The PIT!
G.I. Joe #1, June 1982
Herb Trimpe, Bob McLeod,
and Larry Hama
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Look at this and tell me that Steranko’s Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD didn’t inspire GI Joe.
Don Maitz’s cover for author Richard Meyers’s “Doomstar.”
In a weird case of crossover between people featured on Vintage Geek Culture, Richard Meyers is a good friend of the Amazing Kara Hui Ying Hung.
Richard Meyers was a big fan of samurai and kung fu movies in 1978, when he was introduced to martial arts movies by his friend, GI Joe creator Larry Hama. That was the same year he travelled to Hong Kong and met his friend Jackie Chan.
Sneak Peek was a GI Joe named after Stephen King’s son, Owen King, who was a huge fan of GI Joe. Note that Sneak Peek is also from Bangor, Maine, Stephen King’s hometown.
Dave Dorman did a phony GI Joe movie poster for a 2003 April Fools issue of Wizard magazine. Wizard used to do April Fools issues, where a lot of the content was made up.
This was back in the day when a big budget revival of a fanboy-beloved eighties property was just a wild and crazy nerd dream, instead of the central, mainstream force of popular entertainment culture.
GI Joe’s Choose Your Own Adventure for Operation: Tigerstrike.
My favorite one of these GI Joe Choose-Your-Own Adventures was the one where you’re a disguise expert pretending to be the president’s son.
House ads for the Micronauts comic, one of the best Marvel Comics of the 1980s. People remember Transformers and GI Joe, but as interesting as they were, I thought the “product tie-in” supreme achievement was Mantlo and Mike Golden’s Micronauts.
GI Joe Puzzle.
GI Joe lasted a surprisingly long time. By 1993, they made Street Fighter crossover Joes.
“I fly for the glory of Ra. The sun is my strength, the sky is my home.” - Jeff Parker in “Future Quest” (2016). A prayer to the Egyptian gods he is the last remaining worshipper of, given just before flight by habit, by Ray Randall, aka Birdman.
