So it’s Thursday, which means yesterday was Wednesday, and the latest Joe comic to hit the rounds was G.I. Joe: Origins #15, and IDW does something interesting here.
Obviously the fandom blew a rod when Marlon Wayans was revealed as Ripcord in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Changing the race of a somewhat minor player in G.I. Joe lore really put the fans on their ear, but more than that even was the drastic change in personality. While Hama wrote Ripcord (during his most popular time) as a motivated, ultra serious soldier, Wayans portrayed him (as he usually does) as an off-color hack who was mostly comic relief.
In all honesty, I didn’t mind Wayans all that much. There were worse performances in the film, to be sure. But even though IDW has been taking large steps to cater to the fans, they decided to go the Rise of Cobra route with Ripcord, and I think it works pretty well. I mean, it’s obvious by now that this isn’t your 80’s G.I. Joe. So why not shake things up a bit, plus make things a bit more cohesive with the movie universe? But even beyond that is the issue itself, which ends up being really entertaining. A mixture of some comedy, some action, with pretty solid writing and nice artwork, it has me very interested to read the follow up. But what do other sites think?
No, it’s not our 80’s G I Joe. And everytime Hasbro tries it’s darndest to forget about that and it’s rich history and “evolve” the brand be it Valor vs Venom, Sigma 6 or Rise of Cobra it fails to reach a new generation of kids.
And with the exception of the same 50 or so people who love anything Joe as long as it’s not ARAH, it really doesn’t connect with the fans of the 80’s.
Oh and while we’re at it, pretty much everyone wants to see Low-Light, so let’s bring him back, but this time he’s an elderly female from Southeast Asia who only completes her missions with the aid of Moroccan Breaker’s ultra high tech googles.
Because you know it HAS to evolve…
Now which Sigma 6 and ROC fan steps up first to say it sounds good to them? Of course, as long as it has Joe slapped on it, it’s all good.
-Changing the race of a somewhat minor player in G.I. Joe lore really put the fans on their ear-
Wow Justin. I mean, we’ve known each other for years and years and I really respect you, but to me that was such a jerk thing to say. I know you’re a big fan of RoC and somehow you’ve been getting increasingly hostile towards the purists but this….
Ripcord is one of a handful of GIJoes that I will remember for the rest of my life just because he wasn’t some minor guy like say Dial-tone. Or the 200+ other Joes or Cobras I could fill up the entire page with.
Ripcord played a huge part in one of the best GIJoe stories ever, the assault on Cobra Island. He also had more to him than most of the “classic” Joes like say Doc, who we never got to know anything about on a personal level. The showdown between Zartan and Ripcord is GIJoe legend. To say he was a minor character is ludicrous. Yes, he’s not Snake Eyes, Cobra Commander, Storm Shadow or Scarlett, but then who is?
I see absolutely no difference between what they did with Ripcord than let’s say if they had Pee Wee Herman play Snake Eyes. It’s nothing short of destroying a beloved character, one way or the other.
Sorry man, I hate being at odds with a friend but just had to say something to this.
Hawkwinter – hostile to the purists? Certainly not my intention. To guys like you and me, Ripcord is a major player, but that was one story that was told twenty years ago that most folks have long forgotten. Sure, you ask the hardcore G.I. Joe fan if Ripcord is a major player, they’ll probably respond in the positive, but if you ask the thousands of fringe fans or Joe and Jane on the street, they have no idea who the heck he is and probably hadn’t even heard of him until the movie launched.
I actually find it ironic that you call Dial-Tone a “minor player” because I would challenge you to say that to any Sunbow fan and have them agree. They would argue that Dial Tone is definitely a more major player than Ripcord ever was. Characters are important to particular people, comic fans have their affinities and cartoon fans have theirs, but when marketing a property to the general public, characters like Ripcord have more play because to most folks out there, he isn’t someone they instantly recognize or identify.
You know me by now…you know how much I relish and enjoy that period of story telling by Larry Hama, and while Ripcord will always have a big place in my heart, and in many old school comic fans’, he just doesn’t to the general public.
