Wow, a lot was posted in this thread in just one day!

I like the comic a lot, so I won't bash it. What I will do is defend the cartoon, which I enjoy just as much as the comic, but in a different way.

First off, I like that the cartoon gave voices to all the characters. To this day, when I read the comics, I hear the cartoon voices in my head. The dialogue was corny, but at least it "popped." "Eye in the sky, go in high! Gung-Ho Joe is goin' in low" may well be one of the silliest lines ever written for television, but it sounded good when Chris Latta said it, and I've never forgotten it.

I also love the background music, especially from the first two mini-series (as I'm sure you realize since I made MP3s of all of it, which Hammerfel hosted on this site). Again, when I read the comics, I hear music in my head from the cartoon, and it enhances the experience.

I also like the "high adventure/James Bond" feel that Lava Boss mentioned. To keep the attention of kids (or at least this kid), you needed more than just strict military protocol. The cartoon had the type of action you'd see in a 007 or Indiana Jones movie, and that really appealed to me.

As the BATman pointed out, what kid at age 7 or 8 or 9 cared or even understood that most Joes shouldn't be able to fly fighter jets? And if they did know, would they have cared? I wouldn't have! It seems a little weird to me now, but it doesn't detract my enjoyment of the show.

I also couldn't have cared less that Duke was bossing around characters with lower ranks than him. The cartoon said he was the leader, so I ignored the filecards. I knew he was a sergeant and therefore was outranked by a general or a colonel, but I just figured that he had been granted special authority to give orders to the likes of Ace and Steeler (I don't count Flint since his card gave him a lower rank anyway).

Finally, as to the subject matter -- I believe that the very first mini-series is the best of the whole show. The teleportation gimmick is kind of ridiculous (but again, I didn't care as a young child, and I doubt many kids did), but it did a great job of presenting all the characters and illustrating the universe fairly well. The Revenge of Cobra added more characters while fleshing out some of the ones we already knew and is my second favorite of the whole run.

After that, it's hit or miss. I personally hate The Pyramid of Darkness. The writing is childish -- and I know to someone who already has a low opinion of the show that doesn't mean much, but even when compared with the most childish of any of the other episodes, P.o.D. was ridiculously juvenile and simplistic. Then the series moved into stand-alone episodes, and there were some winners and some losers, but what I appreciated the most, in both good episodes and bad, was that everyone had an established character and they all behaved within the parameters you learned to expect. I've said it many times before, but I'll mention it again -- I love Larry Hama, but all his heroic characters sound the same! I could grab a line from a good guy out of almost any issue and ask you to identify the speaker, and I bet no one could tell a Hawk line from a Stalker line from a Flint line from a Duke line. They all just spouted generic military jargon. Meanwhile, I could grab a line from the script of almost any TV episode, and I bet there's a much better chance someone with some familiarity with the characters as presented on the show could guess the speaker.

Anyway, I reiterate -- I do like the comic, quite a bit. It has things I like more than the show, such as the intricate backstory, the soap operatics, and the fact that it was all the vision of one man. But I also love the cartoon. Maybe nostalgia is a big part of it, but the fact that I watched the entire series over again earlier this year and didn't flinch much at all tells me that there must be something more to it than that, if you can let go of your idea of how things are "supposed" to be and just enjoy it as a fun action/adventure/fantasy/sci-fi cartoon.

(And for the record, the majority of occasions when I did flinch while re-watching the show were all in The Pyramid of Darkness! It really is just that awful!)

(And P.S.: Nice call on "Twenty Questions," Swindle. That is one of the most right-on episodes of the whole show to illustrate a lot of the points I tried make up above! Everything clicked in that one!)

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