G.I. Joe Classified Series

Yeah he looks great with no vest, too. He might be outfitting three figures, including himself. The tac vest with samurai flourishes is peak silly Joe business and we're here for it. Great deluxe figure, up there with Action Sailor as my favorite $35 deluxe offering so far.
 
I would really like to have a Cobra response for this guy, so that may be where the more traditional samurai armor goes for me.
 
AceofKnaves said:
Guys, I love this thread so much.
Click to expand...
Yeah I think my main team was usually Snake Eyes, Storm Shadow, Stalker, Falcon, Tunnel Rat, and Lady Jaye (who usually filled in for Ripley when need be), but when her thumbs broke off, Jinx was put into active duty. Sometimes Dial Tone and Sneak Peek would support.
 
I love that the intensely thought out head canon discussion in this thread carried over from the old boards because that was so much fun. And I LOVE that so many of us are like, okay on paper Joes might not be something I agree with, so here's my personal head canon...

Put me on the list of people who also don't see the Joes as military. I figure Hawk etc. scoops up guys who were exceedingly good at their job and EXCEEDINGLY bad at being in a regimented, ordered military. Sometimes in my head they don't even know they've been disavowed and scooped up by an international, non-partisan organization to fight international sociopaths. They can pretend to be a military organization but that money's coming in from somewhere else and their strength is that none of them conforms, they're all at least mildly tapped in the head, and nobody gets in the way of letting them be very good and very weird at their jobs.

I often lost Snake Eyes, so it wasn't ALWAYS the Snake Eyes and friends show, but pretty often. Usually it was Dashiell "Flint" Faireborn, Rhodes Scholar, English major, and rule-bennnnnding soldier in charge with Lady Jaye never far away, pulling of James Bondian/Mission Impossible type missions with the other rejects. (Now I'm trying to think of the guys who were my go-to's. Sci-Fi, Spearhead and Max, Chuckles got a lot of traction.. Tunnel Rat and Low Light and Spirit, too.)

Also head canon is that Destro is always trying to find a way to get out because he didn't realize how bonkers CC is and he's been feeding intel to Flint for YEARS. They have an arrangement. Baroness eventually is in on it.

Budo looks AMAZING, and I had ZERO interest in the character til they showed off the action shots. Now I'm sold.

And COLD SLITHER IS REAL, KINDA? I picked a bad day to be offline!
 
Budo is INSANE.

. . . is it weird that I maybe like the armorless, hair down look the best? He looks like he just fought his way through a score of red ninjas:
“All right, Firefly. Let’s see if you’re really the ninja you claim to be.”

*swoosh*
*clang*
 
docsilence said:
I love that the intensely thought out head canon discussion in this thread carried over from the old boards because that was so much fun. And I LOVE that so many of us are like, okay on paper Joes might not be something I agree with, so here's my personal head canon..
Click to expand...
Completely agree. I think I enjoyed getting into that even before I officially jumped into collecting this line.
 
That’s why I love Hama’s file cards so much: they give you a taste of the character, and then you can go from there. Buzzer dropped out of Oxford to join the Deadnoks? Shockwave sings in a choir? Destro’s family dealt weapons to both sides back during the British civil war? Heavy Duty is a classical guitarist?
Awesome, fertile stuff.
 
AceofKnaves said:
That’s why I love Hama’s file cards so much: they give you a taste of the character, and then you can go from there. Buzzer dropped out of Oxford to join the Deadnoks? Shockwave sings in a choir? Destro’s family dealt weapons to both sides back during the British civil war? Heavy Duty is a classical guitarist?
Awesome, fertile stuff.
Click to expand...
Yes, I loved how that really kicked off so many ideas and plots for me as a kid. Just an awesome jumping off point.
 
AceofKnaves said:
That’s why I love Hama’s file cards so much: they give you a taste of the character, and then you can go from there. Buzzer dropped out of Oxford to join the Deadnoks? Shockwave sings in a choir? Destro’s family dealt weapons to both sides back during the British civil war? Heavy Duty is a classical guitarist?
Awesome, fertile stuff.
Click to expand...
Every bio card was a work of art. It's funny, there's one or two early ones where he just doesn't say much and it's like: did he just not like this one guy in particular, or was it a bad day? I reread the old Marvel Order of Battle collection of cards and I can't remember who jumped out at me as not getting the full Larry Treatment but it was striking when one didn't sing.

