This is one weird story... I’m not saying I got the whole story; hell I’m not even sure I got the story half correct... I just finally reached a point where I had too many facts, and strange ideas I’d conceived along the way, and was trying to connect them all, that what you are reading, finally, simply erupted from the pile of notes and Joe binge watching and comic book cross referencing that is my current lifestyle. It’s been years in the making but I think it was worth the time to make sure this story had taken the most accurate shape. If you tend to read my stuff from time to time, little tid bits of this may be things you have heard from me or those close to me before, but to be honest this is a “start suddenly and don’t stop until I’m done operation” so forgive my usual mad scientist approach.
by Frank Zero
-dedicated to Jack Kirby and Jim Steranko
(Images from the Secret Sun blog are links to the blog, some others are links to various other websites/ quotes from the Jim Steranko wikipedia page in Arvo font)
I want to make many things clear before we begin. First of all, I absolutely love these interlocking mythologies, the last thing I would want to do is add to conspiracy nonsense, belittle a great licence(s), or make something complex seem simple and misunderstood; attempting to guess or assign a moral or philosophical stance radically different from those of the creators of the shows or original material. The difference between me and the guys on Youtube who think every cartoon is satanic Illuminati mind control is EVERYTHING. I have nothing to do with those people and I don’t like what they do to the fiction that I love.
As much as it may seem to the contrary for one reason or another, I’m just another life-long fan of all this stuff. I vowed to do myself a favor and only write about things I really loved, quite recently... so here’s to the honest and most bizarre pursuit of trying to understand one of many cartoon enigmas of my childhood. In this way, I want to express before any other idea I may suggest here; that I respect this work and do not mean to deconstruct it just to do so, or insist on some fundamentalist interpretation. If you don’t agree with what I’m saying that’s fine with me and I hope, okay with you too. If you do dig what I’m saying here, check out more like minded work in the Sync Book 1 and 2.
There is no greater origin or “Source” of brilliant ideas to start this debriefing than the King himself, Jack Kirby. Jack’s sense of technological tedium mixed with metaphysical awareness sparks together with an already overactive intuition and sense of life inspired G.I.Joe creator Larry Hama, as well as so many aspects of the look of different other things in G.I.Joe, and obviously quite directly SHIELD, Nick Fury and many other cartoons, etc…
My observations on Jack Kirby are only a mere compilation of ideas discussed in length by Our Gods Wear Spandex author Christopher Knowles on the Secret Sun blog, which I suggest reading thoroughly if you are interested in any related topics even remotely!
Jack was very much a physical likeness of the leader of the Howling Commandoes where some of the men who had been in WW2 expressed some of their stories under the anonymity of the comic fiction. Also, at first glance, one can imagine where Hama may have been influenced to create the Joe team, as we shall see…
Speaking of enigmas, one of the real life enigmas so important to silver age comic books was a man named Jim Steranko. A boxer, stage magician, artist, musician, concept artist for films such as Indiana Jones and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Steranko would be most known for his psychedelic paranoid conspiracy driven work on Nick Fury and the world of Marvel Intelligence, S.H.I.E.L.D. (which is now known for it’s depiction in the Marvel blockbuster films and subsequent T.V. show.) Steranko’s first published comic book work already paints a picture of the rest of his career…Terms like Top Secret and Spy adorn a cover which has a tiny electromagnetic palmistry kind of diagram in the bottom left hand corner
.
Jim Steranko and Jack Kirby, I think were men who had a lot of violence in their early lives, and like many comic creators and enthusiast were picked on. Jack of course, going to the extent of almost being seriously injured from frost bite during World War 2; and in some ways as young men who had discovered their inner warrior but who were not fans of violence, they escaped into an inner world of beauty that could be scary or a pleasant fantasy, but it was always beautiful and full of life and character...
They were men who revolutionized the dynamism in comic art.
They were men who revolutionized the dynamism in comic art.
They brought a new sense of responsibility to the artist as a story teller. As we shall unveil there was a kind of shamanic process at work to really get inner turmoil and upset and turn it straight into the expressions and the agony of their characters. These were peaceful visionaries who had served their time as warriors, of one kind or another and come back with vision.
Of course in the mid 60s these kind of “far out” concepts were not alien at all, and it wouldn’t be long before Steve Ditko would set himself, or was set free in a very similar psychedelic universe examining fashion by his work on Doctor Strange, a very different kind of magician than Steranko in real life.
