I am a freelance writer and publisher of independent comics. I have worked with Mike Oeming and Bryan Glass on the Harvey Award winning Mice Templar comic series and published my own title: Once Upon a Caper. As well as editing, lettering and coloring indie comics, I publish an ongoing Star Wars parody webcomic that updates Mondays and Fridays. I also write regular articles for Cereal:Geek magazine; a glossy, full color print publication that is dedicated to 1980s animated shows.

I grew up quite the fan of G.I. Joe. I read the Marvel Comic series right up to the final issue, collected a large number of the toys thanks to a generous mother, and rented the videos of the cartoon series until the tapes were just about worn out. Of my various geeky hobbies through my teenage years, G.I. Joe remained potent and became the subject of my very first website. It even led to my meeting the woman that would become my wife!

So yeah, Joe has never been far from my thoughts even if it is mostly just nostalgia for me now.

Back in the early days of the internet, I was the webmaster and creator of a certain site called Zartan’s Domain. Back when you could count the number of Joe sites on your fingers. The site was fairly popular for its creativity, as what I lacked in resources at the time, I tried to make up for with my tongue-in-cheek reviews and content. I summarized and reviewed the entire 155 issue run of the comics. I interviewed Larry Hama in depth, now available at Dave Thornton’s Quick Kick’s Theater website. I also collaborated with another Dave to create the Cold Slither month special at Zartan’s Domain which featured all new compositions of the titular song, along with several new parody songs like “Cobra Commander’s in da hood”. Alas, it was nearly 14 years ago now and I no longer have the files, or my buddy’s contact info.

Since moving on from active involvement in the online Joe community, I have been fortunate enough to speak with and interview Michael Bell, Jim Cummings, Charlie Adler, Neil Ross, Anne Bryant, Joe Bacal, Tom Griffen, Flint Dille and Christy Marx. This was part of a project that was my own initiative to celebrate 1980s animation in a hard cover book. The project fell by the way side despite extensive work combing the New York Times archives. I’ve written many articles about various cartoons from the 1980s for Cereal Geek and really enjoyed being able to incorporate the memories of the people who worked on these shows.

One of the reasons I wanted to make a site for G.I. Joe once again is that blogging now makes it easier to quickly throw a site together and organize articles. The other reason is that Leanne and I were recently inspired to start watching some of our favorite Joe episodes after quite a long break. We ended up deciding to go back and watch them all in order. This blog is a place where I can record the many thoughts and unusual observations I made while revisiting the series.

Here’s a little bit about my experience with G.I.Joe through my childhood.

G.I. Joe never aired on television in New Zealand, so I discovered the show via television commercials for the merchandise and the commercial video releases at my local video stores. During my preteen years I rented G.I. Joe videos regularly, often getting the same one several times because the episodes were so much fun. It was the same for Transformers and Jem, though both of those shows eventually did make it to New Zealand television. I believe the violence of human vs human was less acceptable than robot vs robot. And perhaps the amount of American patriotism was also damaging for foreign sales. As a kid I didn’t care. Besides, I liked Cobra.

Although a large selection of episodes were collected across the commercial releases, there were still many episodes that were omitted. I never knew that I was still missing about 1/4 of the series. I wasn’t missing much though. It just so happens that whoever selected the episodes to be released chose all the good ones! In the 1990s, I was able to collect the entire series via video tape trading. The result is that I’ve been spared multiple viewings of the bad episodes.

The beauty of the Sunbow series is how good it was when judged in proper context against it’s contemporaries. Fully animated art, higher levels of action than seen before, faster pacing, superb voice acting, pulse pounding catchy music and, most subtly, witty writing that went straight over the heads of the young audience. Steve Gerber, Buzz Dixon and Flint Dille knew how to layer in some humor that only the parents would truly understand.

G.I. Joe as an animated series gradually lost sight of its strengths, introducing Cobra La and ultimately ending up in a light-weight, dumbed-down DiC Entertainment shadow of a series. However, the original show has so many stand out stories that I feel the need to celebrate it, even today, so many years after walking out of the online Joe community. Whatever you thought of RodZD or remember of Zartan’s Domain, I hope you will give this new endeavor a chance with an open mind. At the end of the day, we all grew up with something in common: G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (and Cobra the Enemy)…

For more about my work and life check out RodHannah.com

I also publish the popular Star Wars parody comic Blue Milk Special with comic illustrator and Joe fan, Leanne.