[J James]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FunkyBunch

We discuss 230-232 in episode 92 of the Talking Joe podcast. ww.talkingjoe.co.uk

A few little things we noticed / liked

-The team is Juggling 4 main story lines with some great momentum, cliffhangers, locations – underwater action in broca beach, bombstrike in oliastan , Claire's benzene trip and Dawn
-Red shadows are clearly meant to be English “bob;s my uncle”, “mates”, “luv”, “grub”, “gor” (gor blimey)
-Black Major reveals he is to be given control of the BATS in the new cobra infrastructure.
-Baron Iron Blood teased as a good suggestion in the letters page
-Roadblock gets his ma deuce through airport security in a diplomatic pouch again
-The nautical joes entirely miss tieing up loose ends. Just vanish in the whale, leaving behind remains of the brand new BAT design.
-Bombstrike grabbing a chicken drumstick on way out of jail cell, and then later she chucks the half eaten drumstick at Black Major.

'Favourite Line of Dialogue' –
Black major to Bombstrike – “why aren’t you the obstreperous one! We shall have to give you a proper thrashing when you’re conscious enough to appreciate it”
and
Deep Six “if we have the same calibre I can scrounge your ammo if you get killed”

Checked out the website! I'll listen to your podcast. Thank you for writing up a summary here. This is great.

[J James]

issue 231

Funny that Onihashi is being spoken of in a museum as if he was ancient in some way. Dude would still be alive if he didn't kill himself. What does that number 63 mean? Is it a refence to the hexagram? I seem to remember that the hexagram was one of a long book of numbered hexagrams with different meanings.

Dawn is kind of mean. Didn't remember that. Is it meant to be her personality or Snake-Eyes? You know... Larry could develop her into a good villain (but he won't).

Since the old trope of the ceiling vent is such a lame old worn out plot device, seeing it used as a misdirect is refreshing.

Deep Six and Cutter together in dialogue is good. Deep Six is appropriately a jerk, and Cutter just feels like an accepting older man who doesn't let it ruffle him. Why are they building robots in Broca Beach too? I guess it's Cobra's main jam right now.

The Claire mystery is blowing up on Duke, with Hawk and more Joes being sucked in to the story. It is incredibly bold of the team to resist Hawk in this way. Especially Psych-Out with his fake diagnosis in the middle of the conversation. That is nearly a warning to Hawk.

Oh no! Cousin Farik! He was my favorite subplot of this subplot. The city hopping here is very fast. Glad to see Roadblock using the diplomatic pouch trick that Snake-Eyes used to do all the time.

Uh oh. We have the US targeting hospitals with drones. That cements this firmly in the Obama administration, further confusing the timeline.

Letters page: Calling out the wrong birthplace of Stalker, and then a really good question about the parental status of Joe team members. It seems technically unlikely that all of the Joes would be unmarried and without kids at home. Maybe that's why we see some of the more obscure Joes less often.

[Mainframe77]

Place holder

[Mainframe77]

Issue #232 is live to discuss. Yo Joe!

Snake in the Grass.

[J James]

issue 232

This may be the best use of Cutter ever.

These BATS are sixth generation? I don't know if I can count them all, but if I saw the supposed generation diagram Larry is thinking of then I would probably disagree. I feel like there have been more models than that. These might be the best looking since the original BATS though (the original toy ones). I still count the blue robots in the swamp.

Looks bad for Bombstrike. It's an escape ruse I think.

Looks bad for Faoud. Also a fake-out or an escape.

The two salvagers are getting lucky. Kinda surprised they haven't found empty buildings but I guess Cobra left a lot of trinkets behind and the mafia who bought the area haven't done anything with it at all.

So Bombstrike, not a ruse. Failed headshot. Biggles-Jones has truly broke bad. Closeup of Red Shadows headshot for emphasis.

The reveal that Faoud is kind of a community figure in his neck of the woods. Some level of virtue signal writing which will continue to increase as the title ages.

