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:
The Hama-verse....from the beginning. Read Along.
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11-30-2020, 09:45 AM
J James
Crimson Guard
Join Date: Nov 2013
Location: Boulder
Posts: 1,574
I promised everyone here I would post my review of the whole "Secret Base and Eyeball Saga" once I got caught up on it after my wedding / honeymoon recently. Apparently wedding planning takes 13 weeks or so. It's kind of a mini-essay so I waited until the end of a weekend before the next issue drops to post this.
I do remember the Sky Raven from the Snake-Eyes funeral as a cameo.
issue 201 to 213
Secret Base and Eyeball Saga
I was away from the boards during these issues due to my wedding preparation and honeymoon, so when I returned I promised to follow-up with an encapsulation of my thoughts of the entire Eyeball Saga in one straight-through read. As with most of the modern second half of ARAH, this is only the second time I have read these issues and my initial memories are not always accurate to the facts I learn during the reread.
The Eyeball Saga begins when secret base is revealed. Hawk creates a three-base solution. I being counting the Eyeball Saga as an eight-parter which begins when Duke has the eyeball revealed to him by Joe in the depths of the secret base, and ends when the robot is destroyed and Snake-Eyes dies. Coincidentally in 201 which was the first issue I read in this sequence, the secret base is revealed and then shortly after the final issue in this sequence the secret base is reburied and written off.
Snake-Eyes and Scarlett go on their final Staten Island ferry ride in issue 201. During the rereading I desperately hoped that this was the last time Larry wrote these two before the death, especially since the next time we see Scarlett on the ferry is with Sean in the rubber mask. Alas, twas not so.
Zoe and Chloe come around in and beat down Roadpig and Zarana. Zoe and Chloe are still around as of 220. Are they Crimson Guards, or do all Crimson Guards just have horribly overwhelming spouses?
Mindbender is lamenting the slow decline of Cobra. Cobra Commander is really rocking the beatnik mufti disguise again during this time and has a great smile moment in 203. This might be Cobra Commander’s lowest point since being buried alive. He has lost all his European countries, most of his suburbs, is continually taunted and defeated by previous employees, is bleeding out money, and has been crushed physically.
Zartan attacks Destro and the Baroness. Then they make up. Destro declares that people continue to leave Cobra Commander alive essentially because he’s less effectual at the head of the Cobra organization than someone who might take over during a power struggle would be, a power struggle which could be global and cause collateral damage. Since this is the only explanation I have received for why Snake-Eyes would keep letting CC go, I’ll accept it. I still like my opinion that Cobra Commander is secretly a CIA asset and has a “no-kill” protection through the military.
There is a Joe mission in Olliestan which sees the end of Adele Burkhard in 205. It’s a very tense mission, and continues to generate increasingly more dire stakes as it progresses. Larry gives Burkhard a heroic death and Alpine’s respect. Adele Burkhard is buried in the same issue that Sean Collins returns and the eyball is introduced. This is like the death of innocence of the original half of the series.
The letters page of 210 claims that these plotlines are “building up to a doozy.” Understatement.
Roadblock is injured in 201 and again in 212. He is the most trusted member of the Joe team. Roadblock names Sean “Throwdown.”
Raymond is introduced, Tyrone’s brother and student of Blind Master (or more likely Zartan as we’ll eventually see later). Raymond is trained up by Budo (his second master) and ready for Granny Demon’s tutelage by the time of his second appearances. Strangely, this fact actually helps me to rationalize Sean being already trained as well.
Blue Ninjas attack the Arashikage. Why are they still attacking the Arashikage? Haven’t they evolved enough to not have a tie to the clan? If anything eventually comes of this storyline I do expect it to tie in to Tommy’s father. The missing Middle Master. Perhaps the Middle Master is alive at the center of the Kansas Blue Ninja facility, or perhaps he is himself the focus of their rage or even existence. BN-002 is introduced, and he’s the strangest leader yet, although later we find out that these are more like “cell leaders.” Part of me wants to see the Middle Master himself be revealed as the original identity of Alpha Prime but that is also sort of morbid and I’d like to actually be able to look up to Tommy’s father.
Pale Peony is allowed to see the secret base before most of the Joes. In the Joes secret base exist the gigantic robots which I believe make possible the option for a dismissal of Transformers from the Joe canon, if Larry wanted to take advantage of that possibility. I’ll explain later.
Sean Collins is introduced once more, 50 issues into the modern second half of ARAH. We will find that he has grown up more than logically plausible during the time elapsed between the original and modern halves of ARAH. When did Snake-Eyes ever train Sean? Certainly Snake-Eyes and Scarlett were separated during this time, and Snake-Eyes has kept it a secret from Scarlett. There can be no other convenient answer.
