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Wasss once a man
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Posts: 1,430
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Join Date: Nov 2006
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I voted yes -- at the time, when I'd hardly had the opportunity to read any comics, I loved watching Action Force videos as it was the only way to see the characters "in action" for me. And the movie was a big deal. When I got the chance to read the comics, I found myself a lot more engrossed in them and caring about the characters & events a lot more, soon coming to consider it the "real" continuity (helped by the filecards tying in). But I'm still able to enjoy watching the movie on its own merit.
Regarding characterisations -- yes, I'll readily agree the cartoon had more identifiable, distinctive characters, but I will argue that this was because they were often assigned just the one characteristic and everything else was built around that so they could often be more caricature than realistic character.
Which leads into the "realism" debate. Of course the comics weren't attempting to recreate events that were completely believable for the real world. To dismiss the idea of realism in "fantasy" comics (which includes GI Joe, superheroes, sci-fi, sword & sorcery, etc) as something they're not meant to have just displays the fact that you haven't read enough comics to understand it. Realism doesn't mean a broad, all-encompassing, everything-must-mirror-real-life portrayal -- comics do present you with a scenario that requires a suspension of disbelief for the sake of escapism but that doesn't have to apply to EVERY aspect of the story. For the most part, modern comics (going back to Marvel in the '60s) have endeavoured to introduce realism by presenting a fantastic situation or turn of events but then attempting to play everything around it out as it might actually happen -- people reacting as actual people might react in the given situation, laws of physics being obeyed beyond any established fantasy element -- so that everything BEYOND the established fantastic factor remains credible as something the reader could identify with and more readily accept. Look at Batman comics from the '50s compared to today -- back then he would go to a boy scout meeting as a guest speaker before flying to the moon to fight aliens, whereas now he prowls Gotham at night while other people question his sanity. The GI Joe comic WAS more realistic than the cartoon, because while it had some fantastic elements (like clones) it didn't have the "anything goes" style the cartoon did (clones, laser guns, ghosts, monsters, magic, secret civilisations...) and characters often treated the sci-fi elements as a bigger deal. It used military terminology appropriate to the characters' backgrounds, plus looked into political and beurocratic repercussions of the team's actions. And the characters had more depth to them than being built around a single personality quirk; I found that characters like Stalker, Spirit and Flint DID have distinct personalities even if their speech patterns didn't make them so readily identifiable, and the subtleties of this made for a richer and, yes, more REALISTIC experience.
Now, I'm not saying this was necessarily BETTER -- with such a huge cast it's going to be difficult to make everyone be an individual and when you're trying to sell toys you're going to want everyone to stand out in their own way. Watching an episode of the cartoon was generally a fun, action-packed experience that carried you along easily.
On this note -- who here has actually read the DDP series, continuously? Self-Modifier, you say you'd like to see the cartoon characters in the comics storyline; right from the relaunch, DDP was acknowledging the cartoon's role in the brand's enduring popularity and said that they would be aiming to work in some of the things that made the cartoon's characters stand out. They may not have gone the all-out caricature route but a lot of characters DO feel a lot more like they did in the cartoons.
And finally, don't use "leaving her at the altar every week" as a criticism of the Snake Eyes/Scarlett relationship. That happened once, in the DDP series, and personally I feel it added a bit more depth to them as individuals and as a couple. Might as well criticise cartoon Dusty by saying he kept switching sides. This post is long enough already to not go into details, but I feel Hama did a very good job of showing how & why Scarlett would be intrigued by and then drawn to Snake Eyes, and then considering their personal histories and current situation it seems perfectly REALISTIC for them to endure a somewhat turbulent relationship...
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