The Four Color Media Monitor

Here's a recent Collider article focused on the end of Hama's GI Joe run, which originally began at Marvel, and then picked up from where it left off in 1994 when IDW took up the license over a dozen years back:

IDW Entertainment shared with Collider today some exciting and bittersweet news. Fans of the long-running G.I. Joe comic book saga can look forward to a legendary treat. After a 40-year run that spanned across two different publishing houses, the franchise will come to an end with G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero! #300. Written, as always, by Larry Hama, the final issue of the comic book saga will send the G.I. Joes out with a bang: The cover image, which Collider can now show you, is set to be a record-breaking wraparound art that features no less than 313 (!) named characters that populated the stories across the years.

Hama penned almost every story in the original 155-issue run back when G.I. Joe was published by Marvel Comics. The superhero publishing house decided to not move forward with the title in 1994, and the Joes only scored an encore 15 years later: When IDW acquired the license and invited Hama to finish the work he started. In an emotional official statement, Hama reminisced about his history writing G.I. Joe stories, and teased a next chapter in his life:

“I handed in the plot to G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero! #300, which is the final issue of the series for IDW, with a mix of sadness and amazement. Sad, that a storyline I began in 1982 is coming to an end, and amazement that it has lasted this long. […] I did 155 issues at Marvel, and they pretty much gave me free reign to do what I pleased. When IDW got the license, they wisely chose to turn me loose with my own methods, and I happily produced a run that is only five issues short of my Marvel run. […] Now, however, I have come to the end and it truly feels like leaving home, leaving characters that have been my friends for four decades—many of which are, in fact, based on my actual friends and acquaintances—and I can feel a real emptiness looming. Somehow, though, I suspect the story doesn't completely end here, that the story will go on and the PIT will not be in mothballs for long. See you in the next incarnation!”

It may be the continuity he began isn't over (assuming it resumes at a different publisher), but the way he became such an ideologue and even turned against his former colleagues in a most ungentlemanly manner did no favors for the reputation of the franchise owned by Hasbro, any more than Aubrey Sitterson did 5 years ago. A serious query: why can't men like Hama keep their mouths shut, on social media or otherwise? It's regrettable there's only so many veterans like him whose work now has to be taken with a grain of salt, all because he wouldn't distance himself from other leftist ideologues who view themselves as above criticism for their politics. And some of Hama's leftism did, unfortunately, make its way into GI Joe material of more recent years in very unwelcome ways, at least a few times.

The GI Joe franchise is admirable, and that's why it's a shame Hama couldn't rise above leftist politics to really make it possible to appreciate the Real American Hero tagline. Something which we may not see in future takes on the franchise, assuming it'll have new life elsewhere. If the Real American Hero tag is scrapped, much like DC went out of their way to abandon The American Way in Superman, that'll be the result of leftist wokeism dictating decent phrases are unacceptable, all because anti-American ideology matters far more. Why, who knows how the GI Joe franchise will be handled going forward, if it sees a resumption at another publisher?

Labels: history, indie publishers, licensed products, marvel comics, msm propaganda