Warren Ellis's GI Joe
Warren Ellis has written a new series of GI Joe cartoons, reimagining the infra-dumb 80s toy-sales vehicle as a serious war comic. Adult Swim has the original episodes, but they're blocked outside of the US, so if you're in the UK like me, you can watch 'em on YouTube.
GI Joe Resolute (YouTube) GI Joe Resolute (Adult Swim)
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
the latest
latest episodes
have you actually seen the embedded episode? Strangely, I have doubts.
Awesome! The second episode has a nice homage to Seven Samurai.
Gilbert Anonymous here:
Wow. Is it available, or will it be available, on DVD?
Looks like the animation direction and style is by the same artist(s) who animate The Boondocks.
Bazooka! Major Blood! Next Tomax and Xamot are going to be in the Peace Corps!
I've been keeping up with them, they're really good.
Well, colour me impressed.
Not as impressed as I would have been if I saw any sign of Cobra-la bio-tech, but still impressed.
To Warren Ellis: IOU a blowjob.
Seriously, I grew in the 80s watching those dumb gi joe toons and playing with the cool toys, later I became a pacifist and an anti U.S. warmonger politics. But man, when I see some good script on one of my childhood memories, I only want to take my gun and say HELL YES!
Pro Q: Doest sound the music and sound effects like those in the Metal Gear Solid saga?
BODY MASSAGE!
Wow. I'll be constructive (ish) in a second, but that was five minutes of my life I won't get back.
How was that in any way a "serious war comic"? I trust Warren Ellis to do something a bit more interesting with it as it develops, but otherwise I found it pretty shallow.
It's an interesting idea to lay 80s cartoon imagery and logic onto a more serious conspiracy thriller storyline, but I found the dialogue so dry and the narrative so stilted it didn't exactly leave me wanting more.
Oh well, hopefully someone can get a nostalgia trip out of it.
Wow, well.. look at their brightly coloured hats!
I think I will add "reimagined" to the list of words that automatically set off the warning klaxon I had recently implanted in my hunchback.
It's basically the original cartoon, but with actual violence. Sweet.
I hope we get to see a machine gun shoot a blue laser and it actually cut someone's torso in half.
I hate lasers: they cauterize the wound and there is no blood flowing, arteries jerking...
(sigh) Even as a young kid I never liked GIJoes, can you believe it? At age 8 they were just too dumb for me; imagine how lonely... well, not really. I despised the dolls but their toys were so cool :).
This one with it's Manichean attitude may have better scripts (???), better direction, better effects and toys and still be fundamentally an ass black hole for one's living time.
I couldn't watch after they killed Bazooka.
I personally loved the original because I was a kid. A kid who loved toys. It was perfectly geared towards me. Saying it was "dumb" because it was crafted for that audience is like me complaining that Little Einsteins is predictable and repetitive.
Why does the G.I. Joe logo at the beginning have a Dutch flag behind it?
I'm really disappointed I didn't hear about this until now, but I'll be able to see it all Sat. night so thanks for the heads up, boingboing.
Maybe if this is successful, A.S. will order more and give us something decent to watch again (with the lone exception of maybe VB season 4).
Also, love the fact that everyone from the series retains their look and don't look like a bunch of Matrix knock-offs like the upcoming flick.
A serious war comic is DMZ. This is just GI Joe with real violence. COBRA has enough money to design, build and launch 20 or so orbital lasers but still needs more? They have their own island!
It looks 100% less stupid than the original, but thats not saying much I'm afraid.
If you are in Canada, you can see the whole thing on friday night at 11:15 pm on Teletoon Detour.
i hated GI joe back in the 80s, but i'm really actually enjoying these. warren ellis rules.
@9:
I would have gone with "PORKCHOP SANDWICHES!"... but I like your style too.
Gi-Joe was always camp; any attempts to make it more "serious" have just come off as ridiculous as the core concept (two secret yet massive and wildly diverse groups of elite commandos fighting one another ... in secret!) is silly and untenable.
