[PanzerKrake]

The only good stories Hama did with ARAH were the ones that had zero Arashikage involvement, and were the short mini series side stories, or the one off issues about random Joes. The mainline ongoing storylines were all terrible, went nowhere, and just would retcon things often within a couple years.

Seriously after like 12 years the Revanche storyline has gone absolutely nowhere. We got now three Snake Eyes like characters? Oh boy I hope they do the gag about the granny arashikage with a brick in her purse

[AWOL]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PanzerKrake

The only good stories Hama did with ARAH were the ones that had zero Arashikage involvement, and were the short mini series side stories, or the one off issues about random Joes. The mainline ongoing storylines were all terrible, went nowhere, and just would retcon things often within a couple years.

Seriously after like 12 years the Revanche storyline has gone absolutely nowhere. We got now three Snake Eyes like characters? Oh boy I hope they do the gag about the granny arashikage with a brick in her purse

This is pretty much how I feel.

As far as Granny, I may have found Hama's inspiration. This is from a Japanese show called, Choujin Sentai Jetman:

[Ford]

I've always said the first 20 issues were my favorite. But I've been reading some of the newer stuff lately and have enjoyed it. The stuff around issue 200 with the rescue of Grunt and Cobra taking over the Pit had an old school feel to it.

[PanzerKrake]

Quote:

Originally Posted by AWOL

This is pretty much how I feel.

As far as Granny, I may have found Hama's inspiration. This is from a Japanese show called, Choujin Sentai Jetman:

He's obsessed with the Arashikage stuff and it's the worst part of GI Joe now by far. It was fine for a while as an overall connecting tissue for lot of plot elements, but now it's just overused.

Last 5 years has been just cobra trying to capture snake eyes how many times now? How many snake eyes do we need?

And they just continue to make Cobra Commander more and more pathetic and he's become his 80s cartoon bumbling idiot persona.

[Cobra Agent 66]

Yeah from 21 to around 50 something was the best. There was Arashikage stuff, every few issues or so, to keep the story going, but then whole issues dedicated to the Skystriker fighting the Rattler, or the issue with the WHALE vs the ASPs at the atol, or the jungle rescue with the Marxist snipers vs Recondo, etc.

Everything was well balanced. Lots of military action, a good amount of martial arts action and Dreadnoks stuff, a good balance of old vs new faces, etc. Not too much sci-fi yet, just enough.

[JoeArashikage]

I love the ninja stuff. Obviously.

I'll agree that Revanche has never quite paid off. Hama has the same problem as Stephen King because they both just write and see where it goes. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. For King, he ends the book and moves on. But after 300 issues plus those loose ends that didn't quite pan out keep luring Larry temptingly to pick them back up, thinking he'll be able to close the deal this time and closure often still continues to elude him.

I love him though, and would rather read Larry Hama at his worst than most current comic book writers at thier best. I'm grateful he's still giving us more.

[nightwrite]

I explained the appeal of the comic series to my father thusly: "Imagine over 300 issues of a Japanese American Vietnam vet just riffing a story off of the top of his head." As you said, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I'm kind of fascinated by narratives that just won't end. Soap operas, wrestling, and comic books (and obviously, some network TV shows) all force their writers continue coming up with (or recycling) new material.