Our small country is in fact 2 small countries that were fused together in 1830 to function as a buffer between the Netherlands and France. The northern part is Flanders and we speak Flemish (Dutch) here. The southern part is Wallonia and they speak French. For the longest time, the upper parts of society, the nobility and thus the ruling class, have spoken French. This caused a lot of issues during the 1st World War when the officers were only speaking French and the regular soldiers were Flemish farmers and laborers. The officers would declare their orders in French and would say ” et pour les Flamands, la même chose.” which translates to “and the same goes for the Flemish people.” which they didn’t understand and caused a lot of unnecessary hurt and deaths. To this day there are still tensions between the Flemish and the French speaking people. One benefit to all this is that we get taught Dutch & French in school (and even some German since a part of Germany was given to Belgium as retribution for the war). All this to get to my point, that I bought another French G.I. Joe comic book.
In France (and thus also for the French speaking part of Belgium), Vestron owns the rights to publish the G.I. Joe comics from the Marvel era. They are specialized in movie comics and trade paperbacks. This book contains a selection of G.I. Joe stories and trivia to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the comic book series in 2022. I just recently was able to find one. They have released and are releasing several other TPB’s from the Marvel run as well, mostly the later issues with Star Brigade and Ninja Force. They’re still on my want list.
The format of the book is slightly smaller than the U.S. trades we are familiar with, but bigger than a Japanese manga. The actual size is 23.5cm by 16.2cm (about 9.25 x 6.38 inches). Small but powerful, filled with action.
The stories they selected are: (in print order):
- Issue #1 – Lady Doomsday
- Issue #34 – Shake down!
- Yearbook 2 – Triple play
- Issue #21 – Silent Interlude
- Issue #60 – Cross purposes
- Issue #80 – Rolling Thunder
- Issue #82 – Weeding out
- Issue #152 – … just fade away
For each story, they have a short description, and a Do-you-know section (as we know, that’s half the battle).
Speckled in between the stories are several filecard pages and the beautiful overview of the Pit.
At the end, they have placed a commercial for their next installment, a second compilation with unedited stories. The origin of Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow, The creation of Serpentor and many more. They’re calling the books that follow the Maximum Action Super Special series.
With this salute, we’ve reached the end of this post. See you back soon and until then, Happy Collecting and YoJoe!
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