I totally agree, LB. For someone to purposely do a silent issue, that's lame.

What this DOES prove is that Hama comes from the generation where the pictures can tell a story w/o us needing to know much. THAT is something a lot of current-gen artists can't do. Yeah, YOU DREAMWAVE!!! Comics are so text oriented, it really can bog things down.

I think it's the next issue where Grunt says, "hey scarlet, what happened to ya? You were doing your parajumping yearly thingy and BAM, you're gone..."

I wondered too WHY she was captured. But at the same time, it was a way to intro the red ninja which I could care less about. Shoulda left THEM back in #21, DD!!!

Sometimes a girl just has an 'off' day................even when she's me.......... ;)

Besides, us women know that sometimes, SOMETIMES, we have to let you menfolk 'rescue' us............... :p

I first read this as a reprint in Marvel UK's Action Force Weekly title. It was bookended by a couple of UK-originated strips dealing with Scarlett's abduction and the aftermath with Cobra Commander, Destro and Storm Shadow. Those had dialogue as usual and I barely noticed the lack of speech in the #21 part -- I guess that shows how good Hama's visual storytelling abilities were and how naturally the action in that issue flows without the need to speech.

For the most part, I liked the SS/SE connection -- the mystery and soap opera gave the book a continuity to follow that went deeper than the Joes foiling Cobra's world domination plots. This was a relatively subtle way of starting all that and for those reading it when it came out I can only imagine the level of intrigue that last page brought up!