GI Joe

As a child I was big into GI Joe, the toys the comic the cartoon, any and everything that had to do with the property.  I loved the characters, the looks of the vehicles and enjoyed the story as I could get it broken apart as it was for me. 

Throughout the years even as I drifted away from the 3.5 inch action figures and then they disappeared for a while I still loved the comic books. The first run ended in the early '90's after started in 1982. Because of this started before both my birth and ability to read I missed almost all the issues, and thus started my quest to buy as many as I could.  Normally that involved going to boxes and boxes of X-men and Punisher comics at antic stores and flee markets. I didn't usually find very many issues, and usually seemed to find the same four or five, but every time I found one I would buy it. 

Now I'm not a comic snob and the ones I had before that are in lets just say really shitty condition. I couldn't keep the covers on those suckers to save my life. Also as a boarded 5 to 6 year old I drew in them. I know I know a moral sin, they should have had boards I'm a savage, put away your inner Brodies and let me be, the ones I have now all have covers and are in cases with boards.

I had given up on my GI Joe quest for a long time till one day a few years ago when Liz took me to this little restaurant near VCU that served local food with a rotating menu. Really good food even if it did feel a bit to hippy for me. In the front they had a few big boxes of comic books and started pawing through them. Low and behold I found around 30 issues of GI Joe. Issues that I had never seen, the second parts to story arcs that I had owned part one of for years.  It was a gold mine that I jumped on.

Looking back I always new that GI Joe had an effect on how I viewed story telling and some of the stories I created.  Sure there is a lot of Solid Snake in Mongoose from The Yokai Project, but there is also some Snake Eyes.

YO JOE!