Marvel’s GI Joe Retrospective, Issue #2: “Panic at the North Pole”

This post is part of a series revisiting Marvel’s 1980s GI Joe comic books. Here’s an introduction to this series.

What’s the story?

When an American research station at the North Pole is wiped out by a mysterious force, a team of four Joes is called in to investigate. They discover that researchers at a nearby Soviet installation had been experimenting with paranoia-inducing radio waves directed at the US, but after succumbing to it themselves, killed the US research team before dying of exposure. The four Joes have repeated run-ins with Kwinn, an extremely competent mercenary hired by the Soviets to clean up all the evidence. They eventually convince the honor-bound mercenary to lead them to his Soviet handlers and the stolen evidence.

What’s noteworthy about this issue?

Arctic peril. It can’t be a coincidence that John Carpenter’s The Thing arrived in theaters just a month before this issue was published in 1982. While GI Joe never (well, rarely) delved into outright horror elements like aliens or the supernatural, this issue’s illustrations of eerily abandoned Quonset huts and mysteriously dead researchers evokes The Thing. Even if Carpenter’s film was not an inspiration, this unusual setting could be drawing on arctic thrillers like Ice Station Zebra.

Weird science. The events of this issue are set in motion by Soviet experimentation with “low frequency fear waves” intended to induce mass paranoia in the U.S. As outlandish as a “fear wave” sounds to us today, it would have evoked for 1982 readers the CIA’s illegal MKUltra program, which (among many other things) involved human experimentation and mental manipulation, and which was made public in the mid-70s. Here, of course, it is the dastardly Soviets and not the Americans who are meddling with this sinister science.

Getting to know some important Joes. This issue introduces us to several iconic Joes who will be central figures in the comic’s most memorable storylines. While we met some of them in previous episodes, here we get brief but revealing glimpses of their private lives.

In this issue’s opening pages, the four Joes chosen to make the arctic expedition are called back from their off-duty relaxing and put on a plane for the North Pole. Who are these Joes, and what do they do in their free time?

First up is Stalker, who is spending his day off hunting deer in the forest in his trademark camouflage outfit. While Stalker isn’t as widely known as other Joes, he is an important presence in the comics—we will later learn that he was a member of a long-range patrol unit in the Vietnam War alongside Snake-Eyes and his now-nemesis Storm Shadow.

Breaker is up next—he’s spending his vacation day in a computer lab at MIT. Breaker is the Joes’ communication expert; he isn’t given a strong or memorable personality, and honestly I don’t recall him ever being a terribly significant presence.

That’s not true of Scarlett, who is in the middle of a martial arts competition when she gets the recall notice. Scarlett, with her red hair, southern accent, and martial arts expertise, is a close friend of Snake-Eyes and will be deeply involved in his many adventures and storylines. When her opponent in the martial arts tournament charges her from behind, she responds with what I suspect isn’t a legal maneuver in most tournaments:

Last but not least is Snake-Eyes, the most famous Joe of them all. Even if you don’t know or care about any of these other Joes, you certainly know Snake-Eyes. The archetypal brooding loner—he never speaks and wears a face mask at all times—Snake-Eyes was just about the coolest, most mysterious dude your typical teenage comic reader had ever seen, and the comics will milk his popularity for years. As ninjas became an obsession in American entertainment through the 1980s, the comics will increasingly center him and his complicated, soap-opera-like tangle of relationships with friends and enemies alike.

Here, he is found whiling away the time in a sensory deprivation tank. The officers sent to retrieve him gasp at the site of his face—hidden, as always, from the reader; it’s suggested that it’s so hideously ugly or deformed that anyone who gets a look at it gasps, screams, faints, or all of the above:

His horrifying appearance, left to our imagination, only increases his mystique. Of course, this is a bit of a trap for the comic writers: after years of teasing us with this kind of scene, they will eventually feel obliged to show us his face, and it won’t even remotely live up to whatever mental picture you’ve concocted. But that is years in the future. In this issue, Snake-Eyes is just a cool, taciturn commando, who earns the special respect of the mystic mercenary Kwinn.

Kwinn, the star of the show. Kwinn is an ultra-competent Eskimo mercenary hired by the Soviets to clean up their arctic mess. He’s really the main character of this issue, and every panel he’s in is a treat. The four Joes track him across the arctic wastes; across several different ambushes and encounters he outwits them repeatedly. In the final encounter, he expresses sympathy for the Joes and a dislike for the task his Soviet handlers have assigned him, but he holds to a strict code of honor that prevents him from outright betraying his employers. He ultimately finds himself a loophole through which his conscience can fit: he won’t turn over the goods to the Joes directly, but he won’t stop them from following him to his meetup with the Soviets and then won’t intervene in the conflict that will inevitably result.

Kwinn is a great character and it’s a shame that, to my knowledge, he plays only a limited role in the comics going forward. The GI Joe setting can always use more frenemies like Kwinn, who can serve as friends or enemies as the storyline demands.

Little military details. As noted in previous posts, the legendary Marvel writer/editor Larry Hama was a Vietnam vet, and that shows in countless little details that ground the otherwise rather outlandish scenario in the real-world. Off-hand references to military tech and tactics like blasting caps for explosives, firing pins for guns, and other details aren’t necessary, but they cumulatively work to keep the comic’s tone from drifting into outright James Bond or superhero territory.

Favorite panel: The closing panels show the four Joes doggedly closing in on the Soviets. Snake-Eyes is now wearing Kwinn’s necklace of animal skulls, which of course only adds to his bad-assedness. The issue ends here, before the Joes reach the Soviets, although it’s not hard to imagine who will emerge victorious.