French – European Joe's

Encore une fois

In 1997, DJ Sash was hitting the charts again with a new song titled “Encore une fois”. I was 15, still had all my childhood G.I. Joe sitting in my room and no new G.I. Joe toys were to be found. Little could I have known then that 27 years later, I’d be writing a blog post about some more French comics. If you missed the previous post, check them out here and here.

As promised, I’m back with another addition to my French G.I. Joe collection. This time it’s the Maximum Silence TPB, aside from the French commentary pieces, even non-French speaking/reading people can read this one!

The book starts with the remake of the iconic #21 from 2022 where each page was drawn by a different artist.

The next story in the book is the #21.5 that was first released in 2008 with the Snake-Eyes & Storm Shadow figures from the 25th anniversary series. In 2014, the comic book was released to comic book stores officially by IDW in honor of the 30th anniversary of ARAH. Called “Silence between borders”, the story is the same as in #21, but it’s shown from different perspectives and showing scenes from the viewpoint of other characters.

Next up is the story “Hush Job” from the Yearbook #3. This was released 3 years after issue #21 and is situated sometime after #52. It shows Snake-Eyes being held prison in the Cobra Consulate in New York and being subjected to the Brainwave scanner by Dr. Mindbender. Scarlett is asking Storm Shadow to help her free Snake-Eyes. They infiltrate the consulate building, both in their own ways. Snake-Eyes is able to beat the Brainwave scanner, and together they escape (with a bit of a ruse at the end and the Baroness without her catsuit).

It would be best if Destro didn’t get to see this.

The 4th story in the TPB is “Timber”, #19 from the G.I. Joe Origins series from 2010. It tells the story of how Snake-Eyes first encountered the lone wolf Timber.

And we’re already at the 5th story without any word balloons. This is the #85 from 1989 called “SFX”. The lack of words in this story is more than covered by the sound effects shown, hence the SFX title. Lot’s of sounds in this one.

And the silence doesn’t end yet, we get one more silent issue. #214 from the ARAH series from 2015, part 3 of “The Death of Snake-Eyes” story arc. After a lethal fight with Serpentor, the entire Joe roster – both troops and vehicles – are paying respect to Snake-Eyes.

The more the Frenchier

A few posts back (see here), I talked about finding a French Trade Paperback from Vestron that celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Marvel G.I. Joe comic books. In it were some advertisements for other TPB’s they were going to release. I tracked them down and here they are.

The first book in the series contains the Marvel issues 123 (Shots in the dark), 124 (Triptych), 125 (Diptych) & 126 (Firefly!). After that story arc, they print issue 127 (Playing with the big boys) and parts of issues 128 & 129 (Winds of Change & Standoff!)

Tome 1 – Eco Warriors, DEF and Snake-Eyes

The cover art for this TPB is inspired on the original art for issue #123, but they added a crosshairs in front of Cobra Commander’s head in sludge green.

Book 2 boasts the Ninja force and continues the continuity with issues #130 (Point and Counterpoint), #131 (Last Stand), #132 (Bump in the Night), #133 (Recon by Fire) & #134 (Throwdown in the Citadel). In the back of the book, they now added the original covers as well.

Tome 2 – Storm Shadow representing the Ninja Force

The cover art looks familiar, but I can’t recall where I’ve seen it before. If you know, let me know and I’ll put it up here. It’s depicting Storm Shadow sitting perched or jumping, sporting his camo G.I. Joe look.

UPDATE: I’ve received help from within the Joe Community on this one. The art comes from within issue #112. It was drawn by John Statema, inked by Randy Emberlin and colored by Bob Sharen. Thanks to Justin Taylor, Jeff Bohn, Gavin Regnaert and Rob S Foster for confirming this on Facebook. Special thanks to Rob Arts from G.I. Joe Nederland for reaching out and adding some extra information.

Next up is Tome 3 which jumps a few issues and features the Star Brigade. It tells the stories of issues #145 (Threads and Resolutions), #146 (Immovable Objects), #147 (Oblivion Express!) and #128 (Irresistable Forces).

For this TPB, they used the cover art of issue #146 without any modifications, aside from the addition of the Maximum Action Tome 3 and the change of the header.

Normally, I’d say that’s all. Not this time though. What is printed in the back of TPB 3? An announcement of Tome 4 of course! And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a mention of a Maximum Silence issue! In case you would wonder what that could be about, stay tuned because there may be a post about it in the not so distant future.

Tome 4 – To be released in September 2024

Now that’s really it for this time. See you again soon, until then, Happy Collecting and YoJoe!

The same goes for the French.

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 back even shows 208 pages! And Battle Force 2000.

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).

We are here to follow orders, to try the impossible and make it look easy.

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!