Commander, and Gung Ho in their cartoon incarnations long before I knew who they were when Hama wrote them and Mike Vosberg (or Herb Trimpe) drew them. So, yes, even as a lifelong comic fan, I can appreciate and enjoy the Sunbow series as well. It deserves it’s spot in the Joe mythos, and this weekend I’m giving it its spot.
On Saturday I’m going to post my Top Five favorite moments of the MASS Device mini-series, and then on Sunday will post my Top Five favorite moments from the Revenge of COBRA. Both mini-series’ were just released as boxed set “Battle Packs” and deserve a little more pub, and I’m happy to give it to them. In going back through and refreshing my memory I realized there were some great things to love about these cartoons, and hopefully you’ll enjoy the “Sunbow Weekend”. 🙂
I was also iniatially introduced to G.I. Joe through the cartoons, then the toys, then the comics. Unfortunately, I didn’t discover the comics until they were in the late 40’s. Because I lost so much comic book backstory, my sense of character development came mostly from the cartoons. As an adult (in age, not in mind), a lot of the plots do seem so ridiculous that it might as well have been thrown in with the regular Marvel Comics continuity. On the other hand, there were well well written stories like the time where Shipwreck was brainwashed into believing he had a family and the tragedy that came from the discovery of the truth. The cartoon has had such an influence over me that whenever I see Joe characters with word balloons, it is the voices from the cartoon series I hear. In my Joe-verse Cobra Commander sounds like Chris Latta, and Lt. Falcon sounds like Don Johnson.
i watched the cartoon but only read the comics a few years back, so the cartoons are where i get the characters from. yes, the cartoons were silly and out there, but so too is raising land from the ocean to make a island and snake eyes killing like a 100 people to get to cobra commander and letting him go.
also, i have to disagree that the comics had better character development. everyone seemed so blend to me. flint, hawk, duke and falcon could all have been the same person. great characters that we loved in the cartoons like quick kick, bazooka and shipwreck had no unique characteristics whatsoever. i once started a thread asking people to write some good sayings from both the comic and the cartoon and who said them. joedios is first and foremost a place where everyone is influenced by the comics, yet no one could think of a single saying from the comic, but there were many, many from the cartoon.