Dawn meets Storm Shadow.

Letters page: an interesting question about soundtracks leads to Larry suggesting Ennio Morricone, Lalo Schifrin, and Ry Cooder. I don't know any of these musicians so I might look them up.

[SnowCat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by J James

issue 232

Letters page: an interesting question about soundtracks leads to Larry suggesting Ennio Morricone, Lalo Schifrin, and Ry Cooder. I don't know any of these musicians so I might look them up.

Schifrin is responsible for the score from the original Mission Impossible TV Show, Bullitt and Dirty Harry, so you've almost certainly heard at least some of his stuff.

Morricone did the score for a lot of Eastwood Spaghetti westerns.

[Mainframe77]

Place holder

[Mainframe77]

Issue #233 is live to discuss. Yo Joe!

Snake in the Grass.

[J James]

Look at all them handsome lookin' Snow Serpents on that cover.

General Crowther is back. Good character choice from around the same era as the most prominent Faoud storyline. Faoud has a background reboot. Now he's seen as a sympathetic figure instead of an incipient tyrant.

"The complexities of moral imperatives are no simpler to sort out in hindsight as they are in the moment. One person's righteousness is another person's mortal sin, and so the circle of violence continues." This is a great moment of dialogue. One of the strongest lines in the entire series. Except that there IS right and wrong, so some of this sentiment is based on modern moral relativity.

The slowest grenade ever is stopped by the heaviest car door ever. Roadblock is strong enough to push a door off a car from a sitting position and he has sadly lost his 50 cal.

I looked up the Night of Fire and Steel, the Obon Festival. In which the spirits of the dead return. It's a Buddhist festival which lasts for three days. Do we ever see Granny's sliced tattoo again after this? I think not but I'll try and remember to look for it.

To Bombstrike, money is no obstacle.

Cobra Commander is still calling it the "Cobra World Order" not being honest with himself that it's kinda all over. He's lost or given up his cities, the headquarters are all closed, Mindbender keeps reminding him about the financial shortfall problems, and the Astro-Vipers are being used to pilot helicopters.

"Dawn now has the sword known as Morning Light, and that sword will attract Arashikage ninjas to her like moths to a flame." Well, this has somewhat come true. Zartan is being pretty fatalistic though since Larry has probably forgotten about this little foretelling session by now. We can still hope, though.

Wade and family move into Springfield again. This must be the new replacement lifestyle and home for after their house got blown up, if I remember right. The whole family is feeling vengeful.

This stuff will Ellen Bogen and Granny in the back room, carving out a routine for Dawn is pretty good. This is the kind of slow formative growth that could have benefited many other characters who started out young in this series then aged up into some position of responsibility.

Okay I used math to try and figure out which real country Olliestan could be. Bombstrike starts out bargaining for the small box of rounds at $1000 "dinars" and ends up settling for $800 as a final price. So here are the amounts in American dollars that equal $1000 and $800 dinars in these currencies. (If it's only one number then I didn't bother to look up the exchange for the $800 and it's just the $1000).

Kuwaiti dinar
3,302

Bahrain dinar
2,651

Jordanian dinar
1,410
1,128

Tunisian dinar
367

Libyan dinar
225
180

Serbian dinar
10.24
8.19

Algerian dinar
7.49
6.01

So if it's a 50 round box of 9mm I'm going to say that none of these are a good match. Although maybe the prices are wildly inflated from a single man vendor in the middle of the desert, and so Libya makes more sense than Serbia. Best answer is probably that Olliestan is it's own country and we can establish that it's dinar currency value is in between that of Libya and Serbia somewhere.

In the letters page, someone requests an appearance from Tracker. (Did Tracker show up in Snake Hunt? I don't think he did). Larry fields a third complaint about the "Stalker is from Detroit" problem.

[Flints Beret]

“Astro-Vipers are being used to pilot helicopters.”
Yup. I literally laughed out loud at that. Thank you. Lol