The eyeball is introduced in the first of eight issues which I call the Eyeball Saga. It’s 206 to 213. The Eyeball Saga introduces first the Blue Ninja silver samurai “921,” whose mental interface will be used to connect the technology-based eyeball to Serpentor. The issue after 921 is introduced, the eyeball is introduced next, then in the subsequent issues Serpentor returns. So all three parts of the system are set up in three back-to-back issues, and by this point Larry has also established that it will be flying up out of the Pit. The eyeball is “non-organic,” and unknown technology of some kind. Three issues into the Eyeball Saga and we already know all of the details which we will need to have to understand the climax of this mess. At some point Larry is able to pivot away from the Hasbro mandate to complete this story, but there’s not a clear indicator of when that was since he finished the Eyeball Saga using all the same parts he introduces at the start including giant robots. As the fairly few actual depictions of the eyeball progress, the size of the object appears to either shrink, or it becomes shrouded in metal, hiding some of its size. After some thought I believe that it’s probably located in the robot all along.
The Armor-Bot is reintroduced as a means of testing the 921 interface. This prepares the readers for the coming “doozy.” Joe and Jane share dialogue which might indicate the Cobra also has it’s own gigantic technological eyeball. Red Laser reinforces this when he states that “we built it the same way you did.” Although that would mean that Red Laser knows about the GiJoe secret base and gigantic eyeball robot. Also, is their robot being piloted by a man using the 921 interface as well? We’ll never know. The Cobra giant robot looks more like a Transformer than the Joe robot. Their scale seems much larger than a regular Transformer to me, although I don’t know much about their different sizes.
Reading this all at once strengthens my view that the separate elements of this storyline can be used to remove actual references to Transformers from the 90s crossover of ARAH. To do so requires that both Joe Colton and Cobra have built gigantic robots in their secret bases which existed at that time (at least the Joes did and maybe the Red Shadows already had as well). It requires that the robots have A.I. (well established in Joe lore at this time). This concept requires that the Joes and Cobra Commander have met and interacted with these robots of their own creation at some point (obviously they have). It finally requires that the robots have their own internal struggle and the ability to launch into space (established here). All it would take is one single “untold tale” from Larry to recontextualize these robots into the robots from the Millville story so that there is a reason CC knows Megatron. The benefit to this change is that these robots would be terrestrial and fabrications of the Joe Colton / Red Shadows era. It also helps somewhat to justify or fix the existence of this entire storyline. It brings them in-line as the big ugly brothers of the robot technology which already exists in the Joe universe. For me this is better and brings all the wacky giant robots “in house” even tying them to the Blue Ninjas and Armorbot. Maybe it doesn’t have that affect for you. I don't want to confuse the straightforward fact that I'd rather not have Transformers at all instead of trying to make them Earth-bound and products of human engineering in my headcannon.
Sean’s first mission as a Joe is his last mission as Throwdown. This consists of: half a day of riding on a vehicle, infiltration dressed as an enemy, changing enemy clothes, escaping, taking over the mission as the leader, and assaulting a giant robot. While in space, there is an electronic voice talking to Sean. Is it a Joe in the Pit talking to Sean? Is it Serpentor, or could he be hallucinating? Will the space voice return and drive Sean mad, turning him to evil? Perhaps it is the eyeball itself talking directly to Sean. Later there is a similar blue narration box but with different font, announcing the landing procedure. The difference in font leads me to believe that there was some script which might have been abandoned. Is Sean inside the eyeball itself when he is in the head of the robot? While the robot is outdoors, the eye appears to be a standard glowing robot eye. When it returns to the dark of the Pit we see for the first time that it is indeed the giant eyeball.
Snake-Eyes goes down. The proximity of the explosion to the Joes leads me to believe that there was no escaping the grenade, that Snake-Eyes did indeed perish at this point. I have read many ideas for ways to bring him back, and I personally would prefer that he stay dead. However if he were to come back I would be okay with it mirroring the storyline of Destro and CC in the abandoned original Pit. Don’t forget that Larry brought back the original Pit during this exact storyline, clearly explained that the collapsed portion hasn’t been rebuilt, and he stationed Snake-Eyes there. So it was on his mind to some degree when he was writing this. Someone also suggested that Snake-Eyes could be faking his death to go underground and wipe out the Blue Ninjas once and for all. I could buy this as a resolution to the Blue Ninjas storyline although I still feel like they’re Storm Shadow’s problem in the end and he needs to resolve whatever their connection to the Arashikage is.
Sean puts on the mask. One page delay between old and new.
Thanks to everyone for your comments about these issues. I went back and read the comments during that time period of preparation for my wedding when I was away from the boards. Gratitude to Sean C. for being the only person many weeks and keeping up the good fight during what might be the lowest point in either half of the ARAH series.
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