Never worry about being “at odds”, man…as long as you aren’t tossing insults, no skin off my nose. 😉
I like Dial Tone. He doesn’t seem like a minor character when you consider all he did in the cartoon.But I completely get where you’re coming from Hawk. It came off to me that way as well. Maybe not Justin, but the reason many of the ROC fans on the forums seem hostile or sound like jerks is because they are poo poo’d that ROC wasn’t the big smash hit that people said it would be and it looks very much for now that Hasbro is steering Joe back towards a more realistic, or even classic look rather than the ridiculous, out of this world, crazy ROC or Sigma 6 look that never seems to catch kid’s attention.
“Hawkwinter – hostile to the purists? Certainly not my intention. To guys like you and me, Ripcord is a major player, but that was one story that was told twenty years ago that most folks have long forgotten. Sure, you ask the hardcore G.I. Joe fan if Ripcord is a major player, they’ll probably respond in the positive, but if you ask the thousands of fringe fans or Joe and Jane on the street, they have no idea who the heck he is and probably hadn’t even heard of him until the movie launched.”
Problem with that Justin is, and it should be clear to everyone because it even looks like it’s finally clear to Hasbor, that there is no fringe fans. There is no kids. It’s hardcore collectors. And there’s far more, far more, collectors who remember, like and prefer the characters and personalities from twenty years ago over the the 90’s outrageous stuff or VvV or Sigma 6 or ROC.
Sure, things need changing. We can’t have them all Nam vets. That would put them in their 60’s or 70’s. Make them vets of the Gulf War or even the current war on terror from about 7 or 8 years ago in Afghanistan or Iraq. No need for M-16’s. Give them AR14’s or what have you.
Stuff like that needs changing. And no one has a problem with it. But to change race or gender when there really is abstolutely no reason to do so is what insults and infuriates the fans.
There are plenty of females, latinos and african americans in the large library of Joe specialities already. And of course there is always imagination, in other words, creating new characters. How many times do we hear Hasbro telling us they are bigger fans of Joe than us? Why don’t they use their imagination? We as collectors and customizers and as kids all created our own characters. Next to Helix and Benchpress, who have they created? They just seemed to content to change what they already have. They’re not fans. They have no imagination. And they didn’t care to offend the fans because they were so sure it would all be a hit with this generation of kids. And they found out otherwise.
I’ll not support IDW if they are going to turn their series into an offshoot of ROC.
TOTALLY agreed with Hawkwinter and Alpine.
There was absolutely ZERO legitimate reason to have changed Ripcord’s race nor Dial-Tone’s sex. (I guess someone out there still happens to be a big fan of Brock Lee, aka I am “Broccoli”, or owed him a favor and made the sex change to Dial-Tone for him…)
Furthermore, who CARES what “Joe and Jane on the street” or the “fringe” happen to think about it?! THEY don’t care obviously, because they know nothing or very little about it, BUT THE FANS DO, and WE are the ones who continually support Hasbro, not the so-called “fringe” or the mythological “kids” whom Hasbro is constantly trying to snag with their next big gimmick line, rather than giving the hard core collectors and long time, that’s LONG TIME, fans and supporters of the franchise.
Those “kids” they always try to draw in are never there for long, which is why their experimental lines constantly FAIL (though Hasbro and their defenders will never admit it), whereas the core is always here shelling out the cash while Hasbro $#!t$ on us in favor of people who really don’t care one way or the other, and are done with it as soon as their kids get tired of whatever it is and move on. Then you also have that particular group of “fans” who will buy ANYTHING (or go watch it) if it has a GI Joe logo splashed on it somewhere, so they don’t care either, not really, they just blindly support the brand name.
So, again, who cares if those particular groups don’t know or care about Ripcord or Dial-Tone?! Changing their race or sex isn’t going to draw them in if they weren’t already there, but it sure as hell is pushing fans away. I speak for myself, of course, but I don’t even see GI Joe making the order in my local shop anymore because everyone there has removed it from their pull lists, and the single copies of each issue up til #12 are still collecting dust in the store.
