This week we take the battle with Cobra to the high seas. Get your feet wet landlubbers, here is Shipwreck!
Shipwreck was introduced in the comics in perhaps one of the best story arcs of the Joe line, the creation of Cobra Island in issue 40. He is assigned to set up the new Transportable Tactical Battle Platform on top of an old oil digging site in the Gulf of Mexico.
In the Pyramid of Darkness, Shipwreck teams up with Snake Eyes and infiltrates the Cobra underwater base disguised as Cobra troopers. “Yeah, who’d notice a wet sailor with a parrot and a masked silent man with a Timber wolf.” A while later, both Joes are dancing on stage. I don’t know what those cartoon writer had been smoking…
In the Spy Troops spin-off continuity, Shipwreck is the Joe that get’s to impersonate the big snake himself after Zartan infiltrates the Joes posing as Shipwreck. Not quite James Bond level of spies, but still an entertaining Joe movie.
To end this post, I’d like to link to the ABSOLUTE AWESOME album by Wordburglar, Welcome to Cobra Island. On track 7, Rank & File, Shipwreck is present with some fellow Joes. Go check it out and buy the album. I have it on repeat most of the time in the car. Nautical flows 🙂
Today we are going to take the high road or possibly no road at all. In any case, we are getting high with Impel Trading Card #24, Alpine.
The first memory I have of Alpine is from the Special Missions #2. On this mission, he and Airtight are diffusing a WWII gas bomb on an old bomber that is stuck in a melting glacier. Whilst they are busy with that, another Joe team is in Brasil to protect a wanted Nazi – Doktor Otto Totenschadel. I won’t spoil the story here, if you haven’t read it yet, make sure you do. I feel the Special Missions are more serious and real world than the regular ARAH stories. Words of Honor is one of my favorite stories. It shows the impact WWII still has on our society.
As for the toy line, there have been 7 versions of Alpine released between 1985 and 2015. The original figure did not get a second (and third and fourth!) version until 2004, and I have to say that the 2004 figures are not that great looking. They are all 3 repaints of the same model, and the fourth version made him actually white… This version came in a Tiger Force themed two-pack with Cross Hair. The package art does show Alpine as black, so guess someone in the Hasbro factory is colorblind or something 🙂 They did release a darker version in the same pack later on, so maybe it was a production error? Anybody have any information on this?
That’s it for now. I’ll see you all after Christmas when we will set for the high seas with Impel Trading Card #25… Until then:
Ho Ho YoJoe!
Happy collecting!
I hope you all get to find some Joes underneath the tree on Christmas morning.
We have arrived at #23 in our Impel Trading Card overview and review. How clumsy of me to not introduce our Joe Member depicted on the card first…
Here is Tripwire.
There are 6 versions of Tripwire made in the 3 3/4 inch series (http://www.yojoe.com/action/83/tripwire.shtml). My modest collection only includes the original 1983 version. Although I once had a Tiger Force figure, he seems to be MIA. In hand, I always found the figure a bit thin, slender. For a guy working explosives, I should have him wearing something extra padded. Then again, the Joes have always been a bit sci-fi, so maybe he’s wearing the equivalent of this guy below in future tech 🙂
In case you haven’t done so yet, go and check out the G.I. Joe reviews from Formbx257 on Youtube. I’ll post a link below to his Tripwire Review. What do you think of the figure? Let me know in the comments.
In the comics and cartoons, the character works great as comic relief between the often serious and dangerous missions of the Joes. The other Joes really need to have steel nerves and cool to go on a mission with Tripwire in the team. Not sure I could cope with someone like him on my team.
That’s it for this week. I’ll try and post #24 and #25 this year.
It has been a while, but we are back on track with the review of the Impel Trading Cards. Today we arrived at # 22, First Sergeant Conrad “Duke” Hauser.
Duke is the field commander and second-in-command of the G.I. Joe team after General Hawk. He was first introduced into the comic in issue #22 (and this is the #22 of the Trading Cards, talk about coincidence). He is introduced alongside Roadblock on the funeral of General Flagg, shooting down a Cobra Rattler. The character has been a love him or hate him character all these years. Even Larry Hama (God for the admirers) admitted not really being able to handle the character.
