[firefly069]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wild Bill

Just when you least expect them...

lol. Yep.

[stopdead]

Quote:

Originally Posted by firefly069

Wow Hama kills off snake eyes, and then triples down by having Dawn Moreno, Sean Collins and snake eyes return. Also, didn?t Sean also get burned like snake eyes? Too many ninjas.

Hopefully soon we?ll see Dawn get a code name and Sean in a new uniform. I assumed Sean was wearing a mask. Yes, too many ninjas. As someone already said, Storm Shadow has become redundant.

[J James]

I think that if they split the ARAH comic into two monthly titles, "GiJoe ARAH" and "GiJoe Featuring Ninja Force," nobody would buy the second one and it would get canceled. Also I'm saying that as a reader who doesn't necessarily hate the ninjas.

The ninja stuff has not only too much exposure, but also not enough actual explanation. Who was Tommy's father? What is the relationship of the Blue Ninjas to the Arashikage? Is Granny Demon still the leader of the clan? How many members are there right now? Are there splinter groups which comprise the whole clan?

These are all important questions to me. Here is what I understand to be the case.

I wrote Larry in the letter's page and asked about Tommy's dad. He just replied that he died when Tommy was 10, the insinuation being that he isn't important.

It occurred to me that the Blue Ninjas could have something to do with his dad, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Originally when the Blue Ninjas showed up they wore the hexagram and were ninjas. Most of that stuff has been dropped at this point though. They now seem to just be transhuman avatars. What is their relevance to anything?

Granny Demon has been pretty straightforwardly shown to be the leader of the remaining clan. However I'm sure, quite sure, that Obaake Obasun has transferred leadership of the Arashikage Clan to Tommy. She held a meeting recently and she was deferring to him and he was giving the orders.

If true, that's a MASSIVE plot development for Storm Shadow which may have been ignored or overlooked completely. I don't want to have to read between the lines on this kind of thing... that's literally the redemption of Storm Shadow coming full circle. That's a top-ten ARAH plotline, probably top-three. How is that not it's own event or obvious plotline? It's like how Storm Shadow had his first actual legit mission as a GiJoe team member (as confirmed by Hama) during the IDW run but no mention was made of it... these are very significant developments which deserve at least some token mention to confirm that they really happened. But they deserve more than that, these should be cover mentions and primary stories for at least one whole issue.

How many members are there? We see Tommy and Obake spending much personal time with all the new girls. We see a few of the urban white boys occasionally. But then there are also the mature, well-trained older Asian men who seem to be of Tommy's age and who occasionally show up. They are not part of Granny's personal circle.

So how many factions of actual Arashikage are in the whole body? We have at least a few GiJoe team members in Ninja Force. Where are they? A few I think were in San Francisco together running the old dojo, but then that turned into a GiJoe headquarters and was barely mentioned. How many are overseas? Where are all the other mature members at? My answer to this would be that a few members are in San Francisco, most are together training and living together but not at the old Arashikage compound (since we saw that it is vacant and Granny spent some time living their and maintaining it). And the yound kids and girls are Granny's "special project" or personal pupils she is getting up to speed and starting out. Then when we wonder where Tommy is all the time we can see that he may be splitting his time between checking in with the Joes, training the unseen adult men faction, and dropping by to catch up with Obaake Obaasan.

This is a fair amount of content which could support a miniseries, but again, I don't think it would sell well. It is a lot of narrative housekeeping which is important but should already have happened rather than now requiring a fat plop of a narrative drop to make sense of it all.

And the Arashikage barely have an enemy. The Red Ninjas and Firefly? Dawn Moreno thrashes them and directly routed their headquarters. Imagine if that was Storm Shadow leading a faction of adult male Arashikage we didn't know previously and including Ninja Force, doing a similar attack on that base of operations. You could even leave the details of the operation similar, with the government sending in the inspector / ninja liaison to narrate. The Joe team would even be on the fringes as support, and the younger members would be learning from the elders.

We would almost all love to read that.

[TheOverlordCorp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by J James

I think that if they split the ARAH comic into two monthly titles, "GiJoe ARAH" and "GiJoe Featuring Ninja Force," nobody would buy the second one and it would get canceled. Also I'm saying that as a reader who doesn't necessarily hate the ninjas.

If I could make one revision? I'd revise the Ninja Force title to Larry Hama presents Ninja Force (removing them from GI Joe in full). Let ARAH be futuristic military/adventure, let ninja be ninja, and maybe let the Defiant/Star Brigade handle the Transformers subplots.

[Bryon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lifeline 71

The picture of the statue "crying " hits hard.

The whole preview was beautiful, but I agree that the statue was particularly moving.

Well done to the art team. Every detail, down to the color choices: wow. Perfect.

[Cobra Agent 66]

Sean, Dawn and Kamakura should never have existed. Billy shouldn't have died. Snake Eyes should have died, for good, around 1989, with Billy taking his place, under the tutelage of Storm Shadow / Jinx. So many missed opportunities.

[firefly069]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cobra Agent 66

Sean, Dawn and Kamakura should never have existed. Billy shouldn't have died. Snake Eyes should have died, for good, around 1989, with Billy taking his place, under the tutelage of Storm Shadow / Jinx. So many missed opportunities.

They didn?t need to kill snake eyes. Why can?t people just be allowed to retire.

[stopdead]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cobra Agent 66

Sean, Dawn and Kamakura should never have existed. Billy shouldn't have died. Snake Eyes should have died, for good, around 1989, with Billy taking his place, under the tutelage of Storm Shadow / Jinx. So many missed opportunities.

Well, that's not how it happened so all we can do is provide constructive suggestions for moving forward and hope that Larry or someone that can influence him will visit this forum and take our ideas into consideration...

[Cobra Agent 66]

Quote:

Originally Posted by firefly069

They didn?t need to kill snake eyes. Why can?t people just be allowed to retire.

I'd be fine with him just retiring in the mountains and occasionally providing GI Joe with supplemental training, like Yoda on Dagobah, as long as he's not clad in black and going out on missions.

[Cobra Agent 66]

Quote:

Originally Posted by stopdead

Well, that's not how it happened so all we can do is provide constructive suggestions for moving forward and hope that Larry or someone that can influence him will visit this forum and take our ideas into consideration...

Just let it end, or reboot.