Sloooooow stories, crap-inbetween-Atkins-artists on the main title (and Origins art is worse…), poor characterizations, unwarranted/purposeless deaths (except to appease the deathmongering “realists” out there, who claim to be Joe fans but are really only fans of violence and mucking up escapism with too much “reality”), lame yet overdone military lingo and constant codename abbreviations to try and sound cutting edge and cool, (and did I mention the stories are sloooooooow?), total reinvention of popular characters/backgrounds (hello?! They were already popular for a reason! Duh.), and then the pointless race and sex changes to well known and favored characters…THESE are all reasons and ways that IDW has completely bent the fans over, and Hasblo let them. Why? Because they don’t REALLY care about the fans. They really, REALLY don’t care about the fans, and anyone who believes otherwise is probably quite deluded.
Hasbro let that pompous boob Michael Bay ruin Transformers, as well, so they’ve proven time and again that they have no remorse if it promises to possibly make a buck (why else re-release so much of the 80’s nostalgia if this isn’t the case? I mean there’s an article I just read on this site, talking about the Blu-ray upgraded version of the original Animated Movie being re-released. But for whom? Oh yes! The FANS, the LONG TIME, HARD CORE FANS, not the fringers and kids because they don’t know and don’t CARE!). What they (Hasbro) FAIL to realize is, that IF they would just do it RIGHT, they’d have total fan support AND they would STILL draw in all of those fringers and street fans, with an ALREADY awesome project that wasn’t over rendered, hyped or forced to try and look cool, because it already would be. Not rocket science here, just common sense. Iron Man proved this unequivocably, so no BS about how it can’t be done. It can be done. It WAS done. It SHOULD be done… with Joe and Transformers too.
As big, and greedy a dousche as Lucas is, Hasbro pays HIM to sell HIS Star Wars characters/franchise, and he doesn’t let them mess with it but very little, and they certainly aren’t allowed to give his characters sudden race or sex changes to sell a figure for him. So why should WE pay Hasbro to sell us crap and let the franchise handlers change things to make us buy their crap? Aside from those who will buy anything and everything, and lend viability to Hasbro’s thinking on this, we’re the ones that Hasbro needs to be catering to, not these other mystery groups out there. WE support the franchise, and since we pay them for it, they should make it a priority to see that we get what we want FIRST, and THEN worry with the fringees.
Sorry, bout the rant, Justin, but it all goes hand-in-hand, and changing characters needlessly, like Ripcord and Dial-Tone is a HUGE show of disrespect for the people who keep supporting the classic line and the general flavor of what ARAH is/was for all this time, not to mention a major slap in the face. If they wanted or needed another black character in the movie, Stalker would have been a big fave, but no, they opted for the unnecessary and changed an established character’s race instead. They COULD have introduced a brand new Joe character to the universe for the comic, but again, no, they choose to emasculate another established character by giving him a sex change rather than simply giveng HER a name change. Unnecessary. Then to add insult to injury, Hasbro allows IDW to bring in the ethnic Ripcord to the crap comic series. Insult us? Nahhhhh, because we’re “stupid fans” and we’ll just go happily along with it because they TELL us to (but in a very nice and polite way) by way of some lame@$$ excuse that it appealed to a certain target audience and we’ll be okay.
As with Star Wars, Lucas didn’t need that orange, spotted babytalking retard to draw kids in, because his ESTABLISHED fan base of people who enjoyed the first SW movies have raised THEIR kids on it, so they already loved the stuff. GI Joe and Transformers have the same thing going for them, because it was the same generation who were there in the 80’s for both, as were there for Star Wars in the late 70’s-80’s. Granted, Star Wars has a more massive fan following than Joe/TFs combined, but still, it is obviously enough of a base for Hasbro to continue coming back to what we want, whether they choose to publicly admit it or not.
It’s the LONG TIME FANS who CARE, not the “fringe” or “ghost fans” that Hasbro needs to appease with their various products. Please the fans and the rest will follow. Very simple if they pull their heads from their anuses(Is there a doctor or med student in the house? is this the correct plural for anus? lol) and do things right. Someone should remind Hasbro of this and soon, before they piss off too many of those collector/fans. As it is, I now only buy what appeals to me heavily. I let the RoC junk collect dust on the shelves at full price and only picked up a few markdowns for some customizing, but I got as much of the 25th (Classic) line as possible.