Jack Kirby had begun adding collage' to what was becoming mystical canon of a whole new sort, involving whole NEW GODS
“Steranko also approached Marvel Comics in 1966. He met with editor Stan Lee, who had Steranko ink a two-page Jack Kirby sample of typical art for the superspy feature "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.". Steranko self-published it in 1970 in the limited-edition "Steranko Portfolio One"; it appeared again 30 years later in slightly altered form in the 2000 trade-paperback collection Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. This led to Lee's assigning him the Nick Fury feature in Strange Tales, a "split book" that shared each issue with another feature. Future Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas, then a staff writer, recalled,
“Steranko also approached Marvel Comics in 1966. He met with editor Stan Lee, who had Steranko ink a two-page Jack Kirby sample of typical art for the superspy feature "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.". Steranko self-published it in 1970 in the limited-edition "Steranko Portfolio One"; it appeared again 30 years later in slightly altered form in the 2000 trade-paperback collection Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. This led to Lee's assigning him the Nick Fury feature in Strange Tales, a "split book" that shared each issue with another feature. Future Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas, then a staff writer, recalled,
He came up to the office ... and I was sent out by Sol [Brodsky] to look at his work and basically brush him off. Stan was busy and didn't want to be bothered that day. But when I saw Jim's work, ... on an impulse I took it in to Sol and said, 'I think Stan should see this'. Sol agreed, and took it in to Stan. Stan brought Steranko into his office, and Jim left with the 'S.H.I.E.L.D.' assignment. ... I think Jim's legacy to Marvel was demonstrating that there were ways in which the Kirby style could be mutated, and many artists went off increasingly in their own directions after that.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Steranko
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Steranko
(Steranko would be incarnate as character Mister Miracle, given that Jack Kirby would often base characters off of personalities he was familiar with in real life)
“Lee and Kirby had initiated the 12-page "Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." feature in Strange Tales #135 (Aug. 1965), with Kirby supplying such inventive and enduring gadgets and hardware as the Helicarrier — an airborne aircraft carrier — as well as LMDs (Life Model Decoys) and even automobile airbags. Marvel's all-purpose terrorist organization HYDRA was introduced here as well.”
In issue #135 we get a peek at many things that would later become iconic for S.H.I.E.L.D. and in some ways the G.I.Joe mythology. Steranko was influenced by Dick Tracy, and this issue shows he and Kirby’s combined vision ranging from Get Smart to James Bond.
It is interesting that there is a clear relationship between a weapons contractor like Destro or Bruce Wayne’s father, Tony Stark’s father is pictured on one page with a room of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. As Stark Industries is a leading military contractor in the Iron Man films, eerily similar to Destro, he is also actively involved in the development of German super soldier and rocket programs turned American. Stark and Destro, both men fused with metal who rely on their weapons industry fortune to work in the favor of the military interest they back primarily...which gets confusing…
In G.I.Joe Retaliation (second live action film) it is explained that there are vast underground tunnels in Germany where all of Cobra is stationed for some reason. Though modern Austria in the real world is a place of peace, environmental and energy advancements, they have a special
forces unit called COBRA besides GS-9.
forces unit called COBRA besides GS-9.
Jack Kirby originally created a character called Cobra who has the mental profile of Cobra Commander or even Zartan.
Oddly enough, in the 90’s after Marvel fought DC for the second time, the universes joined in the experimental; and as I remember it quite controversial, Amalgam universe, containing a Batman/Nick Fury hybrid called Bruce Wayne Agent of Shield. ( Later if you get bored think about Destro in the first Joe film being played by time traveling actor Doctor Who (Christopher Eccleston) , a bloodline of high technologist like Destro.
Destro comes from a long line of English occultist who have made their fortune for over a century selling weapons.
We get a disturbing intimate look at Destro’s family rituals in the episode Skeletons in the Closet.
Skeletons in the Closet:
Destro’s
origin
reveals his ancestors were convicted of witchcraft and forced to wear
mask. Lady Jay receives a memo to meet her long lost family
right in time for her vacation. On the day of the winter solstice she
comes across all kinds of spirits and dark cult activity in the mansion
she was supposed to meet family in. The cult is wearing robes and
various animal mask and use a Cauldron of Chaos to invoke a one eyed
tentacle flailing beast in the bottom of a stone pit. They intend to
sacrifice Lady Jay to the monster when a mysterious man saves her. The
man winds up being Flint who deploys a “Strike Team”
For some reason a similar entity is in a Jack Kirby 2001 comic book as well…
( Like Bruce Wayne, Robert Downey Jr. plays another dark detective Sherlock Holmes, besides playing Iron Man. Doctor Who (not same actor but Tom Baker) has episodes called the Pyramids of Mars, Ghosts of Mars, Mission to Mars, and conspiracy literature involving Mars often includes a parable about the past of Mars, as related to war culture, technological dependence or destruction or warnings about not “returning to Mars”.)
