R.I.P.cord Part 1: You Say Jump...

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G.I. Joe: Origins #13
Origins13 cvrB.jpg
The issue that inspired a hundred Joe fans to explain how being white is essential to Ripcord's character, actually.
"R.I.P.cord Part 1: You Say Jump..."
Publisher IDW Publishing
First published March 10, 2010
Cover date March 2010
Written by Scott Beatty
Art by S.L. Gallant
Inks by Walden Wong
Colors by J. Brown
Letters by Robbie Robbins
Editor Andy Schmidt
Assistant editor Carlos Guzman

When Wallace "Ripcord" Weems is shot down in the jungle, it will take everything he has in him to survive.

Synopsis[edit | edit source]

Wallace Weems needs to survive. Finding the body of his teammate Cruz hanging from a jungle tree by his parachute, he loots the other man's body, using his beloved knife to cut him down — but when he goes to drink from Cruz's waterskin, he finds it empty, ruined by bullet holes. Instead, he goes for the other man's boots, but is forced to scramble away when a search party nearly spots him... but seeing the body cut down and the boots left behind, the searchers fan out to find him, nearing in on his position.

In the Pentagon, officials are briefed on a transmission they recieved from the Republic of Agak... a message on a thought-dead secure special-ops channel, saying "can you hear me now?". One of the U.S. government's maximum deniability branches had, some time before, sent a spy drone in with a team of commandos as backup...

From their Globemaster transport, the commandos deploy their "Skeeter" drone; but one of their number, wannabe pilot Wallace W. Weems, is busy pestering the plane's pilots for a recommendation when he transfers to the Air Force as he plans to. His teammates drag him back to the console from which they are operating the drone, but are unaware that Skeeter has been spotted from below by mercenary forces, who blow the spy plane out of the sky! The commandos are ordered to parachute down and retrieve Skeeter's data card, but as Weems — who the others refer to as "Ripcord", to his irritation — descends, he spies a pair of heat-seeking missile flying at the plane above! Weems tries to alert the Globemaster, but it's too late; the transport is blown out of the sky, throwing Ripcord off-balance as he falls.

Though protocol is to listen through and transcribe transmissions chronologically as they come in, the airman responsible is ordered by a mysterious superior to skip through to the most recent broadcast. Weems declares that the mission isn't a drug bust as was thought, and that he'll be doing his best to be a "superfly in the ointment". With the intel gathered, the woman reports to her commanding officer with news of trouble in Agak.

Temporarily knocked out by the Globemaster explosion, Ripcord comes to as he plummets towards the treeline. He manages to get his parachute out moments before he hits, tearing it in the trees but hitting the floor mostly uninjured. Though he believes that he has been met by his teammates, he is instead found by a team of the mercenaries who shot down the plane, who knock him out. Awakened with ammonia salts under his nose, Weems immediately takes to joking at and mocking his captors, even when they break the data card he was brought down to collect; he refuses to give them anything but name, rank and serial number, even when they start torturing him through electrocution. The torture renders his heartbeat slow and irregular, which one of the men determines to mean that he will soon be dead; and so, the mercenaries' leader orders that the unconscious Ripcord be buried with his dead teammates in a mass grave...

Featured characters[edit | edit source]

(Numbers indicate order of appearance.)

G.I. Joe Others

Quotes[edit | edit source]

"Wake him up."
"Hih! I'm up! I'm up! Won't miss the bus again, ma! Promise!"
"A comedian."
"Comedy stylist. Strictly freelance. But only if my flying career doesn't take off.

Kurin and Ripcord

Notes[edit | edit source]

G.I. Joe references[edit | edit source]

  • While "Wallace Weems" was the real name of the original "Rip Cord", the IDW version of the character — debuting in this issue — draws a lot on the Rise of Cobra movie version of Ripcord, not just in the spelling of the name but in ethnicity; the original Rip Cord was a white guy, while the movie version is played by the African-American Marlon Wayans. His desire to be a pilot instead of a paratrooper also comes from the movie, where he was offhandedly mentioned as having wanted to go into the Air Force rather than the Army.
  • While objecting to being called "Ripcord", Weems says that he wants a respectable pilot callsign like "Ace", "Slipstream" or "Barrel Roll".
  • Hawk and Scarlett claim that "wherever there's trouble, we're there", a reference to the opening theme of the A Real American Hero cartoon. ("A real American hero! G.I. Joe is there! A real American hero! G.I. Joe will dare! Fighting for freedom wherever there's trouble over land, sea and air!")

Covers (3)[edit | edit source]

  • Cover A: Introducing Ripcord, descending from the sky, by Tom Feister.
  • Cover B: Introducing Ripcord, hunted in the jungle, by S.L. Gallant and J. Brown.
  • Cover RI: Virgin version of cover A.