Haradrel, Brandon Jerwa revealed a LOT of information. THings keep on changing at Hasbro.

WHEN Chuckles and Lady Jaye were killed, the comic fans were pretty ticked. Jerwa was shocked. HE pitched the Special Missions Chuckles story and that's how he pretty much got on board. Next thing he knew, he was killing Chuckles off in that Cobra War2 storyline. Jerwa was VERY upset by that whole thing.

Then the concept of the "Hasbro has a list of characters that could be killed." THis was the infamous BLACK LIST that only the writers and Josh Blaylock knew about.

THIS LIST was later squashed by, irrc, Brandon Jerwa. There was NO list BUT because Hasbro checked the scripts of comic, they would/could decide who could/should/would be killed. There was a time, as you all might remember, that if a character was killed in the comic, then Hasbro would follow suit and NOT make a toy for them. (It was suggested that if they do Lady Jaye, they could do it as a flashback story. Just like Mainframe, Flash, Chuckles, etc.)

It is NO secret that the death of Lady Jaye was just a ploy to sell more GI Joe comics. That is ALL it was. It had nothing to do with making Flint a different man. (That was just an end result.)

Now, the concept of making a smaller team (ie; America's Elite) came from the fact that the current book was failing in EVERY aspect. From the writer(s) to the art to the direction it was going to even, ahem, Blaylock's handling of the franchise. America's Elite, just like, Reloaded was a way to try and relaunch the GI Joe title. Blaylock came out and said, years ago, part of the reason for making a smaller team was to make it more like a video game. So many FPS games were based on just a few characters. The writers just wrote it as Congress not giving the Joes enough money, they needed to be smaller, etc.

All this information was told on the JBL. Years ago, the JBL actually had 'guest star' chats. From Josh Blaylock to Brandon Jerwa to even a few bigger stars. No, they couldn't get Sgt. Slaughter, but they tried VERY hard.


THIS is why I say you guys are funny. If you understood the politics and whatnot BEHIND why things were in the Joe comic, you might not favor the Red Shadows. But from what I read on the JBL, the WW3 was what GI Joe needed to get it back on track but that had more to do with making things end and getting it out of the boring routine it was going thru.