But hey, it was camp! Throw some lasers in there and everything was fine! This, however, I can't really stomach. I couldn't make it past the aircraft carrier that had everything in sight blowing up for no apparent reason, including the planes. It looked like there was an explosive charge planted every 15 feet.
What's HAARP without Art Bell?
This really wasn't very good or interesting.
The original "G.I. Joes" were poseable dolls from the 1960s that were modeled after uniformed men from the four branches of the U.S. armed forces. They were actually meant to represent the "regular Joe" troops that actually engaged in combat, pretty much the opposite of the super-specialized cartoon heroes that the brand later came to mean.
If there ever was a time when G.I. Joe was meant to be "serious" it was back before the line became a bunch of ultra-ripped super soldiers with godlike fighting abilities.
As a long-time Warren Ellis fan, I have to say that I'm not really impressed with this. In the past, Ellis has done some terrific reimaginings of things. For instance, in Planetary, the villains of the comic are a twisted version of The Fantastic Four. But so far (having watched the 8 episodes available as of nowish), this isn't really something I would describe as a reimagining of GI Joe.
It's basically GI Joe about like it was, but with more actual death. And even the death that's there doesn't have a substantial emotional impact because we don't get acquainted with any of the people who die before they get killed.
Plus, this isn't really Ellis's best dialogue. And some aspects are actually less interesting than in previous GI Joe stuff. The ninja-subplot in this is not as interesting or original as the one from Marvel's GI Joe comic. The plot is more interesting than your average GI Joe episode, but not as good as the one where they mixed in elements of The Prisoner.
As a result, I'm pretty nonplussed by the whole thing. I think that the only way I'll wind up liking it is if GI Joe loses. I'm not going to stop liking Warren Ellis, but this isn't something that I'd recommend to anyone else.
"If the Flagg hadn't been built to G.I. Joe specs, we'd be sitting at the bottom of the Pacific right now."
That was a crack up. Where did they get the money to build "G.I. Joe spec" aircraft carriers? Smuggling G.I. Joe spec cocaine?
I'm willing to forgive a fair amount of stilted dialogue for the 5-minutes-at-a-shot format, and I'm still kinda enjoying it all, but man - I don't think I have ever heard worse voice actors than the horrid slabs of meat they have doing this show. The guys doing Duke and Flint in particular are pure crap. _I_ could do better voices huffing helium through a hollow metal spike I'd just jammed into my own throat. Yeesh.
PORK CHOP SANDWICHES!
Can't resist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9bZwBzITyk
I kept waiting for the episodes to improve, but no luck. bad time management masomenos.
This made my day. I think this is a great spin on GI Joe. I love how Destro speaks with a Scottish accent, someone has been reading their filecards I see.
I think I'm going to start watching this.
-just as soon as I roll through all three seasons of "The Venture Brothers" one more time...
No, seriously I'll work in a few episodes, the Adult Swim episode I saw looked pretty good.
You know, if Cobra invested all the money he spent on weapons and put it into various passive-income investments with moderate returns on investments, he'd probably be able to live to a hundred and never have to work again.
Some people are never satisfied.
Greg,
if Cobra took all that money and simply lobbied the governments like everybody else...
They were actually meant to represent the "regular Joe" troops
I, for one, welcome our new 8-foot tall, 96" chest, overalls-with-no-shirt-wearing overlords. These things always look like they're about to break out into gay porn.
If all the satellites are down, how do they know what's happening in New York?
sweeeet
This reimagining reminds me of that game Warren Ellis worked on... Anybody remember Hostile Waters?
Reminds me of Command & Conquer - with stupid names. Will give it a shot.
If all the satellites are down, you can still communicate long distances with short-wave radio.
I fail to see how this is not an infra-dumb contemporary-this-week toy sales vehicle and a serious attempt to sell war to kids. And ultimately, kids to the army. Unicorn chaser please!
I'm afraid I'm with 13stong on this one. But I reread Slaughterhouse-Five this morning, so my brain may be biased.
It's 2009. We've pretty much seen everything here before. Maybe it suffers from the same problem as Star Trek: The Next Generation in following the source material a little too faithfully.
P.S. Re Major Blood and Bazooka: so it goes.