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Thanks to RogueTiger, I was finally able to read the entire Marvel run. And a great story line it is, especially being able to read the entire story start to finish over the course of about a week instead over several years. It kept details fresh in my mind.
From what I can tell, G.I*JOE is a comic based on a toy line and there are some "similarities" I've noticed between the evolution of both mediums.
If you look at the first ten or so issues or so of the comics, you'll notice that the colour pallet basically consists of black, white, blue, red, green and yellow. The charters are drawn in what I call "Marvel standard." Meaning there seems to be a formula to the way the people are drawn, something that you'll notice through a lot of Marvel's titles. Things seem to be kept simple. I'm guessing this was Marvel's way of saying (as they wold with all their titles) "Let's see where this goes." So they hope that the story line is good enough to sell the comic, and continue it going on for another year, but they don't put their best artists and inkers and colourists into it, just yet. G.I.*JOE seems to have been in the unique position of having Larry Hamma, a guy Hasbro wanted telling the stories, to write, so Marvel didn't have to devote much to that part.
At this same time, look at the original figure line. Of the O13, Scarlett, Stalker and Snake Eyes have the only unique head sculpts, Scarlett having the only unique body. Among the male figures, they all share body parts from each other. As if Hasbro was saying, "Let's see where this goes." and didn't put tons of resources into the new figure line.
Then the next year of comics came out, the art was more or less the same, improved, but the colours got better. The figure designs got better with the next ten Joes being introduced. The story started to get more in depth, and more of a continuation from one issue to the next.
The next ten Joe figures to come out all had unique sculpts, none sharing body parts with their predecessors or each other (OK, yeah, there is tan Clutch and tan Grunt, but those aren't new characters)
The third year of comics, the story line really started to hit it's stride, the artists changed and the "Marvel Standard" slowly began to fade.
The third wave of figures again started showing unique parts and looks, and the toy line was showing that it was a hit by this time.
The trend seemed to keep going. Every year that went by, the figures and comics seemed to get better and better. Fortunately by the time the day the day glow camo uniforms of the 90s came around, the idea of the airbrushed pages or computer generated pages or just the art and colouring of today hadn't taken effect, otherwise we'd have all been blinded. This was really just an observation I made, while reading the comics, noticing how as the toys improved, the comics did too.
_________________ Some people, when trying to avoid thinking about those things that cause them pain, turn to drink, food, or drugs...I turn not to any of those...I collect action figures. Over the years, I've found that alcoholism is much more socially acceptable by far.
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