Wednesday, July 10, 2019

G. I. JOE YEARBOOK #2 (March 1986)

This is the famous Michael Golden issue.
Hama has cited this as his favorite JOE pencils. A segment of fans still speak of the “Golden Yearbooks.”
This is the only one to feature Golden’s interior art. And the first Yearbook was only a cover job. That’s the impact of this one comic. Decades later, two of the few 80s comics to receive this deluxe reprint treatment are JOE #21 and this issue.

Not sure what the average reader thought of this. Marvel hadn’t conditioned its fans to accept cartooning, really.
And this is cartoonish to the point of giving banged-up characters Xs for eyes.
Cobra vs.The Oktober Guard! The Rooskies are speaking broken English, even amongst themselves.
Is this the first appearance of the Cobra Transport Copter? Interesting if it’s a Golden design. (Was never a toy, oddly.)
Only real appearance from Joe team in story. Very Hama ending; the team needs the McGuffin more for bureaucratic reasons than anything. 

Gratuitous plug time -- all of my Kindle Worlds JOE novels (set in the original Sunbow cartoon continuity) can be downloaded for free over at Smashwords!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I still have my battered, coverless copy of this somewhere. The art is still gorgeous. I had never seen anything like it at the time, but I don't remember thinking the cartooning was lame. It was just such a great story.
My other favorite done in one by Hama was GI Joe issue 34.

G. Kendall said...

I have a near-coverless copy of YEARBOOK #3, which is one of my very first comics. I wasn't aware of the legend surrounding this issue until a few years ago. I love that two JOE comics from this era most people ignored are now considered seminal works of the 1980s.

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