We also get a look at the beginning of a creeping paranoia, a Cold War, body snatchers kind of feeling that would continue through Hydra’s history, a more direct reference to something Nazi when headed by the Red Skull, but when secretly Americanized or dormant waiting underground, but for our purposes, the serpent society of Cobra. (Serpent societies have no lesser value in the rest of the Marvel universe but that is surely as a ramble for another day for this Rambo).
Though HYDRA is seen, like the Nazis as a mostly military organization their cult like behavior and chillingly similar hand gestures and philosophies make them like the infamous Nazi Occultist. In philosophy, Hydra is seemingly more like the Thule and Vril, but in execution more akin to Cobra or the most disturbing and criminal sects of the real life Temple of Set.
Though HYDRA is seen, like the Nazis as a mostly military organization their cult like behavior and chillingly similar hand gestures and philosophies make them like the infamous Nazi Occultist. In philosophy, Hydra is seemingly more like the Thule and Vril, but in execution more akin to Cobra or the most disturbing and criminal sects of the real life Temple of Set.
-Comic Book Cartography, art by Jack Kirby
In some cases we have the conspiracy more about underground beings or evil humans of some magickal composure on others we simply are speaking of a military accompanied by creepy beliefs, costumes, or imagery…
Some underground structures are bored by the government as conspiracy literature claims, others are created or always have been parts of caves used by the demons of ancient religions or simply their remaining practitioners…
“I had the opportunity to read the entire 1979 version of his 224-page manuscript, edited by Janet Berliner (from which I've excerpted Jack's Foreword, "The Last Time You'll See Paris" in this issue; be sure to get your copy to read this compelling excerpt, as well as a mini-interview with Jack about the book). As stated in the biography that accompanied it, to Jack it seemed that "great calamities are generated in left field, in places far removed from our thoughts, where unwatched pots are permitted to simmer and boil with the seeds of grievance until their contents explode in our midst." Inspired by the Vietnam War and his own experiences in World War II, he set out to tell the story of civilization's next big conflict.
The Story As We Know It
Having seen for himself the rise and fall of Hitler in WWII and studied many of the would-be world conquerors before him, Jack approached the novel with two questions in mind: Who will be the next catalyst for war, and where is the place his ideas and aggressions will bear fruit? For Jack, that place ended up being Red China—and the person, a Mongol warrior named Tegujai Batir. In the 1979 Berliner-edited manuscript, Tegujai is driven by a mystical dream to spend his life creating a vast series of underground tunnels throughout Europe and Asia, from which he'll end the white man's domination of the world structure. We glimpse the early upbringing that shaped him, and see over time as he amasses an army that includes other Mongols (known as the Feathers of the Falcon) and forced laborers taken as prisoners of war from his battles. The "horde" refers to the mass exodus of people that starts the day Tegujai's troops erupt from their underground tunnels, and grows as each new territory is overrun.”
“All this talk of underground tunnels reminded us that we never ran the Tiger 21 info we promised back in TJKC #23. Shown here is Kirby's drawing of the character's underground bunker complex, for a proposed 1960s television show for NBC that never materialized. An agreement dated December 28, 1966 between Jack, John Graham, and Lawrence K. Grossman stated there was a 2-page presentation prepared, as well as additional artwork by Kirby. If we track it down, we'll be sure to run it in TJKC.”
“Steranko began his stint on the feature by penciling and inking "finishes" over Kirby layouts in Strange Tales #151 (Dec. 1966), just as many fellow new Marvel artists did at the time. Two issues later, Steranko took over full penciling and also began drawing the every-other-issue "Nick Fury" cover art. Then, in a rarity for comics artists, he took over the series' writing with #155 (April 1967), following Roy Thomas, who had succeeded Lee. In another break with custom, he himself, rather than a Marvel staff artist, had become the series' uncredited colorist by that issue.
"Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." soon became one of the creative zeniths of the Silver Age, and one of comics' most groundbreaking, innovative and acclaimed features. ... Writer-artist Larry Hama, in an introduction to Nick Fury collection, said Steranko "combined the figurative dynamism of Jack Kirby with modern design concepts", and recostumed Fury from suits and ties to "a form-fitting bodysuit with numerous zippers and pockets, like a Wally Wood spacesuit revamped by Pierre Cardin. The women were clad in form-fitting black leather a la Emma Peel in the Avengers TV show. The graphic influences of Peter Max, Op Art and Andy Warhol were embedded into the design of the pages — and the pages were designed as a whole, not just as a series of panels. All this, executed in a crisp, hard-edged style, seething with drama and anatomical tension."