Same with the comics. Even in spite of what I saw coming from IDW, I gave them the benefit of the doubt for 6 issues of Origins and 6 issues of the main title. That was 12 issues to impress and draw me in, but all they did was repulse and push me away. Hama has LOST whatever he used to have for GI Joe, and Dixon never had it for Joe at all. Gage is a good writer, but he should also stay away from GI Joe (or Cobra as the case may be). Beyond that, IDW really should raise their standard for artwork if they want people to bother with their books at all. Aside from Atkins, they have no one talented enough to keep up the quality level.
In closing, BOO!! to IDW for the RoC Ripcord version being brought to the comic pages of the main title, sex change Dial-Tone, Bitchy Scarlett, tons of other lame dialogue/plot, and BOO for killing off Bazooka. He wasn’t my favorite character ever, but he was a fun character and didn’t deserve that, especially since it really did nothing for the story that would have made a difference if he was alive.
Guess I would care more if I could stomach the new comics and actually read them.
As is, I wouldn’t read them if they were dropped off at my front door. Still can’t believe that I now look back and miss the DDP days…sigh.
“As is, I wouldn’t read them if they were dropped off at my front door. Still can’t believe that I now look back and miss the DDP days…sigh.” — Hawkwinter
Agreed. And you know as well as anyone, I NEVER thought I’d be saying that, as much as I hated the artwork in AE and Storm Shadow’s series. IDW has ruined it for me with their so-called “mainstream” titles/concepts.
Atkins is their only saving grace for me at this point (as I don’t really know how good/bad the continuation series will be under Hama’s tutelage, especially knowing how much he hates/hated GI Joe when he wrote that series last time around, and how terrible his Frontline (DDP) and Origins (IDW) stories have been already), but even Atkins’ artwork isn’t enough to get me to buy the IDW main title. Which is sort of ironic, as I so hated the DDP AE series artwork to the point I wouldn’t buy that either, but it also had poor writing against it, and currently the artwork of the IDW series is 10 times better than the AE crap from DDP, but now I even hate the concept/story as much as what DDP did with them in AE.
Ugh. Is it TOO MUCH to ask for great art (or even just really good artwork), a good (or at least very decent) story/writer, and get back to more along the lines of the concept of what GI Joe was during like the first 100 issues or so, give or take some good ones here and there between 101-155? I’m not asking for the same stories, we already have those, and they were great fun, some of Hama’s BEST writing, IMO. No. What I am asking for is a return to the type of stuff that made Joe great during the early years. Develpoment of secondary characters that were a part of the book’s flavor, but not necessarily part of the team, but still cared about them. Character develpoment of guys that never got the limelight like Snake Eyes, Duke, Scarlett, Storm Shadow, Baroness, CC, and Zartan did. Guys like Ripcord, Airborne, Spirit, or even Bazooka, who could have been used to tell some great stories WITHOUT being killed by the time it was all over.
Granted, there was a lot of product getting shoved into the stories sometimes and at times it interfered with what may have been going on, but sometimes it was fun, and other times it was even very cool, like when Serpentor was introduced. (I know Hama hated Serpentor, and several other characters and concepts, so I don’t expect to see much of anything very cool in the continuation, but I’m hopeful that he at LEAST doesn’t go around killing characters off everytime his anti-Joe PMS syndrome kicks in, because that would just piss me off and I’d just quit with what little GI Joe I still care about at that point.) I hope someone keeps him on a short leash this go around and with this continuation of GI Joe.
Hama has a lot to prove to me, and many other fans, after so many of his remarks, snyde comments, and negative attitude towards the Joe of old he wrote, and the cartoons also. I don’t give one crap about his new ultra-military talk GI Joe. All I need is a little bit for flavor, like it used to be. Much more fun to read without ten times the technical jarhead jargon (No offense to jarheads, I might add), but Hama is into the ultra-realism of the military and applying it to GI Joe. GI Joe is a different animal than that though, so he needs to refrain from it a good bit more than the crappy Origins series.
Time will tell…