SPeaking of Shockwave, my head canon for him to resolve some internal conflict (my family has an... antagonistic relationship with law enforcement, two of my aunts had some brutal treatment by police in their teens) was that he quit being a SWAT guy because he didn't like it, and signed up with the Joes on the premise of "do you need a guy who has no problem being the first one through the door when a bunch of actual bad guys are on the other side? Cos I'm looking for a job."

(If anyone's on the fence about the Stinger, 10/10 would recommend, it's fantastic.)
 
docsilence said:
he quit being a SWAT guy because he didn't like it
Click to expand...
ACAB for sure, and my headcanon is also that Shockwave was repulsed by working for the NYPD and took his prodigious talents elsewhere. And he’s got that Matt Murdock Catholic-guilt conflict.


Aaaactually a fair amount of the Headhunters are ex-LEOs in my headcanon.
 
AceofKnaves said:
Ohhhhh and if a figure had a sword, or if I could find a sword for a figure, it was all swordfights, all night long.
I found an old sabre from a Zorro toy and gave it to “Thunderblast”, my Steel Brigade expy, so he/I could duel with IG Destro.
Click to expand...
Hell yeah. Any Joe that conceivably had a sword or sword-like-object was down for some ninja fighting. Even Spearhead with his weird gladius-meets-machete thing. I also MAY have broken a few Joe thumbs trying to get the more Spacey guys to hold lightsabers.


AceofKnaves said:
THIS. ALL OF THIS.

Yeah, all my Joes actively *resigned* from the service to join G.I. Joe. They are literally a rag-tag band of exceptional individuals who do not answer to any specific world government, but rather to the UN/an altruistic global peace-keeping organization. Most of them are guys who are too open or too weird to fit in with traditional command structures. Most of them actively *rejected* those traditional command structures. All their work is clandestine, all their accomplishments and failures equally disavowed on an official level. Hawk personally vets all inductees, and Hawk is woke as fuck.
Click to expand...
I didn't have a lot of deeply Leftist concerns as a kid, but I think my head canon for Joe was always similar to my head canon for basically everything else I like: The fantasy of the ideal and the perfect.

I LOVE knights and King Arthur and samurai and shit like that. And I love watching movies and reading books about noble questing knights killing dragons and saving people and being this perfect ideal of what WE think of about them. My brain is able to enjoy that fantasy and gloss over that knights and samurai were, largely, psychotic murdering pieces of shit. I save that for reading actual history.

When I play Ghost Recon, I'm fully buying into the FANTASY that this alternate reality America is truly good and these soldiers are doing what is objectively right. I don't buy into it as a reality - it's just a fun and powerful fantasy world of black and white with very little shades of grey.

I think of Joes the same way. I was always okay with them being a special group of American soldiers because I was also okay with living in the pretend world where America is objectively good, full of good people, and American soldiers are serving that good. There's nothing jingoistic or problematic about it as long as one recognizes that it is complete fantasy playing on the MYTH of America, rather than foundational and true for the actual real life United States. Almost like playing a game of 'imagine if...' Imagine If the United States was a bastion of truth and justice, and had a fighting force that could protect the entire world and ensure peace and freedom everywhere. Just imagine. And don't turn on the news or read any books, 'cause that'll definitely mess the illusion right up.


Anyway.. Budo looks awesome and Hasbro fucking sucks at making katana.
 
AceofKnaves said:
ACAB for sure, and my headcanon is also that Shockwave was repulsed by working for the NYPD and took his prodigious talents elsewhere. And he’s got that Matt Murdock Catholic-guilt conflict.


Aaaactually a fair amount of the Headhunters are ex-LEOs in my headcanon.
Click to expand...
Well you just convinced me to steal the Catholic guilt thing - he's even got an Italian last name so it super fits.

(Unrelated, but kinda, all the head canon bio ideas for the Night Force Shockwave has me wondering if they're two guys or same guy, two uniforms in my collection.Most of the palette shift guys are clearly the same person but he's uniquely designed that he could be anyone.)

@Damien I actually like the "this is how it SHOULD be" image. I think that's why I like sometimes sticking Captain America in with the Joes and why I'm thrilled Legends and Classifieds scale pretty well with each other. I'd like to think Fury and Hawk are kindred spirits, and Cap, Duke, and Stalker will grab a beer and talk about how to solve the world's problems the right way when they're not saving the world. (AAaaand now I want to find the 1/12 scale beer bottles I have and actually set that up for some pics.)
 
That’s MY Hawk!
5feff4412e8e1c2957d6842a8d3c8982.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top