Jim Steranko Protfolio at ComicAttack.net
When
Hasbro was making a figure line for GIJOE (in its 70's-current)
incarnation, they were worried that a villain action figure wouldn't
sell. With the help of Marvel's Archie Goodwin, the Joes were given the
very reptilian enemy Cobra. Archie liked to pay homage to his favorite
creators in the comics business and this is most likely an ode to Jack
Kirby and Steve Sherman's character King Kobra. Kobra is also a
collector of artifacts and a schizoid criminal mastermind. The fact that
Larry Hama, his past employees and other cartoon writers were told to
keep “Hasbro secrets " and that GI Joe was originally going to be Nick
Fury's son vs. Hydra complicates things all the more...after all, isn't
it just a kids show? Wasn't the point just the merchandising?
"Prior
to G.I. Joe's relaunch in 1982, Larry Hama was developing an idea for a
new comic book called Fury Force, which he was hoping would be an
ongoing series for Marvel Comics. The original premise had the son of
S.H.I.E.L.D director Nick Fury assembling a team of elite commandos to
battle neo-Nazi terrorists HYDRA. Shooter approached Hama about the Joe
project due to Hama's military background, and the Fury concept was
adapted for the project. Shooter suggested to Hasbro that "G.I. Joe"
should be the team name and that they should fight terrorists, while
Archie Goodwin invented Cobra and the Cobra Commander; everything else
was created by Hama. Hasbro was initially uncertain about making villains, believing this wouldn't sell. Marvel would also suggest the
inclusion of female Joes in the toy line, and to include them with the
vehicles (as Hasbro again worried they wouldn't sell on their
own)...Each G.I. Joe figure included a character biography, called a
"file card". Hama was largely responsible for writing these file cards,
especially for the first ten years. When developing many of the
characters, he drew much from his own experiences in the [[#|US
military]]. The overall premise for the toy line revolves around an
elite counter-terrorist team code-named G.I. Joe, whose main purpose is
to defend human freedom from Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization
determined to rule the
world."-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Joe:_A_Real_American_Hero
"I'm
not going to be ground under the wheels of big government! I'm going to
create an underground organization that will bypass government
restrictions, and garner power through terrorism and extortion!... I
won't stop until my organization coils around the whole world like a
giant cobra!"-- Cobra Commander, ca. 1978
"By
1982, Cobra was an international organization. Cobra Commander
recruited the terrorist known as the Baroness, who served as his
lieutenant. Cobra agents spread through the Third World, using terrorism
to subvert foreign governments. One of the G.I. Joe team's earliest
missions was to free an American ambassador from Cobra agents working in
the middle east. The little South American nation of Sierra Gordo was
another of Cobra's earliest victims. Unstable governments became Cobra's
playground. While G.I. Joe had once been an anti-terrorist
organization, it almost exclusively fought Cobra as time went on. The
two groups became bitter enemies. The Joes fought Cobra Commander's
schemes to assassinate foreign ambassadors and subvert the government of
the United States. Cobra used the confusion of the Cold War to its
advantage, fighting not only America's G.I. Joe team, but also the
Soviets' October Guard." –myuselessknowledge.com
So let's examine Cobra for a moment without their opposing force. They can be interpreted in many ways as representing what conspiracy theorist refer to as the Fourth Reich down to bizarre and colorful details, they are representative along with many other 80s and 90s children's media of reptilian shape shifting humanoids, they represent every fundamentalist patriotic American fear there is:
In two seasons and three films Cobra manages to:
- Infiltrate the Marine Core from the inside out.
- create half man half fish aquatic humanoid hybrid soldiers.
- underwater bases.
- privatized Army apart from their official standing army made up of assassins and shape shifting reptilians.
- Massive corporate power through separate but interlocking entities.
- Satellite/Star Wars Program/ Space station control
- false flag war with Russia
- false flag war with Egypt
- false flag alien abduction from Sirius B blamed on Middle East
- weather control
- slavery
- control of world's oil
- control of world's currency
- militarization of occult and psychic powers or gifts in children
- various forms of magick
- counterintelligence, spy programs, espionage
- cloned replicants of world leaders
- Mind Control-
- Television
- psychotronic
- music based hypnosis
- ELF wave
- chippping and electronic collars, trauma based, torture, number encoding, such as human neurolink to number stations, related theories, etc...
19.super soldier and cloning programs, other genetic manipulation programs
Character Profile: Zartan- shape shifting, MPD assassin who leads the privately contracted Dreadnoks often in doing Cobra's bidding...
COMING NEXT:
- Serpentor Arise!
- Cubes of Darkness
- Mass Device
- Cobra Androids
- Baroness
- Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow
- More of Larry Hama's comic book career Wolverine, Cable, and other Weapon X as lost G.I.Joes
- Sunbow, DIC,
- Extreme,
- Renegades,
- Valor vs. Venom, etc...