However you feel about the guy, he has played a major role in all of the Joe storylines. In the Marvel run, he keeps on duty till they fold the flag. In the Devil’s Due main comics he takes over active duties from an – spoiler alert – disabled Hawk. In Amera’s Elite, he leads the Joes into the battle against the Plague during World War III. In Reloaded, he gets knifed by Scarlett (Go Red!).
Not only in the comic books, but also on the small and big screen Duke plays a big role in the Joeverse.
In the ARAH cartoon, he is field commander for General Flagg and later second-in-command under General Hawk. In the animated movie, he is the older half-brother of Lt. Falcon and should have been killed, but Hasbro intervened and at the end of the movie a small line was added – uttered by Doc I think – to indicate Duke would survive. In Sigma 6 he is the Joe leader. In the Resolute story, he finally gets a shot with Scarlett. During my research I came across some fanfiction that goes deeper into this (I haven’t read them though). In Renegades, he is part of the fugitive band of heroes that fight the Cobra Corporation. This is grittier, darker setting and so is Duke. He even gets a role in Prime Time TV show Community – Episode G.I. Jeff – where he leads a court-martial against the main protagonists of the show alongside Scarlett and Flint.
In the Live Action movies, Duke is the main character in the first movie and becomes a part of General Hawk’s team. Only to be killed in the second movie…
This brief overview again shows that it’s a difficult character for the writers as well. While one depicts him as a hero saving the day and the world, the other might just have him shot in the nuts.
Personally, I have nothing against the guy. I thought he was a regular Joe in my toyworld. It wasn’t until I started getting into the comics that I learned he was a big shot. The more recent IDW comics show some more of Duke (having a wife and all that). They’re making him into more of a tragic hero and I think that is fitting for a guy you either love or hate. Basically a good guy, that can do bad things if it means saving someone or something he loves or believes in.
The next post about the Impel Trading Cards will come soon, but today, I’ll show off The Corps! Beast Bomber. As I mentioned before, it’s next to impossible to find a toy store here that sells 1:18 scale military toys, let alone they would have G.I.Joe. The Corps! is probably the second best-known brand for 1:18 soldiers and vehicles, but over here, no stores sell them.
I bought the True Heroes C-130 a while back as a troop transport for my Joes and when I found out about the Beast Bomber on hisstank, I knew I needed to add this to my collection. There is a member there that created a very nice custom Joe plane out of this. It’s my goal to customize my C-130 and the Beast Bomber as well, but I’m not confident I can do as good a job on it. So I keep pushing the customizing ahead of me.
Back to the Best Bomber now. I was able to find it for an affordable price with Smyths, but they don’t ship to Belgium. I tweeted the question if someone in the UK could help me out and the guys from Action-Figure-Supplies were very kind in purchasing the Bomber and sending it to me in Belgium. I figured the plane would be a bit bigger than a Rattler, but I was slightly mistaken. The Beast Bomber is a genuine Beast and is the same size as the True Heroes C-130. Below is a shot of the Beast Bomber on top of the C-130. It´s not that easy to spot the C-130 below that Beast.
Here´s another view of these 2.
The pilot of the Beast Bomber is Condor. His file card tells he is an expert jet pilot and an ace dog fighter. And yet he gets to fly a huge bomber 🙂 The other figure packed with the plane is Troll. He´s an interrogation expert and master-at-arms. He´s a member of The Corps!´ nemesis, The Curse!. (Those marketing people sure like their exclamation points!)
Just now I realize I haven´t taken any pics of the figures themselves. You can see some of them in the pictures above. I guess there lies the weakness of The Corps!. The figures don´t have the same articulation as the Joes and the quality is just not there. I really like the vehicles and the storyline is ok (Good vs Bad, how wrong can it be?), but the figures are just pieces of plastic. I have to say, that the female characters do look better, so I´ll have to chase these down somewhere.
I´ll probably try and get some more of The Corps!. I hope some local store will start selling them. Check out the website www.thecorpshq.com if you haven´t done so already. Since Hasbro is not releasing a lot of new Joe toys, I´m glad to find some other 1:18 scale toys to combine with my Joes.
For now, Happy Collecting and YoJoe!
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